Who we are

Arend is the Director of the Nature Finance convened Sustainability-linked Sovereign Debt Hub and leads the work on sovereign financing. He has 15 years of experience in sovereign debt, spanning work in credit trading, risk management, economic research, credit ratings, and debt advisory. Prior to joining NF, Arend was part of the sovereign advisory team at Citigroup where he helped governments manage a wide range of debt management challenges. Before that he worked at the technology consulting firm BFA Global as a policy specialist and product manager designing innovative tools for governments across the world. Arend has also been Director of Sovereign Ratings at Fitch Ratings, an macroeconomist at Swiss Re, and an investment banker at Standard Bank. He holds a B.A. from McGill University in Montreal, and a M.S.c from the London School of Economics. He is based in Zurich, Switzerland.

Barbara leads on stakeholder engagement for the Sustainability-linked Sovereign Debt Hub and NatureFinance’s sovereign debt work more broadly.

Before joining NatureFinance, Barbara launched and served as Director of the Sovereign Decarbonisation Program and of the Labelled Bonds Campaign at the Emerging Markets Investors Alliance.

Barbara is a former investment banker, having held London-based roles in fixed income sales focused on structured products, high yield and emerging markets at Salomon Brothers, Citibank, and Unicredit. She was co-founder and CEO of an FCA-regulated advisory firm working with institutional investors on illiquid and complex assets. Within the COO office at NatWest Markets, Barbara led bank-wide regulatory and strategic projects focused on governance and transformational change. In these roles, she engaged with both internal stakeholders and regulators.

She is an advocate for progressive change and sustainability via the financial markets.

Barbara holds a CFA Certificate in ESG Investing and a BSc and MSc in Economics and Social Sciences (DES) from Bocconi University in Milan.

Ceandra leads the Communications and Engagement portfolio at NatureFinance. She has 15 years of strategic communications and engagement experience across sustainable development, human rights advocacy, and the cultural sector. Before NatureFinance, Ceandra was a Communications Specialist at the United Nations Development Program’s Sustainable Finance Hub. Prior to this, she provided strategic communications consultancy for the OECD Development Cooperation Directorate, the Multilateral Organisation Performance Assessment Network, the OECD Sahel and West Africa Club and Global Affairs Canada.

Her early career in Australia focused on non-profit advocacy lead communications for the Starlight Children’s Foundation, Save the Children Australia and Creative Partnerships Australia. Ceandra has also worked as a contemporary art journalist and held board positions at The Lester Prize, A Maze of Story and Amnesty International Western Australia. She holds an MBA specialising in Digital Transformation, a Bachelor of Journalism and a minor in French Literature from La Sorbonne Nouvelle Paris III. She is based in Paris and is a mother of two.

Daniel is the Operations Associate for Nature Finance. He works with the coordination team to support all our working teams, managing the day-to-day activities of the organization and improving efficiency in the organization. 

He comes with several years of experience in operations and admin, having spent the last 10 years running operations in various sectors, including tech, marketing, and media. He holds a degree in Business Management. 

Darya is a Program Administrator at NatureFinance, with a focus on providing coordination support to the Sustainable Sovereign Debt workstream.

Darya has 10 years of cross-cutting professional experience most recently as an administrative and executive assistant at United Nations Watch in Geneva. Her previous roles include hospitality management in Israel and Geneva, telecommunications and three years of military service including as an officer. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Hotel, Food and Tourism Management from the University of Jerusalem. Darya is fluent in Russian, French, English and Hebrew, is a mother of three and currently based in Geneva, Switzerland.

