Sarah O. Ladislaw

Sarah Ladislaw is the former managing director at Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI), an independent, non-partisan, nonprofit organization of experts across disciplines working to accelerate the clean energy transition and improve lives. RMI’s mission is to transform the global energy system to secure a clean, prosperous, zero-carbon future for all.

Ladislaw lead the U.S. program at RMI and works on other global initiatives to reduce industrial sector emissions and support the development of green banks. She was previously senior vice president and director of the Energy Security and Climate Change Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), where she led the think tank’s work in energy policy, geopolitics, and technology analysis.

Ladislaw spearheaded new work at CSIS on climate change and foreign policy, deep decarbonization, and just transitions. She authored numerous publications on the geopolitics of energy, energy security and climate change, and the energy transition. Before CSIS, Ladislaw worked in the Office of the Americas in the Department of Energy’s Office of Policy and International Affairs, where she covered a range of economic, political, and energy issues in the Western Hemisphere. 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. In addition, she spent a short period of time working at Statoil as its senior director for international affairs in the Washington office.

Ladislaw is a member of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory’s Strategic Analysis Technical Review Panel, the Strategic Advisory Council for Georgia Tech’s Strategic Energy Initiative, and the University of California, Davis Institute of Transportation Studies Board of Advisors. She has taught graduate courses on energy security as an adjunct professor at the George Washington University and is a frequent guest lecturer at other universities. She also testifies before Congress and comments frequently in print, radio, and television media outlets.

Ladislaw received her bachelor’s degree in international affairs and East Asian studies and Japanese from the George Washington University and her master’s degree in international affairs and international security from the George Washington University as part of the Presidential Administrative Fellows Program.