Lubaina is Program Director, Urban Development and Resilience in the Cities and Transport program at WRI India. With over 15 years of experience, she leads the urban climate resilience program focusing on national and sub-national climate planning and projectization, blue-green infrastructure, nature-based solutions, and heat resilience pathways grounded in interdisciplinary policy and action research.

Over a decade at WRI India, Lubaina has shaped how cities plan for climate risk by putting differential vulnerability and community capacities at the centre of the process. She led the development of the Climate Hazards and Vulnerability Assessment (CHVA) and the Urban Community Resilience Assessment (UCRA), frameworks that help cities move from understanding who is most at risk to designing, financing, and implementing action. Her work links research to practice, with equal attention to how resilience plans are built, who shapes them, and how they translate into projects on the ground

Lubaina began her career as a researcher and visiting lecturer at two architecture schools in Mumbai, and worked with the KRVIA design cell on projects affiliated with the Mumbai Transformation Support Unit (MTSU) and the World Bank. In the United States, she helped set up an online building approvals portal for the City of Emeryville, California, and worked with the City of Berkeley on local economic development strategies for low-income neighbourhoods in South Berkeley.

An architect and urban planner from Mumbai, Lubaina holds an undergraduate degree in architecture from the Kamla Raheja Vidyanidhi Institute for Architecture (KRVIA), Mumbai University, and a dual master’s in Architecture and City and Regional Planning from the University of California, Berkeley, with a focus on housing, community, and economic development.