Dorothée Herr is a Senior Associate at NatureFinance and leads the work on biodiversity credit markets contributing to the broader work on building a better governance of nature markets. Dorothee was previously the Manager for Ocean and Climate Change for the Ocean Team at the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), leading the IUCN’s international policy and private finance engagement on coastal and marine Nature-based Solutions. She has authored articles and reports on ocean acidification, Blue Carbon as well as on coastal and marine Nature-based Solutions (NbS) in the context of the UNFCCC, CBD and other international policy fora. Dorothee developed, with a team of financial experts, the Blue Natural Capital Financing Facility (BNCFF) and the Blue Carbon Accelerator Fund (BCAF) and co-developed the Subnational Climate Fund (SCF) and its Technical Assistance Facility, funded by the Green Climate Fund. She received her masters degree in Environmental Change and Management from Oxford University, UK and her diploma in Geography from the University of Heidelberg in Germany.

Eva is the Administrator for the NatureFinance project, responsible for coordination and logistics, including scheduling, travel arrangements, contact database maintenance and event administration.

Eva has worked as an Administrator in various sectors including marketing, graphic design and health services.

She holds an MSc in Psychology and is a BACP-registered counsellor.

Hiba is a Principal overseeing NatureFinance’s nature investment activities. She was previously the COO Middle East at Respira International, an impact-finance business. She has 16 years’ of international experience in finance focusing on agricultural investments, including as Investment Director at UBS and New Hope Group, and CEO of Bydand Agricultural Partners. Hiba is also a Non-Executive Director of OneFarm, a vertical farming business.

Gregor has over 15 years of experience in the asset management industry. He holds a MSc degree in Risk & Asset Management from EDHEC Business School and an MBA degree with the specialization in sustainable businesses from the University of Bologna.

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Jeremy Eppel is a NatureFinance Associate Principal and is the co-founder of Eppel Sustainability, a consultancy established in 2016 to help organisations tackle global sustainability challenges and secure funding. He is a member of the CBD’s Expert Panel on Resource Mobilisation for the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework. Jeremy has advised the World Bank’s Global Wildlife Program, the Prince of Wales’s International Sustainability Unit, UN Environment Programme, CITES and a range of non-Governmental and private sector organisations. Until 2016, Jeremy was Deputy Director International in the UK Government’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra). In this role, he led the UK delegation to CBD COP 11 and COP 12 and, as a member of the Bureau, co-chaired the contact group on resource mobilisation at COP 12. Jeremy also led pioneering efforts to tackle the illegal wildlife trade (IWT) through his oversight of the London and Kasane Conferences, and by funding frontline projects under the IWT Challenge Fund and the Darwin Initiative. Jeremy has almost four decades of experience advising Ministers and providing leadership in international and domestic policy making, including eight years spent as Environment Counsellor in the Organisation for Economic Development and Co-operation (OECD), Paris. Jeremy is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and a Trustee of IUCN UK and of TRAFFIC International.

Julie McCarthy is the Managing Director at Nature Finance. She has 20 years of nonprofit and philanthropic leadership experience in the areas of economic justice and financial governance.

Most recently, Julie served as senior advisor to the chair of the WHO Council on the Economics of Health for All, focused on ensuring that national and global economies and finance are advancing a healthy population and planet.

From 2019-2021 Julie was the founding co-director of the Open Society Foundations’ (OSF) Economic Justice Program where she led an $11 million global advocacy campaign on debt and financing economic recovery in low- and middle-income countries. From 2013-2019, she founded and led the OSF’s Fiscal Governance Program.

Prior to this Julie served as the founding director of the Open Government Partnership (OGP), after working with the Obama White House and Brazilian government to develop and launch the effort. In 2009, Julie was selected as a Franklin Fellow and peacebuilding adviser at the U.S. Mission to the United Nations, where she helped scope and launch a $30 million peacebuilding program in Liberia. Prior to this, McCarthy directed the Open Society Foundations’ Revenue Watch Program and then co-founded the Natural Resource Governance Institute, serving as its deputy director until 2009.

She is currently a nonresident fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Center for Sustainable Development as well as an Aspen/ADL Civil Society Fellow, and lives with her three children in Warwick, NY.

