Grace Perez-Navarro
Former Director of the OECD Centre for Tax Policy and Administration
Grace Perez-Navarro is a global public policy leader with more than 35 years experience in law, government and executive leadership. She is an American lawyer with a long and distinguished career in public service in both the United States and internationally. Until her retirement in April 2023, she served as Director of the OECD Centre for Tax Policy and Administration in Paris where she led the OECD’s tax work, both international and domestic. During her 26-year career at the OECD, she played a key role in the OECD’s ground-breaking work to eliminate bank secrecy, tackle base erosion and profit shifting by multinationals (BEPS), address the tax challenges of digitalisation as well as a number of other projects including the recent establishment of the Inclusive Forum on Carbon Mitigation Approaches. Prior to becoming Deputy Director in 2007, she led the OECD’s tax work on bank secrecy, e-commerce, harmful tax practices, money laundering and tax crimes, countering bribery of foreign officials, responsible business conduct in the tax area and strengthening all forms of administrative cooperation between tax authorities.
Grace also served as the Honorary Chair of the OECD Women’s Network (2022-2023) and as the patron of the first edition of the Global Forum’s Women Leaders in Tax Transparency Programme.
Before joining the OECD, Grace served as Special Counsel at the IRS Office of the Associate Chief Counsel (International) in Washington, D.C. where she coordinated guidance to field offices on international tax issues, oversaw international tax litigation, negotiated tax information exchange agreements (TIEAs) and tax treaties, and reviewed regulations, rulings and other policy advice. In 1993, she was seconded by the IRS to the OECD to launch the first revision of the OECD’s transfer pricing guidelines.
Grace holds a Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) in international studies from Cornell University, a Doctorate of Jurisprudence (J.D.) from Temple University and has pursued executive leadership studies at the Harvard Kennedy School.