She has directed and supervised the development and implementation of international financial marketing programs in western and eastern Europe, Latin America and Asia; evaluated east European market potential and acquisition candidates; and integrated the acquisition and due diligence team that led to the first successful acquisition of a privatized enterprise under collective management. She has advised a national commission on legislation and regulations underlying electricity restructuring and performed economic analyses of privatization of the electric sector and assessments of the electricity privatization process. Ms. Pineda has also addressed valuation, tariff, and business strategy matters in the electric distribution segment. She has success-fully managed corporate relationships with regulatory bodies, government institutions and the U.S. Congress.

Ms. Pineda is a native Venezuelan. She is proficient in a number of languages: Spanish, English, French, German, Yugoslav, Russian, Bulgarian, Italian and Portuguese. She has served as an advisor to OLADE, the Latin American Organization for Energy.

Ms. Pineda has an undergraduate degree in economics ("ingeniero comercial") from Louvain-Belgium, an M.S. in statistics and operations research and an M.B.A., with a concentration in marketing and finance, from Pepperdine University. She is currently pursuing her Ph.D. in economic policy at the University of California, Los Angeles.