Michelle has spent the past decade working on climate change policy for the Australian Government. She most recently worked in the International Climate Change Branch of the Department of the Environment and Energy, where she led the global analytics function and supported Australia’s involvement in the G20 Climate and Sustainability Working Group. She was an emerging leader at the 2017 EU-Australia Leadership Forum and an inaugural recipient of the 2019 JWLand research fellowship for the ANU Grand Challenge Zero Carbon Energy in the Asia-Pacific.

Meeting the temperature goals of the Paris Agreement requires massive public and private investments to facilitate rapid decarbonisation, accelerate electrification, and develop negative emissions technologies in hard-to-decarbonise sectors. New kinds of investment governance are required to facilitate this transition. Through her PhD research, Michelle will explore different dimensions of this governance, including the development of an international benchmarking framework for Green Banks, models for green investment governance in the Asia-Pacific, and the roles of Public Banks in the transition to net zero emissions.