Karen E. Young is a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute (MEI), where she leads the Economics and Energy Initiative. She is also a senior research scholar at the Columbia University Center on Global Energy Policy. A political economist, her work focuses on the Gulf and broader Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, with particular attention to the intersection of energy, finance, and security.

Dr. Young has held senior research and teaching positions at a number of academic and policy institutions. She was previously a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and a senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington. She has taught courses on Middle East international relations at George Washington University and regularly teaches at the US Department of State Foreign Service Institute. Her academic appointments also include serving as a research fellow at the London School of Economics and Political Science Middle East Centre and leading a seminar on emerging markets in MENA at Johns Hopkins SAIS. From 2009-2014, she was an assistant professor of political science at the American University of Sharjah.