Maria Carreño Lindelien is Senior Water Governance Officer at IUCN, where she has spent nine years with the Water Team in roles of growing responsibility. Her work sits at the intersection of environmental conservation and water resource management, with expertise in water governance and water risk across diverse international and institutional contexts worldwide.

Her path to water governance reflects a career built on understanding how resources, power, and sustainability connect at a global scale. She holds an MA in Conflict, Security and Development from King's College London and a BA in European Studies, Politics and Spanish from the University of Essex — a foundation that informs her conviction that sustainable water practices and the preservation of natural ecosystems are not competing priorities, but interdependent ones.

Based in Switzerland, she has dedicated over a decade to the international sector, working across the complexities of water governance in contexts where environmental, political, and human dimensions of water security converge.