Catalina-Alexandra Papari is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Utrecht University School of Economics (U.S.E.), where she conducts research on financing food system transitions and biodiversity finance within the REGENL programme. Her work focuses on developing place-based finance approaches that enable the integration of biodiversity into financial decision-making by reconnecting financial markets with the real economy. Within the project, she investigates financial mechanisms/ models that recognize and reward the value created through regenerative agricultural practices, facilitating their integration into both agri-food value chains and financial markets to support the transition towards regenerative, nature-positive food systems.

Catalina completed her PhD in Sustainable Finance and Green Innovations at Utrecht University & KU Leuven. Her doctoral research examined how sustainable finance and various financial practices can support the scaling of green innovations—including renewable energy technologies, management innovations such as TCA (True Cost Accounting), and biodiversity-related solutions—from niche initiatives to mainstream markets, while investigating how the financing of these innovations can drive the reorganization and transformation of the financial system to better support sustainability transitions. During her PhD, she also co-led the Financing Biodiversity - Pathways to Sustainability project, providing expertise to work packages on nature target setting and blended-finance for biodiversity, with a particular focus on institutional investors and asset managers.

Previously, Catalina obtained an MSc in Economic Policy from Utrecht University and a BSc in International Business and Economics from the Bucharest University of Economic Studies. Before pursuing her PhD, she worked for a couple of years in the European finance and policy sphere as a Policy and EU Partnerships Associate at Impact Europe. She began her career in Brussels at the European Commission's Directorate-General for Regional and Urban Policy (DG REGIO), where she contributed to initiatives aimed at simplifying Cohesion Policy and the European Regional Development Fund.