Mr. Praveen Pardeshi is a Retired Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer with over 34 years of experience in the services of 1985 batch Maharashtra Cadre. He has served in various senior executive roles including Additional Secretary to the Chief Minister of Maharashtra, the Principal Secretary of Revenue and Forest Department, Maharashtra, and Municipal commissioner of Greater Mumbai. He has worked as a Member (Administration), Capacity Building Commission, Government of India (New Delhi), overseeing the Honorable Prime Minister Mr. Narendra Modi’s flagship initiative “Mission Karmyogi”. Mr. Pardeshi led the training of 100,000 citizen-facing railways staff and over 400 UT police personnel to impart citizen-centric values. At present he is working as the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the think tank Maharashtra Institution for Transformation (MITRA) since July 2023. MITRA is being overseen by the Hon Chief Minister of Maharashtra and is formed on the lines of Niti Aayog, Govt. of India. MITRA is committed to enabling Maharashtra’s district-level data collection and analysis, thus generating insights to catalyze necessary policy formulation. MITRA-led transformation will drive the target of making Maharashtra State a $1 trillion economy by FY 2028. In this pursuit, Mr. Pardeshi has been appointed as Chief Economic Advisor (CEA) to Hon. Chief Minister of Maharashtra.

Mr. Pardeshi was all India first rank holder in the Indian Administrative Services batch of 1985. During his stint, Mr. Pardeshi also held various senior leadership positions within the United Nations as the Chief of the Transition Recovery Unit, UNDP Geneva, and Senior Coordinator of the United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UNISDR). He has subsequently headed the regional offices of the Support and Coordination Unit of UNISDR. Mr. Pardeshi was the Global Program Coordinator for the Defeat-NCD Partnership within the United Nations Institute of Training and Research (UNITAR). Mr. Pardeshi has been a key player in post-disaster and conflict recovery programs of UNDP and the public administration, governance reform, wildlife conservation, and public health efforts against COVID-19 in Maharashtra, India. Mr. Pardeshi has worked as the District Collector and District Magistrate for Latur District, and supervised law and order, along with drought management. In September 1993, Latur District was devastated by an earthquake of 6.7 Richter scale with Killari village as the epicenter. Mr. Pardeshi managed the Earthquake relief works following the Killari Earthquake and successfully implemented a Killari Earthquake reconstruction project.

Mr. Pardeshi holds an M.Sc. degree in Social Policy, Participatory Planning, and Economic Development from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). Before getting a master’s degree in development economics from DSE, he was an Economics graduate from Delhi University.