Palmira N. Ríos (born 1956) is an Afro-Puerto Rican academic who has worked as a professor in New York, the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico. She has served as a commissioner and president of the Puerto Rican Civil Rights Commission, the first person of color or woman to be appointed to the government body. After serving as the dean of the Graduate School of Public Administration for the University of Puerto Rico, she became the Dean of Academic Affairs for the Río Piedras Campus in 2015. The Bar Association of Puerto Rico honored Ríos with the Martin Luther King Jr.-Arturo Alfonso Schomburg Medal for her efforts to promote racial equality.