Justin Mundy is the Chairman of SLM Partners, Founder of the Rockswood Association, Senior Adviser to NatureFinance, a Strategic Adviser to the Climate Risk Hub of Willis Towers Watson, Chairman of the Cibus Funds’ Environmental Advisory Board, an Adviser to the National Geographic Society, Senior Adviser to the LandBanking Group, a Trustee of WWF-UK and of Global Canopy and a Distinguished Fellow at the World Resources Institute.

From 2007-2018, Justin was the Director of HRH The Prince of Wales’s International Sustainability Unit. Prior to that, he worked as an Adviser to the UK Government on Russia, Energy and Climate Change, was a member of the UK Government’s Sustainable Energy Policy Advisory Board, an Adviser to the European Commission on Russia and climate change and managed the World Bank’s forestry and biodiversity programmes in Russia and Central Asia.

In the private sector he has been the Managing Director of Climate Change Capital, Senior Adviser to Deutsche Bank’s Global Markets Group, a Director of Aon Carbon and a founder of ForestRe. He is a Special Envoy of the Secretary General of the Commonwealth Secretariat.

Katherine Keddie is Co-Founder and Director of Adopter, the marketing company for green technology adoption and Knowledge Partner to the Taskforce on Nature Markets. Adopter specialises in growing the online presence of companies that have invented new green technologies and organisations that are shaping new climate & nature positive markets. Katherine has led digital communication and marketing projects for ‘world first’ climate change and nature loss solutions for sectors including finance, construction and agriculture.

Katherine and her team are supporting digital outreach for the Sustainability Linked Sovereign Debt Hub, NatureFinance and Taskforce on Nature  Markets.

She holds a Politics degree from Durham University.

Lior brings 15 years of international expertise with non-profit organisations in the fields of operations, fundraising and partnerships. In her role at NatureFinance she oversees the operational functions including finance, legal, HR, IT, partnerships, risk management and overall workplace culture. Prior to NatureFinance she led operations for family offices and philanthropy associations in Switzerland including Giving Women, Geneva. Her extensive experience across the non-profit sector includes Fundraising Manager roles at sustainability and social change organizations. Lior has also worked as a human rights educator, including for Amnesty International and remains passionate about fighting injustice and promoting equity.

Lior completed her MA in Standardisation Social Regulation and  Sustainable Development at UNIGE in spring 2021, specialising in corporate social responsibility and circular economy. She is a mother of one and is currently based in Geneva, Switzerland.

Louis de Montpellier has extensive experience in international finance with senior roles in both public finance and the investment banking world. He is an expert in the management of government debt and sovereign wealth, ESG, impact and green finance, sustainable economics, and inclusive capitalism. He presently serves as Chair of the Board of rePLANET and vice-Chair of the Biodiversity Credit Company, two firms he helped found in 2020 to drive large-scale ecological restoration and preservation through private sector funding. He also serves as an independent board member and advisor of financial firms and think tanks engaged in sustainable economics and impact finance, including NatureFinance. His public sector roles have included Member of the Executive Committee of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS); Executive Director of the Belgian Government Debt Agency and Director of Funding at the EBRD. In the private sector, he has held senior positions at State Street, Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse. Louis holds a Master of Law and a Master of Arts in Economics from the University of Louvain (Belgium) and an MBA from Cornell University (US).

Marcelo has over 30 years of experience working in the sustainability field, committed to advancing environmental and social justice through advocacy and philanthropy. Most recently, he became a Visiting Scholar at Columbia University – ILAS (Fall 2021).

A founding partner at the start-up ZCO2/BlockC, a traceability platform for environmental assets using blockchain technology. He was the CEO of Alana Foundation and Arapyaú Institute, family foundations that promote sustainability, social justice and education. Marcelo is a co-founder and was the facilitator of the Brazilian Coalition on Climate Forest and Agriculture, a multi-stakeholder forum with representatives from academia, business and civil society to implement a just and sustainable low carbon economy focused on land use issues. He is also a co-founder of the Climate & Sovereignty Centre, a think tank on Defense and Climate issues.

