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Breakthrough Work In Sustainable Apparel

The work of scientists and researchers deserves celebration, but solid climate, energy, and technology breakthroughs need costly infrastructure and sustained funding to scale. Relying on private philanthropy like the Bezos Fund for climate research says a lot about this country’s expressed values while laying a fragile foundation for our industry’s future.

News and Publications with Erica Downs • The Robin Report • October 14, 2026

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October 16, 2026 • 11:45 am - 12:45 pm edt

CGEP Student Roundtable on Sustainable Finance

The Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University SIPA invites students to join us for an engaging roundtable discussion on sustainable finance with Jacqueline Ricciani, Managing Director,...

Event • Columbia SIPA
CGEP Student Roundtable on Sustainable Finance

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Biography

Dr. Karen E. Young is Senior Advisor for Scholarly Affairs and a Senior Research Scholar at the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA). She is also a Senior Fellow at the Middle East Institute, where she previously founded and led the Program on Economics and Energy. She regularly briefs corporate and investment audiences on geopolitics, energy security, and the geoeconomics of the Gulf.

Previously, Dr. Young was a Resident Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and Senior Resident Scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute. She has taught at George Washington University, Columbia SIPA, and the U.S. Department of State’s Foreign Service Institute. She was a Research Fellow at the London School of Economics and Political Science’s Middle East Centre and led a seminar series on emerging markets in the Middle East and North Africa at Johns Hopkins SAIS. From 2009 to 2014, she was Assistant Professor of Political Science at the American University of Sharjah.

Dr. Young is the author of The Economic Statecraft of the Gulf Arab States (2022) and The Political Economy of Energy, Finance and Security in the United Arab Emirates (2014), and editor of Energy Transitions of the Middle East (2024) and GCC Hydrocarbon Economies and Covid (2023). She has contributed chapters to several edited volumes on Saudi Arabia, China and the Middle East, the Gulf and the Horn of Africa, and renewable energy in the Gulf. Her research and commentary have appeared in the Financial Times, Bloomberg, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, Lawfare, Al-Monitor, Journal of Arabian Studies, Georgetown Journal of International Affairs, Current History, and Middle East Policy, among other publications. She has testified before Congress and is frequently quoted in international media, including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Financial Times, and Bloomberg, as well as NPR, CNBC, CBS, and AFP.

Her research has been supported by the Smith Richardson Foundation, Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Fulbright Program, IREX, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Woodrow Wilson Center, the U.S. Department of State’s Middle East Partnership Initiative, the APSA MENA Fellows Program, and the Emirates Foundation.

She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

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