Chennai gets its first Chief Resilience Officer

The Greater Chennai Corporation along with 100 Resilient Cities, which is pioneered by the Rockefeller Foundation (100RC), on Wednesday, officially announced the appointment of Krishna Mohan Ramachandran as the city’s first-ever Chief Resilience Officer.  

As the CRO, Ramachandran and his office will be on the forefront of the development of Chennai’s Resilience Strategy, in conjunction with the various stakeholders and citizens, to create a practical roadmap towards urban resilience. He has an advertising and social enterprise background.

Krishnamohan Ramachandran, Chief Resilience Officer of Chennai, said, “My mission is to carry out resilience-building efforts that our community and government will see as capable of producing real, tangible results for Chennai in the long run.”

Ramachandran is the second CRO to be appointed in India after Kamlesh Yagnik was appointed as CRO for the City of Surat in 2015. Dr D Karthikeyan, Commissioner of Greater Chennai Corporation said, “The whole city has felt the impact of Chennai’s struggle with water, both flooding and droughts.  We all feel the pain of our gridlocked city and the pollution that it causes and we are all worried about the increasing impact of climate change.  

With the appointment of a Chief Resilience Officer, we are one step closer to building a brighter and more secure future for Chennai but we still have a long way to go. The CRO’s role is to align the efforts of all stakeholder groups in the interests of a more resilient Chennai. I urge everyone to support him in this critical new role.”