Hispanic Heritage Month 2023 – United States Department of State

Isabel E. Rioja-Scott is a career Foreign Service Officer at the U.S. Department of State and currently serves as Economic Advisor at the U.S. Embassy in Madrid. From 2021 to 2022, she served as Director for North America at the White House National Security Council, where she helped develop the President’s bilateral programs with Mexico and Canada and revive the structures of North American integration. She also served as economic and policy advisor at the U.S. Embassy in Panama City, focusing on illicit financing, geostrategic security issues, and maritime affairs, and served as deputy director of the Bureau’s Office of Policy Planning and Coordination Western Hemisphere Affairs (WHA/PPC). , which focuses on regional issues in the Western Hemisphere. She also served as a policy advisor and trade officer at the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City from 2012 to 2016 during the negotiations of trade agreements under the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

Her previous assignments include serving as commercial attaché at the U.S. Embassy in Tunisia during the Arab Spring and serving as dean and Virginia Rusk Fellow at Georgetown University, where she studied development issues in the Americas. She served as a supervisory officer in the State Department’s Operations Center, which briefs the secretary of state and manages global crises, and served in the U.S. embassies in Caracas, Venezuela and Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic . She was co-chair and founder of Balancing Act @ State, an employee organization that advocates for policies that improve productivity and diversity. She also helped establish the Diversity and Inclusion Council of the Office of Western Hemisphere Affairs.

Isabel was born and raised in Madrid, Spain, but moved to Tucson, Arizona at a young age. She holds a bachelor’s degree in international relations and history from the University of Pennsylvania and also studied at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. She is fluent in Spanish and speaks French.