Sophia Baranes
Project Lead
Sophia Baranes is a Project Lead at Nura Global Innovation Lab, where she leads the Water Access Catalyst (WAC) initiative focused on strengthening collaboration between the Israeli water innovation ecosystem and WASH sector partners across Eastern and Southern Africa.
Prior to joining Nura, Sophia served as Country Director for Zambia at Innovation: Africa, where she led large-scale rural water and solar infrastructure operations impacting hundreds of thousands of people across the country. Her work focused on the implementation, sustainability, and long-term functionality of infrastructure systems, including stakeholder coordination with government actors, donors, contractors, and local communities.
Sophia’s professional background sits at the intersection of international development, infrastructure deployment, climate resilience, and cross-sector partnerships.
She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Sustainability and Government from Reichman University (IDC Herzliya). Sophia also completed Yale University’s Financing and Deploying Clean Energy Projects certification and participated in environmental field research programs with Universidad San Francisco de Quito.