Clarissa van Heerden is an audit, finance and risk professional with over twenty years of senior management and advisory experience working for the UN, big 4 firms and international organizations. She started her career in South Africa and completed her South African Institute of Chartered Accountants training with Grant Thornton. While in this role she managed a number of large public sector audits for the Auditor General of South Africa.
In her current role as the Senior Director of Accountability for WWF International, she is responsible for the risk management, quality assurance, network standards, compliance and workplace investigation functions.
In her previous roles, Clarissa served as the Chief Risk Officer for UN’s International Organization for Migration and as the Head of Internal Oversight at IUCN. Clarissa has also held senior management and director roles at PWC and KPMG, where she led the risk consulting and internal audit practice in the UAE.
Clarissa is a Certified Internal Auditor and has served on the Audit & Risk Committee of the CGIAR System Board since 2018, and as the Chair of the AFRC since 2021. She currently serves on the Audit Committee of the International Criminal Court and World Vegetable Center and has recently been appointed to the Audit Advisory Committee of UNOPS.