Marnie Lassen

Background

About Marnie Lassen

I'm passionate about working collaboratively to solve our dual climate and biodiversity crises. I've worked in the environmental sector for over two decades, most recently as CEO of Natural Carbon, where we worked to make carbon markets fairer for Indigenous peoples and local communities. We successfully piloted a fair carbon standard which has now been transferred to our major shareholder, Save the Children.I spent 10 years at Victoria's dedicated private land conservation organisation, Trust for Nature, where I led our statewide operations and conservation markets programs, and twice served as Acting CEO. Highlights included co-designing the Victorian government's $31m private land stream of BushBank (a biodiverse restoration program that includes carbon co-funding), and being part of the Trust for Nature team facilitating the largest-ever hand-back of private land to Traditional Owners in Victoria, through the transfer of to the First People of the Millewa Mallee Aboriginal Corporation.For the past 5 years I've also led a national conversation on conservation finance on behalf of the Australian Land Conservation Alliance, which included co-authoring an Australia-first report on the 26 different ways to fund private land conservation globally. I previously worked on an endangered prairie species conservation program in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States at The Nature Conservancy. I've been privileged to learn from some of the world's leading environmental professionals at two different month-long international fellowships examining how to fund nature conservation, particularly through the use of environmental markets. Those fellowships have gifted me an international network of conservation friends and colleagues.I originally trained in Melbourne as a lawyer (graduated top of class in law at Monash University) and spent 4 years working as an environmental and planning lawyer at a major law firm in Los Angeles. I've served on several boards and have volunteered since I was a teenager at a community organisation that runs camps near Melbourne aimed at creating a more inclusive society through service to others.