Nicole de Paula

Dr. Nicole de Paula is the inaugural Klaus Töpfer Sustainability Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies (IASS) in Potsdam, Germany and Founder of the Women Leaders for Planetary Health.

In 2020, Dr. Nicole de Paula has been appointed as one of the Scientific Commissioners of the Lancet Pathfinder Commission, chaired by former Prime Minister Helen Clark, Prof. Andy Haines and Joy Phumaphi. This Commission  was launched at the UN “Race to Zero” Dialogues and supports progress towards a healthy, zero-carbon society with the support of influential partners, including the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network; C40-Cities; Wellcome Trust Foundation; OECD; and The Lancet. For more than a decade, she has been globally connecting policymakers and researchers to create a public understanding of key issues related to sustainability, the environment, and public health.

Previous to her work in Germany, she was the executive director of a think-tank in Bangkok, Thailand, hosted by Mahidol University at the Faculty of Public Health focused on the operationalization of the One Health approach in Southeast Asia and Latin America. She is the co-founder of an interdisciplinary research group on Planetary Health at the University of Sao Paulo, Brazil. Dr. Nicole de Paula holds a Ph.D. in International Relations from Sciences Po Paris and has been consulting with several international organizations under the UN system on themes related to global health, climate change, biodiversity, chemicals, financial and urban affairs. In the past, she has also been the French Embassy fellow at the Center for Transatlantic Relations at the Johns Hopkins University in Washington D.C. and a researcher at the London School of Economics and Political Science as part of the Global Public Policy Network (GPPN).

Since 2012, Dr. Nicole de Paula is also a team leader and writer for the Earth Negotiations Bulletin, published by the International Institute for Sustainable Development. Her most recent research focuses on decision making and international cooperation in the post-Covid19 world, as well as digitalization and sustainability. In 2020, Dr. Nicole de Paula successfully concluded the executive course "Blockchain: Technologies and Applications for Business" at Berkeley Haas School of Business, University of California. She is currently the review editor for the journal Frontiers in Public Health (Planetary Health) and for the Brazilian Journal of International Politics. As a pioneer in the field of planetary health, she champions the socio-economic advancement of women through environmental conservation and public health policies to make the UN Sustainable Development Goals a reality by 2030.

She is currently a member of the committee preparing the global meeting of the Planetary Health Alliance, to be held in Brazil in April 2021. Originally from Brazil, she speaks Portuguese, English, French, and Spanish.