Nature: Christiana Figueres has a big job. As the executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, she is in Paris this week to guide 195 governments as they try to broker a new global agreement to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions.
Figueres, whose father helped to install democracy in Costa Rica and served three terms as the country's president, tells Nature how she ended up working in environmental policy -- and what she hopes to get out of the ongoing climate talks in...