Ana Palacio

Ana Palacio‘s long professional career has followed three main avenues: supranational and multilateral institutions, academia, and the business world. Her activities in these realms have been driven by continued interest in European integration, international relations with a strong institutional perspective, as well as the extensive field of the energy transition. At the national level, she was Spain’s first female Minister of Foreign Affairs. In the European Union, she chaired the then super-commission on Legal Affairs and the Internal Market, as well as the committee on Citizens’ Freedoms and Rights. In the multilateral sphere, she served as Senior Vice-President and General Counsel of the World Bank Group and as Secretary-General of the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID).

Currently, along with leading Palacio & Associates, the European Union consultancy, Ms. Palacio sits on the corporate boards of several publicly-traded, energy-focused companies – among them, Enagás, the Spanish gas system operator, where she serves as the Lead Independent Director and Chair of the Sustainability and Nomination Committee. She is also on the boards of Ecoener, a renewable energy company, the Emissions Reduction Corp., and is a member of the International Advisory Board of OCP Group. She also serves on the Industry Advisory Committee of the International Energy Forum, along with the External Advisory Committee of Secretary Ernest Moniz’s Energy Futures Initiative. She is also a member of the Board and the Strategy Committee of the Atlantic Council and has recently been appointed as a member of the Wilfried Martens Centre for European Studies’ Academic Council.

Ms. Palacio served as a member of the Executive Committee and Senior Vice President for International Affairs of Areva, leader in nuclear power and renewable energy, and she was a member of the International Advisory Board of Anadarko Petroleum Corporation. Among the positions she has held in major foundations and think tanks, her tenure as a member of the Board of Trustees of the Carnegie Corporation of New York stands out.

Ms. Palacio is a visiting professor at the Edmund Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University and is a frequent speaker at international conferences on topics related to geopolitics and energy. Recently, she has participated in the Redeia 2024 Sustainability Conference, the Atlantic Council’s Regional Conference on Clean and Secure Energy, the Repsol 2024 Executive Team Summit, and COP28/COP29. Additionally, she has spoken at events such as the Naturgy Foundation-Elcano Royal Institute seminar “Geopolitical Pathways of the Energy Transition: Eastern Mediterranean”, the 8th OPEC International Seminar, the Aspen-Columbia Global Energy Forum 2023, the Columbia Global Energy Summit 2023, and the annual IESE Energy Industry Meetings, among others.

She is a regular contributor to different publications, including a monthly column for Project Syndicate, and a weekly column for El Mundo (Spain).

Among the honours she has been awarded, her distinction as a Doctor of Humane Letters, Honoris Causa, from Georgetown University stands out, as well the Justice O’Connor Award, for which she shares the honoree list with former US President Jimmy Carter and former South African President F.W. de Klerk.