Lourdes Melgar is a research affiliate at MIT’s Center for Collective Intelligence and a non-resident fellow at the Center of Energy Studies of the Baker Institute. She is also non-executive director of listed companies in Mexico and in Europe. Melgar holds positions on the advisory board of the Natural Resource Governance Institute (NRGI), the Mexican Council on Foreign Relations (COMEXI), Phius, and Voz Experta, an organization that promotes women energy experts. She is the former president of the Mexican chapter of the International Women’s Forum.

Previously, Melgar served as the deputy secretary of energy for hydrocarbons (2014-2016) and as undersecretary for electricity (2012-2014) during the time of the design, negotiation, and initial implementations of Mexico’s energy reform. As a career diplomat, she has also held various positions in Mexico’s foreign service.

In the academic realm, Melgar was a founding director of the Center for Sustainability and Business at EGADE Business School. She was the Robert Wilhelm fellow at MIT (2016-2017) and has been a visiting scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center and at the Jackson School of Geosciences at the University of Texas at Austin. A graduate from Mount Holyoke College, she holds a PhD in political science from MIT.

Melgar has been included in Forbes’ list of 100 Most Powerful Women in Mexico in 2018 and 2020.

Melgar was an event speaker at the Dialogue.