Marina Campos is passioned about forests and their peoples. She has worked more than 25 years in protected areas, indigenous territories, and conservation finance initiatives in Latin American tropical forests, especially the Amazon. Currently she is the founder and the Executive Director of Conexsus – US, which works on using blended finance instruments to boost the ecosystem of community-led enterprises with social and environmental impacts in Brazil. Before joining Conexsus, she has worked for almost a decade in the philanthropic sector with the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and the Rainforest Foundation-US on issues related to protected areas, indigenous peoples, and conservation finance. Moreover, she has worked as a policy maker, professor, and scientist while living in the Amazon for 11 years. She is a believer that efforts to support the conservation of the Amazon must incorporates community-led enterprises as the basis of a more inclusive forest economy.
She received a B.Sc. and M.Sc. in biology from University of São Paulo and a Ph.D. from the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies with a joint degree with The New York Botanical Garden.