Marcelo also spent twenty-four years at Greenpeace where he served as Executive Director of Greenpeace Brazil, and was previously Head of the Forest, Climate & Energy, and Toxics and Oceans campaigns in Brazil. At Greenpeace International, he coordinated the global Toxic Trade Campaign on the promotion of clean technology and the worldwide ban on hazardous waste trade and industrial pollution and later worked as a policy adviser on Climate & Energy.
Marcelo is a chemical engineer by training with a master’s degree in renewable energy. He is a Yale World Fellow and currently serves as the Board Chair at World Resources Institute (WRI) Brazil. He is also a Board member of Conectas Human Rights. He is also a member of the sustainability committees of Dexco SA and Marfrig SA.

Mark is a Senior Advisor with NatureFinance, and sits on the Leadership Group. Mark holds a degree from Tufts University in the US and a post-graduate degree in History from the University of Cambridge.  Following two years with the Diplomatic Secretariat of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) he has devoted his career to the environment and sustainable development, beginning with five years in the United Nations Environment Programme’s Policy Planning Division.  He spent four years in WWF-International’s Conservation Division, with responsibility for building its programmes in China and as conservation advisor to HRH The Prince Phillip, Duke of Edinburgh.  There followed fourteen years at IUCN, first in the Conservation for Development Centre (integrated into IUCN as the Field Operations Division), then as Director of Development and, finally, as Director of Policy and Partnerships.  He left IUCN to establish the International Institute for Sustainable Development (Europe) which he directed until retirement in 2016 and where he remains a Senior Fellow.  Mark was a Senior Advisor to the UNEP Inquiry into the Design of a Sustainable Financial System for the four years of its mandate, taking special responsibility for developing countries.  Mark writes and lectures on the subject of sustainable development.  He chairs the Board of Trustees of TRAFFIC International and the Swiss NGO Aquasis and sits on the board of the Sustainable Development Solutions Network-Switzerland, the Committee on Sustainability Assessment (COSA) in the United States, the International Bamboo and Rattan Organization (INBAR) in China, and Sustainable Finance Geneva.  He is the founder of the Geneva 2030 Ecosystem, a platform for dialogue and cooperation about the challenge of implementing the Sustainable Development Goals.

Matthew works as an associate with NatureFinace. He oversees the Nature Crimes work and assists with the Nature-Finance Alignment work. Matthew comes to Naturefinance from KPMG Dublin. He has a strong background in both law and finance, with a focus on environmental policy. He holds a masters in Environmental and Natural Resources Law from the University College Cork and he completed his dissertation on the emerging rights of nature.

Monique is a writer and researcher who specialises in conflict resolution, consensus-building, multi-stakeholder relations and policy advisory. She led and coordinated the African Leadership Initiative’s Project Pakati, which advocated for the continent’s leaders to address the governance gap with greater urgency. Prior to this, Monique worked as a Policy Analyst at the Centre for Development and Enterprise, South Africa’s leading developmental think tank. Monique is completing her Masters in Organisational and Institutional Studies (Wits), has a BA Honours (with distinction) in Justice and Transformation (UCT) and a BA Undergraduate in Economic History, Political Science and English Literary Studies (UCT).

Pamela works on strategic communications efforts in NatureFinance including on the Sustainability-linked Sovereign Debt Hub (SSDH) portfolio of work. She began her career as an Academic, earning a PhD from The University of Chicago in Economics and History. After teaching at Queen’s University (Kingston, Ontario) and The University of Toronto, Pamela took her research and analysis skills to developing Research Reports and Speeches on social and environmental issues for the C-Suite of Bank of Montreal. She then joined KPMG, where she honed Consultancy skills, including stakeholder engagement and project management. Combining research, environmental and social issues strategy and communications experience, Pamela established the Corporate Responsibility Division of the international Ad Agency, JWT where she learned the power of strategic and creative communications. After ten years at JWT Pamela established InvisibleHand – her own boutique firm Combining ESG and Corporate Purpose expertise, communications, brand building and marketing experience, and with a strong focus on the power of Co-Building. Pamela believes success begins with defining the compelling truths that move people.

