Francesca Paoletti earned a degree in environmental engineering from the University La Sapienza of Rome and then moved on to complete a PhD in environmental chemistry (with focus on thermodynamics of combustion processes) at the University of Stuttgart. Since 2001 she has been working as a project manager and business consultant for R&D, innovation and business development in the energy sector.  

Francesca is a practising Buddhist since 2010. From 2012 to 2014, she completed the residential FPMT Basic Program at Istituto Lama Tzongkhapa in Italy, which was also accredited by the University Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna in Pisa as Master in the Preservation and Development of Wisdom Culture and the Art of Liberation. Following that, she graduated from the online Masters Program in Buddhist Studies of Sutra and Tantra, FPMT’s most advanced education program, which is inspired by and adapted from the traditional Geshe Studies at the Gelugpa monastic universities. Since 2015, she is a registered Dharma teacher within the FPMT and currently serves as forum elder for the Online Basic Program.  

Francesca is also a certified facilitator for the secular program Cultivating Emotional Balance (developed by Dr. Alan Wallace and Dr. Paul Ekman). Her main areas of interest are the application of Buddhist ethics to everyday life, intercultural issues in the transmission of the Dharma in a Western setting, and the development of emotional resilience in the face of the small and large challenges of our lives.  

She currently lives in Switzerland, where she works as a project manager in the area of renewable energy and decarbonisation, with a special interest in social innovations and community-based energy transition projects. She combines her technical background with her interest in ethical action and her passion for climate justice and thus closes the circle to her Buddhist practice.