DR SOFIA SANTOS

Sofia Santos is an economist specialising in sustainability and sustainable financing.  She has 22 years of professional experience with banks, companies, NGOs and the public sector. She began her career in 1997 in the research department at Merrill Lynch Bank in London and returned to Portugal in 1999. She worked at Reuters, Bloomberg, the Portuguese National Statistic Office and at the Portuguese Paper Industry Association. In 2004 she created the consulting company, Sustentare, and worked with several other companies on sustainability issues. In 2013 she founded another boutique consultancy company, SystemicSphere – which worked in Angola, Cape Verde and Portugal in sustainable finance, sustainable energy, the circular economy and green bonds, amongst other things. Sometimes she includes in her practice as a freelance consultant more specific challenges: from 2016 to 2018, she was Secretary General of the Business Council for Sustainable Development; from 2018 to 2019, she was a Specialist in Sustainable Finance and Green Economy at the Office of the Portuguese Minister of Environment and Energy Transition. In 2019 she has continued to work in that office as a consultant, coordinating the Sustainable Financing Reflection Group. She has authored seven books, three of which are in sustainable financing. She teaches sustainability classes at IDEFE-ISEG and NOVA SBE, both in Lisbon, and is coordinator of a course for executives on “Sustainable Management” at Porto Business School.