Dr. Fiona Stappmanns is a Private Sector Engagement Expert at the Wyss Academy for Nature, where she leads the Innovation Fund supporting nature-positive business models in emerging contexts. Her work focuses on structuring and deploying innovative financing approaches that align economic incentives with ecosystem conservation and community livelihoods. She works closely with partners across the Amazon and other regions to strengthen sustainable value chains, including in the bioeconomy, and to translate collaboration into investable solutions. Fiona holds a PhD in sustainable business models from the University of St. Gallen and works at the intersection of finance, systems change, and environmental sustainability.

Experience Impact Investor investing mainly in the Amazon basin across the value chain of the forests. We deploy Blended Finance and Impact Linked loans as a tool to mobilise capital to the Amazon Basin.

Senior researcher at the interface of macroecology, biodiversity research, and climatology. His research focuses on how climate and biodiversity are linked in time and space. A focus of his recent work has been the development of algorithms to downscale climate data to the biologically relevant scales needed for ecological studies. He is currently studying how extreme weather and extreme events, such as megadroughts, affect vegetation and biodiversity. He have also done extensive work on the geography and biodiversity of cloud forest ecosystems in the tropics and the biogeography of tropical islands.

Benjamin Bollmann is CEO of Swissnex in Brazil since January 2025. He previously served as CEO of Swissnex in Boston and New York, and as Consul of Switzerland in Boston. He is Chair of Swissnex’s CEO Committee, which coordinates strategic priorities across the global Swissnex network. Throughout his leadership across the Swissnex network, Benjamin has driven initiatives at the intersection of science, innovation, and global challenges, with an increasing focus on sustainability and planetary issues. He has launched and shaped long-term initiatives such as Project Quantum, Climate Collider, Swissnex for the Planet, and most recently the Planetary Embassy at COP30 in Belém. In Brazil, he has set a strategic focus on socio-bioeconomy, positioning Swissnex as a connector between Swiss and Amazonian ecosystems and fostering collaborations around biodiversity, climate, and sustainable innovation. Until 2020, Benjamin was Deputy CEO at Swissnex in San Francisco, where he led interdisciplinary programs spanning science communication, humanitarian technologies, and human rights in the digital age. Before joining Swissnex in 2015, he worked as a journalist and communications consultant at the intersection of science and design in Switzerland. He is a graduate of ETH Zurich and has conducted research in neuroscience and artificial intelligence at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

As Head of Programs, Vincent leads the strategic development and execution of Swissnex in Brazil’s initiatives, driving collaborations between the Swiss and Brazilian innovation ecosystems. He oversees projects in biodiversity, sustainability, and entrepreneurship, advancing international partnerships that contribute to the SDGs through joint efforts in innovation, academia, and education. Vincent holds a Bachelor’s degree in International Affairs from the University of St.Gallen. Brazil became the epicenter of his personal and professional journey when he began working for a local NGO in 2019, later writing his final thesis in and about the country.