Mariana Tavares has a PhD in Law from King's College London, an LLM from Duke University, a DES from the Université Libre de Bruxelles and a degree in Law from the Portuguese Catholic University - Porto School. She is a consultant for the United Nations, focussing on competition policy issues. She is an integrated researcher at the Research Centre of the Institute of Political Studies at UCP and a partner at Cruz Vilaça Advogados.

She was a référendaire at the Court of Justice of the European Union and held various management positions at the Competition Authority. She has chaired working groups of the European Competition Network and the International Competition Network, and participated in the work of the BRICS Competition Law and Policy Centre, the OECD, UNCTAD and the EU-China Trade project. She is co-author of the book ‘The law and politics of global competition’, published by Oxford University Press in 2022.