Klaudia Schachtschneider joined the Pacific Institute in 2023 as a Senior Researcher. She is a seasoned freshwater resource and corporate water stewardship professional who develops concepts in water stewardship and NBS and supports their implementation.

Prior to joining the Pacific Institute, Klaudia held Programme Manager positions both at OneWorld and the WWF in South Africa and she worked as a senior researcher at the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR). In these positions Klaudia worked on a wide variety of water-related topics, most notably on water stewardship, water risk and NBS. She has engaged extensively on training, strategy development and partnership building around groundwater at city, national and regional scales. She has also worked on plant water use both in agricultural and ecosystem settings, and on establishing impacts of coal mining pollution on freshwater systems.

Klaudia holds a PhD in Botany, and an MSc in Environmental, Geographical Science from the University of Cape Town.