Diego von Vacano, PhD, is Professor of Political Science at the George Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University. He is from La Paz, Bolivia, where he studied at the Franco Boliviano school. He was an informal advisor to President Luis Arce from 2019 to 2022 on international affairs, education, and lithium policies. He advises firms interested in Bolivia's lithium sector. He is based at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, DC while he completes a book, Power over Energy: the Geopolitics and Ethics of Bolivia's Lithium, for Oxford University Press. He has also written a report for the Wilson Center on the same topic and will be examining the sector in Chile and Argentina. He holds a doctorate in politics from Princeton University, a Master's degree in public policy of economic development from Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government, where he studied Bolivia's social policies, and a BA in social sciences from Wesleyan University. He has written two books in the field of political philosophy and does professional soccer photography as well. He left Bolivia as a political refugee in his youth.