Caroline Mary Saunders ONZM is a New Zealand academic, and as of 2020 is a Distinguished Professor at Lincoln University, specialising in environmental economics.

[4][5] Saunders has worked for the EU Commission, FAO, MFAT, the New Zealand Treasury, OECD and Fonterra, among others.

She was also appointed as a member of the Reserve Bank's Monetary Policy Committee, and is a Director of Landcare Research.

[4] In 2019, the Agricultural Economics Society in the UK appointed Saunders as its President, a role which she is still filling in a caretaker capacity as of 2021.

[3][8] In March 2021, Saunders was made a Fellow of the Royal Society Te Apārangi, in recognition of her "outstanding contributions to the advancement of science by creating new knowledge in her research field of agriculture and economics".