Frank Rijsberman is a Director for the
Global Development Program of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation working on the
Water, Sanitation & Hygiene program. Previously Frank was a philanthropic program director at Google.org.
A prominent voice on global water issues, Rijsberman has been responsible for public health grant making for the philanthropic arm of Google, and previously served as director general of the International Water Management Institute (IWMI), a leading research organization on water, food, and the environment.
As program director with google.org, Rijsberman developed and managed grants and investments in global public health focused on using innovative technologies to combat emerging infectious diseases in Southeast Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. Prior to this, Rijsberman served as director general of IWMI where he transformed the organization from a single, localized institute into an international research network with 12 offices across Africa and Asia. He was also a member of the Task Force on Water and Sanitation for the UN Millennium Development Goals Project, and one of the key organizers of the second World Water Forum. He served as part-time professor at the UNESCO-IHE Institute of Water Education, the world’s largest facility dedicated to research and capacity-building in the fields of water, environment, and infrastructure.
Originally from The Netherlands, Rijsberman received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in civil engineering from Delft University of Technology, and earned a multi-disciplinary Ph.D. in water resources planning and management and civil engineering from Colorado State University.