An economist specialising in sustainability and climate finance. She has 27 years’ professional experience across banks, companies, NGOs and the public sector.
She began her career in 1997 in the Research department at Merrill Lynch in London and returned to Portugal in 1999. She has worked for Reuters, Bloomberg, INE and CELPA. She served as Secretary-General of BCSD Portugal – the Portuguese Business Council for Sustainable Development; and as a Specialist in Sustainable Finance in the Office of the Minister for the Environment and Energy Transition. In this role, she was responsible for leading the “Reflection Group on Sustainable Finance”, which resulted in 20 institutions signing the “Letter of Commitment to Sustainable Finance in Portugal”.
Today, in addition to being CEO of Systemic, she is an international consultant for the United Nations Green Climate Fund for the African region; for the French Development Agency, in the area of Climate and Sustainability Finance on projects in Armenia, Angola and Rwanda; and a consultant on an FCDO-funded project as international coordinator for the Sustainable Finance workstream in Mozambique under the GCIP Project, amongst other projects in Cape Verde. She is also a consultant on Climate Finance for the World Bank.
At ISEG, she is co-coordinator of the ‘Sustainable Finance’ executive programme. She also teaches the ‘CSR and Ethics’ module on the Master of International Management programme at the Business School of Mohammed VI Polytechnic University in Rabat. She holds a degree in Economics from ISEG, a Master’s degree in Economics from Birkbeck College, University of London, and a PhD from Middlesex University in London on the role of banks in promoting sustainable development.
Sofia Santos is the author of seven books, three of which are devoted to sustainable finance.
