Luisa Palacios is a senior research scholar at the Center on Global Energy Policy. She came to the center after a multidisciplinary career in the intersection of energy, finance, and policy.

In March 2021, she completed a two-year period in the Board of Directors of Houston-based Citgo Petroleum Corporation, the fifth-largest independent U.S. refiner during most of which she served as chairwoman. She and her Board colleagues led the company during a critical period in its history, as it faced significant geopolitical, financial, operational, and legal challenges. As Citgo’s first-ever chairwoman, Palacios also shaped efforts to strengthen corporate governance, ethics, and social responsibility, including the publication of the company’s first-ever ESG report.

Before her time at Citgo, Palacios was a senior managing director and member of the management committee of Medley Global Advisors, a macro-policy research firm. She headed Medley’s Latin America and later the firm’s emerging market research efforts. She previously worked at Barclays Capital as a director in the emerging markets research department, and as an economist in the risk department at Société Générale in Paris. She also worked as a senior economist at the Japan Bank for International Cooperation and was a consultant in the Office of the Chief Economist for Latin America at the World Bank.

She graduated from Universidad Católica Andrés Bello in Caracas, received a master’s in international affairs from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, and obtained a Ph.D. in international affairs from the John Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, where she wrote her dissertation on Latin America’s national oil companies. Palacios is part of the Editorial Board of Americas Quarterly, a member of the Venezuela Working Group of The Atlantic Council, affiliated faculty at the Institute for Latin American Studies at Columbia University, and international faculty of IESA's School of Management.