Dr. Rafał Chudy has over 13 years of professional experience in project management within natural resources, forest economics, and finances. At IAFES, Dr. Chudy is involved in the EU-funded project ForestPaths, which is focused on co-designing, quantifying, and evaluating holistic forest-based policy pathways to optimize the contribution of forests and the forest-based sector to climate change mitigation. During the last few years, Dr Chudy worked for private equity and consultancy companies from the United States, Australia, Lithuania and Norway, where he was responsible for ensuring that strong research and evidence-based insights underpin companies’ sustainable investment programs and services in real assets, mostly forestry & carbon, agriculture, or infrastructure. Dr. Chudy’s research has appeared in peer-reviewed journals and presentations at international forest and natural resource economics conferences. He serves as the executive editor of two scientific journals – Journal of Forest Business Research and Forests Monitor, where, together with a group of well-recognized, international, and professional forestry researchers, he wants to revolutionize the scientific publishing process by introducing a new business model. This model rewards reviewers for their time, effort and diligence in evaluating manuscript submissions and supports the forestry community by sponsoring awards for young scholars.

He holds a Master of Science (Forestry) degree from Warsaw University of Life Sciences, a Master of Science (Forestry and Environmental Resources) from North Carolina State University, a Master of Science (Forest Management) from the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, and a PhD in Forest Economics (specialising in Forest Sector Modelling) from Norwegian University of Life Sciences. Dr. Chudy also has a post-graduate diploma in Financial Controlling in Capital Markets Groups from the Warsaw School of Economics and successfully passed the Certified Investment Fund Director programme administered by the Institute of Bankers in Ireland.