Dr. Nicole de Paula

Dr. Nicole de Paula is the Founder and Executive Director of the Women Leaders for Planetary Health, a social enterprise bridging the gaps between the health and environmental sectors through gender-just solutions. In 2019, she became the first awardee of the prestigious Klaus Töpfer Sustainability Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies (IASS) in Potsdam, Germany. For around 15 years, she has been globally connecting policymakers and researchers to understand crucial issues related to sustainability, environment, public health e, and equity. Previously of her work in Germany, she was the director of a think-tank in Bangkok, Thailand, hosted by Mahidol University at the Faculty of Public Health. 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 was 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 critical issues related to sustainability, the environment, and public health.

Dr. Nicole de Paula holds a Ph.D. in International Relations from Sciences Po Paris. During her Ph.D. she has received several scholarships and prizes, including the Young Research Prize from the Treilles Foundation. She has also been awarded the French Embassy felloship at the Center for Transatlantic Relations at the Johns Hopkins University in Washington D.C. and a a scholarship to become a researcher at the London School of Economics and Political Science as part of the Global Public Policy Network (GPPN).

In Brazil, she is the co-founder of an interdisciplinary research group on Planetary Health at the University of Sao Paulo. In 219-2021, she was part of the global Programming Committee strategizing the annual summit of the Harvard-based Planetary Health Alliance, hosted by Brazil in April 2021, which reached more than 5,000 participants from +130 countries.

She holds several advisory roles, including at SHE Changes Climate, PlaHNet, and the International Advisory Panel for REACH: Resilience to Environmental Change and Emerging Health Threats. REACH is the framing for the Monash University-led bid for the NHMRC Special Initiative on Human Health and Environmental Change.

Dr. Nicole de Paula has has been consulting with international organizations under the UN system on themes related to climate change, biodiversity, chemicals, financial and urban affairs.She is a team leader and writer for the Earth Negotiations Bulletin, published by the Canadian think tank International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD), since 1992 to bring transparency and accountability to multilateral environmental negotiations.

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. Originally from Brazil, she speaks Portuguese, English, French, and Spanish.