| Diego Pardow | |
| Office: | Minister of Energy |
| President: | Gabriel Boric |
| Term Start: | 6 September 2022 |
| Predecessor: | Claudio Huepe Minoletti |
| Birth Date: | 1981 1, df=y |
| Birth Place: | Santiago, Chile |
| Otherparty: | Autonomist Movement[1] (2016−2018) |
| Occupation: | Politician |
| Profession: | Lawyer |
| Relatives: | Rodrigo Pardow (brother) Mariana Loyola (sister-in-law)[2] |
Diego Gonzalo Pardow Lorenzo (Santiago, March 23, 1980) is a Chilean lawyer and politician, a member of the Social Convergence (CS) party. Since September 6, 2022, he has served as the Minister of Energy in his country, under the government of President Gabriel Boric.[3]
Pardow was born on 23 March 1980, in Santiago, Chile. He is the grandson (on his mother's side) of Spanish immigrants who arrived on the SS Winnipeg. His parents, Gilberto Álvaro Pardow Smith and Beatriz Lorenzo Gómez de la Serna, were exiled during the military dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet. In 1989, he returned to Chile from Spain.[4] He completed his undergraduate studies in legal sciences at the University of Chile in 2007, and was admitted as a lawyer before the Supreme Court in the same year. Subsequently, he pursued a Master's degree in law at the University of California, Berkeley, in the United States in 2011, and obtained his doctorate in 2014.[5]
Pardow worked as a legal advisor at the General Directorate of International Economic Relations (DGREI) of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs from 2007 to 2008, during the first government of President Michelle Bachelet.[6]
Subsequently, Pardow held positions as a professor of civil law at both the Adolfo Ibáñez University and the University of Chile from 2008 to 2010. Additionally, he taught Economic Analysis of Law at the University of California from 2012 to 2013 and later became a professor of Economics at the University of Chile in 2016.[7] In 2017 and 2018, he was honored with the "Edgardo Buscaglia Award" for outstanding empirical research by the Latin American and Caribbean Law and Economics Association (ALACDE).[8]
Pardow also worked as a consultant for the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) on matters related to infrastructure regulation. Furthermore, he served as the executive president of the independent think tank Espacio Público from 1 November 2019,[9] to 3 June 2021.[10]
As a member of the Social Convergence party since 2019, Pardow played a pivotal role as the coordinator of Gabriel Boric's campaign in the 2021 presidential election. Boric emerged victorious in the election and began his term as president from 2022 to 2026.[11] On September 6, 2022, Boric carried out his first cabinet reshuffle, appointing him as the Minister of Energy, succeeding Claudio Huepe Minoletti in the role.[12]