Sanjay Pradhan

Sanjay Pradhan was appointed as OGP’s Global Ambassador starting January 2025 in recognition of his exceptional contributions to the open government movement.  His role is to enhance OGP’s global positioning and advocate for open government values through public outreach and diplomatic engagement.

Prior to this, Sanjay concluded an outstanding nine-year tenure as CEO of OGP from 2016 to 2025.  Under his leadership, OGP achieved global scale, expanding its reach to 77 countries and 150 local governments  – together representing more than 2 billion people – along with thousands of civil society organizations who together delivered more than 5,500 reforms to make governments more transparent, participatory and less corrupt.  As OGP CEO, Sanjay led OGP’s policy dialogue with Heads of States, ministers and civil society organizations across countries, and served as OGP’s global spokesperson. 

Sanjay earlier served as the World Bank Vice President for eight years holding multiple portfolios, including the World Bank’s Vice President for Leadership, Learning and Innovation, Vice President of the World Bank Institute, and the World Bank’s first Director for Governance. 

Sanjay is a global spokesperson and distinguished speaker on governance, democracy and anticorruption, appearing in major world forums including a TED Talk, the UN General Assembly, the European Parliament, the BBC World Debate, London Anti-Corruption Summit, International Anticorruption Conference, Virtual Leaders’ Summit at UNGA, and OGP Global Summits. 

At the 2022 World Economic Forum Davos, Sanjay was awarded Social Innovator of the Year 2022 by The Schwab Foundation for being “a tireless champion of good governance and fighting corruption”. 

Sanjay has published widely, and was a principal author of the 1997 World Development Report. He holds a Ph.D. and a Bachelor’s degree from Harvard University.