Dharana Nepal

Dharana is a Chartered certified accountant (ACCA) with more than 10 years of diverse experience in different aspects of international development. Her experience has ranged from working within government; private accounting/audit firms; largest multilateral lender, World Bank; DFID/UK aid and international consulting firms. She recently completed Masters in Asia and the Pacific Studies from the Australian National University (ANU) with diverse coursework that included Public Finance Management, Climate Change, and the history and the political economy of Asia and the Pacific region. She started as a PhD candidate at UNSW in February 2022 under Megan Evans and James Rooney. She is interested to understand the opportunities, challenges, and limitations of the use of 'blended finance’ – financial mechanism of combining philanthropic/aid or public funds with private investments that is usually portrayed as the silver bullet to solving climate change and biodiversity loss problems.