Sarah Zadova

Sarah Zadova was Finance Manager for the Growth Lab at Harvard’s Center for International Development.

Previous work includes financial planning and analysis for global programs in higher education, tax and international trade work for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and public interest legal services.

Sarah has a BA in International Economics and a JD, both from Boston University, and is an IRS-certified Volunteer Income Tax Assistance preparer.

Nikita Taniparti

Nikita Taniparti joined Harvard’s Growth Lab as a Research Fellow in 2018 and was promoted to Senior Manager, Applied Research in 2022. 

Prior to joining CID, Nikita worked at the Institute for Financial Management and Research in Tamil Nadu, India. She worked on an impact evaluation to study the social network effects of providing access to microfinance in rural areas, and contributed to publications and conferences on financial inclusion policy.

Nikita also worked as the summer intern at the Ministry of Transparency in Brasilia, Brazil, where she worked on public procurement and corruption, using machine learning and national legislation to better target federal-level audits.  She was previously a consultant at the World Bank, where she worked on study design for impact evaluations on agriculture and farmer livelihoods in Rwanda.

Nikita holds a Bachelor of Arts in Economics from the University of Notre Dame, and a Master in Public Administration in International Development from the Harvard Kennedy School. She was born in India, but also calls the United States, Brazil, and Greece home. She likes writing, practicing yoga, and cooking. 

Op-Eds:

• Double Standards: Ethiopia Must Solve its Internal Displacement Crisis. (9 January 2020). The Global Post.
• The Ruse of Repatriation: Why the Current Efforts to Repatriate the Rohingya back to Myanmar Will Fail. (12 November 2019). Kennedy School Review.
• Austerity Towards Us. (2 October 2019). Souciant.
• The Worries of ‘Log Kya Kahenge?’ on Mental Health. (11 May 2018). The Wire.
• What Happened when I Tried to Teach Harvard Undergrads about Inequality and Poverty. (5 January 2018). Quartz.
• Notre Dame Burst my Bubble. Let’s Burst Harvard’s. (15 November 2017). HuffPost. 

Chris Kohberger

Chris Kohberger is the former Grants Associate at the Growth Lab at Harvard’s Center for International Development.

Prior to joining HKS, Chris worked as a Staff Assistant and Research Assistant at Ariadne Labs, a health systems research center at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Brigham and Women’s Hospital.

He is a native of Long Island, New York and holds a Bachelor’s degree in Linguistics from Boston University.

Matias Iglesias

Matias’s specialty is on the mathematical tools useful for making the analysis of economic realities more powerful. He exploits programming skills to develop a scientific and thoughtful approach to problems.

Apart from learning with the community of technical peers, he hopes to learn from masters of the economics of development, growth and diversification at CID.

Rodrigo Wagner

Rodrigo’s work aims to understand constraints to economic growth at the level of countries and firms, especially in new projects. At the Center for International Development he has been doing research on Growth Diagnostics, on the Discovery of New Exports, and various Financial issues for companies in developing countries and in commodity companies.

Katya Gonzalez Willette

Katya is Events and Outreach Specialist at Harvard’s Growth Lab where she coordinates logistics and marketing promotion for all events including speaker seminars, learning workshops, and high-level meetings with government counterparts. In her role, Katya also manages the Growth Lab’s social media presence and produces multiple podcast series to increase the global reach of diverse research initiatives.

Prior to joining the Growth Lab, Katya held positions in digital marketing, event planning, and client relations at The Engineering Center Education Trust and Boston University. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration from Boston University and a Graduate Certificate in Strategic Management from the Harvard Extension School. In her spare time, Katya enjoys reading, yoga and exercising, exploring new places, and trying new restaurants.

Camila Lobo

Camila Lobo is the former Events and Outreach Manager at Harvard’s Center for International Development.

Her prior experience included 6 years in Marketing roles at Unilever in Europe and Procter & Gamble in Latin America. She has experience in Digital Marketing, product management, events and sponsorship management and budget control. She also volunteers as a Digital Marketing strategist for a non-profit company based in NY.

Camila holds a Strategic Management Certificate from Harvard Extension School, a Master’s degree in Social Communications and Branding from Universidad Pompeu Fabra and a Bachelor’s in Marketing from the Escola Superior de Propaganda e Marketing. She speaks English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian and German.

Paula Marra

Paula Marra is an agricultural expert and entrepreneur. She holds a degree in Agronomic Engineering from UBA, Buenos Aires, and has studied Organizational Development at Universidad de San Andres, Buenos Aires and Agribusiness at UBA.

Paula is a business leader who developed her career at Grupo Los Grobo, a Latin American leading agribusiness and investment company. Los Grobo is a broad, integrated and diversified business platform that covers agricultural land development and services such input provision and technical and financial assistance for small producers. It also processes its own farming activities such as wheat processing and commodities industrialization. Paula was a longstanding Director of the Board, a member of the Board’s executive committee, and served as chairwoman of the audit committee. She spearheaded many of Los Grobo’s acquisitions in Latin America (in Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay).

She is an active member of civil society leading organizations like Fundacion Poder Ciudadano, Fundacion Darse Cuenta, Fundacion Emprendimientos Ruarles, Grupo de Productores del Sur, Espacio de Negocios Inclusivos (ENI, Universidad di Tella, Argentina) and a Member of the Inter-American Development Bank’s 2020 Strategic Advisory Board. She created a school for Young Entrepreneurs in Rural Areas (1999), that later turned into a public school.

Paula is a shareholder and founder of Rosario-based company Bioceres, a biotech firm that develops genes for soy, corn and wheat to withstand drought and cold temperatures. It also makes insecticides, fungicides, bio-fertilizers and chemical-based fertilizers. She is also the Founder of Matriarca, an organization that aims to develop a system of sustainable production and consumption and help with the development of indigenous and creole communities in Latin America.

Ulrich Schetter

Ulrich Schetter joined the Center for International Development’s Growth Lab as a Postdoctoral Fellow in 2019.

His research aims to better understand channels through which globalization affects the growth and prosperity of countries. Specific channels considered include feedback effects from countries’ current specialization in international trade on their development prospects, the growth effects of import competition from technology leaders, and implications of globalization for the concentration of talent.

Before joining CID, Ulrich worked as a Postdoc at the University of St. Gallen and at Yale, and as an Economic Consultant at NERA. He holds a Dr.sc. in Economics from ETH Zurich, a Master in Quantitative Economics and Finance from the University of St. Gallen, and the CEMS Master in International Management.

Op-eds

• Why we need to rethink how we fund research and development, World Economic Forum

Sultan Orazbayev

Sultan Orazbayev joined the Center for International Development’s Growth Lab as a Postdoctoral Fellow in 2018. 

Sultan is an economist working on questions related to international economics, social networks, migration and innovation. Sultan earned degrees in economics from UCL, LSE, and Simon Fraser University, with teaching experience at all three institutions. Apart from academic work, Sultan has worked as an economist at a think-tank and an endowment fund.