About

Rachel Ziemba is a geo-economic and country risk expert focused on emerging markets and energy. She runs Ziemba Insights, an advisory firm supports clients in their macroeconomic scenario analysis and policy due diligence. Her work focuses on how governments are reshaping markets to meet economic and political goals. This includes restrictive tools such as sanctions, export controls as well as positive tools such as sovereign investment vehicles in support of domestic economic development.

Her work revolves around the geopolitics and macro risks linked to energy markets, including fossil fuels, renewables and critical minerals. She tracks how sanctions reshape markets including the development of the illicit energy shipping trade and parallel payment systems.

She is also Senior Advisor, Economic Statecraft at Horizon Engage,  Adjunct Senior Fellow at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) and a non-resident fellow at the Gulf International Forum. She teaches International Political Economy at New York University’s Center for Global Affairs.

Before founding Ziemba Insights, Rachel was the head of emerging markets research at Roubini Global Economics, a global macro strategy and country risk firm. In that capacity she co-led the research team, oversaw the emerging market and commodity research including, the firm’s quarterly global economic outlook and scenario production and implementing many of its customized research projects and due diligence exercises for private equity firms.

Rachel regularly serves as an expert commentator in key media outlets including CNBC, Bloomberg, New York Times, Financial Times, and her research has been cited by a range of international institutions including the International Monetary Fund, World Bank and European Central Bank as well as Academic publications.  She is the co-author of “Scenarios for Risk Management and Global Investment Strategies”  and “Investing in the Modern Age” both with Professor William Ziemba, her late father. Her work can be seen on her substack weaponized economy, as well as in publications like Barron’s, Petroleum Economist and the Globe and Mail.

​Rachel started her career in international development, working for the Canadian International Development Agency in Egypt, and the International Development Research Centre in Ottawa on development economic issues. She was also a US State Department intern at the Embassy in Paris (where she was an inaugural recipient of the Pamela Harriman Foreign Service Fellowship, on whose board she currently serves) and the Consulate in Toronto.

She holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Chicago with honors, and a Master of Philosophy degree in international relations with a specialization in international political economy from St. Antony’s College, Oxford University (with distinction). She holds the Sustainability and Climate Risk certificate from GARP.

A WSET diploma holder, she also writes regularly about wine, spirits and economic themes. She hosts intermittent wine tastings on behalf of the Heart and Soul Charitable Fund, on whose board she serves.