Shqipe Vela is a 2025 Millennium Leadership Intensive participant and program manager at the International Secretariat of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative in Norway, where she leads programs focused on strengthening transparency and accountability in the governance of oil, gas, and mineral resources across sixty resource-rich countries. She is a project manager, energy policy expert, and anticorruption practitioner with over twenty years of experience in international development. She is the co-founder and chairperson of Kosovo Women in Energy and Mining and a member of the Transparency International Expert Network. Previously, Vela worked with the Millennium Challenge Corporation, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, the US Department of State, the United Nations Development Programme, UNICEF, and the World Bank. Alongside her practitioner work, Vela lectures on global energy policy at the Rochester Institute of Technology in Kosovo and has co-authored policy research on energy transition, extractive industries, and anticorruption. She mentors emerging professionals through the Global Women in Energy Transition Network, is a former US congressional fellow on energy policy, and has served on the Advisory Council of International Women in Mining. She holds a dual master’s degree in public administration and public policy from the Central European University and the University of York, as well as a bachelor’s degree from the American University in Kosovo. Her leadership has been recognized with awards from Reuters, the International Energy Agency, the Clean Energy Ministerial, the University of York, and the US Department of State.