Hispanic Heritage Month 2023 – United States Department of State

Isabel E. Rioja-Scott is a career Foreign Service Officer with the U.S. Department of State, currently serving as the Economic Counselor in U.S. Embassy Madrid. From 2021-2022 she served as Director for North America in the White House National Security Council, where she helped craft the President’s bilateral agendas with Mexico and Canada and revived structures for North American integration. She also served as Economic and Political Counselor in U.S. Embassy Panama City, focusing on illicit finance, geostrategic security issues, and maritime affairs, and was Deputy Director in the Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs’ Office of Policy Planning and Coordination (WHA/PPC), which fields regional issues in the Western Hemisphere. She also served as Political Counselor and Trade Officer in U.S. Embassy Mexico City from 2012-2016 during trade agreement negotiations under the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

Prior assignments include serving as Commercial Attaché in the U.S. Embassy in Tunisia during the Arab Spring and as a Dean and Virginia Rusk Fellow at Georgetown University, where she studied development issues in the Americas. She was a Watch Officer in the State Department Operations Center, which informs the Secretary of State and manages breaking global crises, and served in the U.S. Embassies in Caracas, Venezuela and Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. She has served as co-chair and was a founder of Balancing Act @ State, an employee organization that advocates for policies that enhance productivity and diversity. She also helped create the Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs’ Diversity and Inclusion Council.

Isabel was born and raised in Madrid, Spain, but moved to Tucson, Arizona at an early age. She holds a B.A. 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.