Bettina Prato currently serves as Senior Coordinator of the Smallholder and Agri-SME Finance and Investment Network (SAFIN) led by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), where she is also Senior Global Engagement Specialist. She is a political scientist with over two decades of international experience in policy engagement, strategic planning, and research, spanning academia, the think tank world, and the UN system. Her academic work has focused primarily on the political mobilisation of experiences of violence associated with protracted conflict and trauma, while her professional life has focused on responsible investment, social empowerment and policy engagement for inclusive rural transformation. Most recently, she has been actively engaged in debates within the development finance community on private sector mobilisation, including the role of blended finance. She is an Italian national and holds a PhD in Political Science from the University of California at Berkeley.