Adriana D’Elia is a nonresident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center, and a senior counselor at the office of the executive director for Panamá and Venezuela at the Inter-American Development Bank since July 2019.

D’Elia has a bachelor’s degree in urban planning from Simón Bolívar University in Caracas, Venezuela, where she also taught for ten years; has a masters degree in regional and urban planning from Oklahoma University (1990); and as a young professional she became the director of transportation planning in the Venezuelan Ministry of Transportation and Communications. Then, she was the project manager of consulting projects for the Institute of Regional and Urban Studies of the Simón Bolívar Universtiy (IERU).

In her tenure in public office, D’Elia was the director of urban planning and cadastre, and then general director in the Mayoralty of Baruta, a metropolitan area of Caracas (2000–2008). She was also mayor in charge in Baruta. Later, she was the secretary of government of the state of Miranda, the central region where four out of the five municipalities of the metropolitan area of Caracas are located. She was also governor in charge (2008–2015). 

Her experience in government was always in support of Henrique Capriles Radonski’s positions as mayor of Baruta, two-time governor of the state of Miranda, and two-times presidential candidate, competing against Hugo Chávez (2012) and Nicolás Maduro (2013).

Before being forced to leave Venezuela, D’Elia was deputy to the National Assembly for the State of Miranda (2015–2019), representing the Democratic Unity Roundtable (the opposition’s electoral coalition) and the Justice First Party “Primero Justicia.”