Rupesh is a Senior Advisor with NatureFinance and sits on the Leadership Group. Rupesh is a co-founder of Global Sustainable Capital Management, a dedicated impact investment asset manager based in London. Prior to this, Rupesh spent nearly a decade at Lehman Brothers and Barclays in equity research in sustainability and clean technology sector, ranking first in the Institutional Investor survey in his last year. Prior to this, Rupesh worked at PwC in the corporate finance practice. Rupesh co-founded Bankers without Boundaries, to utilise former investment bankers for the benefit of the environment and social good.

Rupesh graduated in economics from the London School of Economics, is a chartered accountant and Freeman of the City of London.

Rupesh has been an expert reviewer in various publications with the World Economic Forum, the OECD, Prince of Wales ISU and the UN relating to sustainable development. Rupesh has spoken at COP climate summits, sustainable investment panels and impact events around the world.

Ralph has over 30 years of experience as a financial economist, with 23 years at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and currently Assistant Director in the Institute for Capacity Development. He is the co-founder of Rebalance Earth, who has developed a novel way to tackle both climate change and biodiversity loss. Namely, to reposition species such as whales and elephants as crucial allies in the quest to sequester carbon, secure climate-resilient ecosystems and generate income for local communities.

Ralph brings decades of operational expertise working with low income and fragile states across the world and providing policy advice, training and capacity development on macro financial economic policy. He boasts a broad range of expertise including remittances, fragile states, inclusive growth, financial markets development, banking regulation and most recently how to value natural capital so as to build markets and an economy around a living and thriving nature.

Ralph Chami has a BS from the American University of Beirut, an MBA in Finance and Statistics from the University of Kansas, and a Ph.D. in Economics from the Johns Hopkins University.

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Shereen is the Coordinator for NatureFinance and is responsible for team coordination and logistics, including scheduling, travel arrangements and event planning. 

She was Assistant Donor and Member Relations Manager for FC4S (Financial Centres for Sustainability) and SIF (Sustainable Insurance Forum) and prior to this she joined the UNEP Inquiry Into the Design of a Sustainable Financial System team in 2014 as the Relationship Manager.  

Shereen has over 15 years of experience as an Executive Assistant and Project Coordinator in various industries, has a BA Hons degree in International Business Management from Newcastle University and has excellent written and spoken Spanish. 

Simon Zadek is the Executive Director at NatureFinance, Senior Advisor to the Task Force on Nature Related Financial Disclosure, and co-lead of the Taskforce on Nature Markets. He was Head, Secretariat, UN Secretary General’s Task Force on Digital Financing of the Sustainable Development Goals, Senior Advisor on Finance in the office of the UN Secretary General, and Co-Director of UNEP’s Finance Inquiry. He co-Chaired China’s Green Finance Task Force, and led the Green Finance Study Group secretariat under the Chinese, German and Argentinian G20 Presidencies.

Prior to this, he was Senior Advisor to the World Economic Forum and the Global Green Growth Institute, founder and CEO of the international think tank, AccountAbility and Development Director of the New Economics Foundation.  He was Visiting Professor at the Singapore Management University and the Copenhagen Business School, and has been a senior fellow at Tsinghua School of Economics and Management, Harvard`s Kennedy School of Government,  and the University of Southern Africa.

He has worked with many corporations, governments and multi stakeholder initiatives on their sustainability and broader strategies, been a member of the International Advisory Board of Generation Investment Management, and has published extensively, including the award winning book, The Civil Corporation

Tejes is project manager working across several NatureFinance work streams. He holds a Masters degree in sustainable development from the University of Geneva and an MBA in sustainability management. He has also been involved in several projects in the renewable energies and circular economy spheres for the past 6 years.

Tom Brookes is a board member at NatureFinance and is also a Senior Adviser on International Strategic Communications to ClimateWorks. Tom advises Mava’s finance for biodiversity funding programme. He started his career as a journalist, covering technology, regulation and broader European politics and moved into communications, public affairs and media relations in the late 90’s.

