Katerina Elias-Trostmann is a 2022 Atlantic Council Millennium Leadership fellow and a climate-change professional with ten years of experience. She is the Brazil country head of environment, social, and governance (ESG) and sustainability for BNP Paribas. There, she has built out the ESG division, tripling ESG transactions in under one year and positioning the bank as a global deforestation champion, by defining the bank’s policy on tropical deforestation. Her work has contributed to sealing the bank’s global and regional recognition, winning the Latin Finance Sustainable Bank of the Year in 2021, and winning the Euromoney Best Bank for Sustainable Finance in Latin America in 2022.
Previously, Elias-Trostmann worked for the UK government’s International Climate Finance fund, where she led the design of a climate finance strategy for Brazil focused on forests and sustainable land use, strengthened UK-Brazil relations through climate diplomacy, and supported an over-sixty-million-pound portfolio of UK International Climate Finance investments in forests and sustainable land use in Brazil. Elias-Trostmann advised UK ministries on deforestation, sustainable supply chains, and climate finance.
Previously, Elias-Trostmann was hired to help launch the Brazilian country office for World Resources Institute (WRI), working to set up human resources, communications, and business-development operations. Identifying a programming gap and the need to work at the intersection of climate and social issues, Elias-Trostmann created WRI Brazil’s climate adaptation program and worked directly with Brazil’s Ministry for Environment on national climate policy. Among her most impactful work, she led research on municipal climate-resilience planning and developed a tool for city managers to measure resilience in low-income communities.
Elias-Trostmann has published on climate change adaptation, urban planning, and forest restoration. She is a born and bred Londoner to Brazilian-German parents, speaks five languages, and has a master’s degree in environmental technology from Imperial College London.