Leila Kazemi is a political economist and governance expert who has been leading CCSI’s work on the Politics of Extractive Industries, a multi-year project grappling with the ways in which power, interests, incentives, and characteristics of political systems shape how extractive industry projects are developed, their ultimate outcomes, and the fate of governance interventions designed to improve these. The goal of the project is to help advance more politically-informed and impactful work on extractives governance. Prior to that, as a long-time consultant, she provided research, analysis, policy advice, and program development support on issues pertaining to the governance of extractive industries, business and human rights, and human rights and development to a range of organizations including the World Bank, Natural Resource Governance Institute, Ford Foundation, Social Science Research Council, Foundation for the UN Global Compact, Purpose, and the Carbon War Room. She holds a Master’s degree from the London School of Economics and received her Doctorate in Political Science in 2010 from Columbia University, where her research focused on the relationship between the governance of foreign investments and host state sovereignty.