Following regulatory and standards work for Alcatel, and others, Tom joined an international public affairs consultancy. Tom worked on the Microsoft competition case in Europe from 2002, representing Microsoft as press spokesman on the case and acting as political advisor to Microsoft’s CEO and General Counsel. He later joined Apple as Director of Government Affairs, Europe, Middle East and Africa. In 2009 Tom became Managing Director of the Energy Strategy Centre at the European Climate Foundation (ECF). He works to progress the political response to climate change, with responsibility for external communications, public affairs and political communications strategy for the ECF, its affiliates and network. Tom joined the Executive Management Team of the ECF as Executive Director, Strategic Communications.

Marianne Haahr is a board member of NatureFnance. She is the Nature-related Finance Lead with Global Canopy and the Technical Sector Guidance Lead and metrics WG with the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD). Prior to this, she was the Executive Director of Green Digital Finance Alliance and an Advisor to the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Denmark on digitalisation in emerging markets finance. She was also Director of Sustainia a think tank deploying digital technology for impact. Marianne started her career building climate adaptation projects in West and Southern Africa. She holds an M.Sc. Environmental Science and a second Masters in International Human Rights Law.

Sean Hinton was formerly the director of the Economic Justice Program and chief executive officer of the Soros Economic Development Fund at the Open Society Foundations.

Prior to this, Hinton was principal of Terbish Partners, which he founded in 2007 to provide strategic advisory services focusing on China, Mongolia, and Africa and the social and economic impact of large-scale extractive investments. He was a long-term senior advisor to Goldman Sachs (Asia) and the Rio Tinto group. His other roles have included: deputy chairman of SouthGobi Resources; special advisor to the CEO of SOHO China; and chairman of China Networks.

Hinton has over 25 years of experience in China and Mongolia, where he lived from 1988 to 1995. He subsequently served as Mongolia’s first honorary consul-general in Australia.

Hinton began his career as a consultant at McKinsey & Company as a specialist in their media and entertainment practice. He studied at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, the University of Cambridge, and the MIT Sloan School of Management. He is a Henry Crown fellow of the Aspen Institute, and serves on the board of the Natural Resources Governance Institute and the international advisory board of the Baha’i Chair for World Peace at the University of Maryland.

Holger Schmid is the Chair of NatureFinance’s board. He was previously the director of the sustainable economy programme at the MAVA Foundation, a private family foundation based in Switzerland. He led MAVA’s strategy development and portfolio management on natural capital, green finance and circular economy.  He facilitates and provides advice on collaborative civil society and cross-sectoral initiatives with a diversity of partners in various European countries. He is a co-initiator of the national Swiss Circular Economy movement and a founding member of the European donor collaboration on circular economy. He also serves as a board member for the Plastic Solutions Fund.

Holger holds a Masters degree in Biology. He started his career in conservation and restoration research in central America and central Asia and worked for WWF in Mongolia and in the Mediterranean on landscape and river basin conservation before moving on to address the underlying causes of biodiversity decline.

Dr. Vian Sharif’s work centres on driving the development of innovative technology solutions to catalyse the shift to more sustainable capital allocations with a focus on the natural environment. She is the founder of ESG nature insights fintech platform NatureAlpha, and heads sustainability at financial investment technology firm FNZ. Her work includes collaborating with academics at Cambridge and Oxford Universities on the development of science-based insights for investor decision-making with a focus on nature risk and impact, including the Benchmark for Nature Project, the Cambridge AI for the study of Environmental Risks Centre and as a guest researcher at the Oxford Martin School. Prior to this she spent over a decade in the global asset management industry. As part of a number of governmental and international sustainability advisory groups, she was a guest researcher at the Oxford Martin School, Member of the Taskforce for Nature Related Financial Disclosures Technical Experts Group and the U.K. Government’s Business Advisory group to the Convention on Biological Diversity. Vian holds a PhD in environmental behaviour change, and a masters degree from Cambridge University.