Sarah O. Ladislaw

Sarah Ladislaw is a senior fellow in the Energy and National Security Program at CSIS, where she concentrates on global climate change issues, energy and geopolitics in the Western Hemisphere, energy security, renewable energy technology, and sustainable development. She manages several of the program’s activities on secure, low-carbon pathways, focusing mainly on the United States, Europe, and Asia. She also managed the CSIS end of a partnership on energy security and climate change with the World Resources Institute. She was involved with CSIS’s work on the geopolitics portion of the National Petroleum Council’s 2007 study and the CSIS Smart Power Commission in 2008, focusing particularly on energy security and climate issues. Her current focus is on the geopolitics of clean energy (renewable, nuclear, and natural gas), energy trends in China, geopolitics of energy in Latin America, U.S. energy and climate change policy, the private-sector role in energy and development, and carbon management strategies and technologies. She is also an adjunct professor teaching an energy security course at the George Washington University’s graduate program in international affairs.

Prior to joining CSIS in 2007, Ladislaw was with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) focusing on energy relations with Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Colombia, Venezuela, as well as other Western Hemisphere energy issues. She joined DOE in 2003 as a presidential management fellow, and from 2003 to 2006, she worked in the Office of the Americas in DOE’s Office of Policy and International Affairs, where she covered a range of economic, political, and energy issues in North America, the Andean region, and Brazil. While at the department, she also worked on comparative investment frameworks and trade issues, as well as biofuels development and use both in the Western Hemisphere and around the world. Ladislaw received her bachelor’s degree in international affairs/East Asian studies and Japanese from the George Washington University in 2001 and her master’s degree in international affairs/international security from the George Washington University in 2003 as part of the Presidential Administrative Fellows Program.