Lili Vessereau
Lili Vessereau is a Research Fellow at the Harvard Growth Lab, focusing on sovereign debt, public finance, and trade economics. Lili previously worked at the World Bank, in an advisory position within the French Government at the Ministry of Finance, at the United Nations, and gained experience in investment banking.
A former Bretton Woods 2.0 Fellow at the Atlantic Council, she is also a European Investment Fund Empowering Equity Fellow, a GLOBSEC Young Leader, a European Leadership Network Young Leader, and a Global Shaper of the World Economic Forum. She has held fellowships with Google, OSCE, the University Consortium (Sciences Po, Harvard, Oxford, Columbia), and served as France’s Youth Delegate to the Council of Europe.
Lili holds Master’s degrees from the Harvard Kennedy School (Public Policy, With distinctions), Sciences Po Paris (Public Affairs), La Sorbonne (Law, With Honors), and HEC Paris (Finance, Dean’s List), equipping her with a multidisciplinary perspective on finance, governance, and sustainable development.
Karan Daryanani
Karan is an Economic Analysis and Data Management (EADM) Fellow at the Growth Lab, where he leverages developments in network science, machine learning, and economic complexity to advance the green growth research agenda. He is committed to building platforms for climate intelligence, most recently having developed deep learning pipelines for research at Harvard Business School’s Climate and Sustainability Impact Lab.
Earlier in his career, he built analytics tools at Closed Loop Partners, and scaled climate technology ventures at Fashion for Good and Yunus Social Business. Karan holds a Bachelor’s degree in Economics, Political Science, and Sociology from Christ College, Bangalore, and a Master’s in International and Development Economics from Yale University.
His research interests are in computational methods for social science, sustainable innovation, and understanding transition dynamics in complex adaptive systems.
Santiago Segovia
Santiago Segovia is an Economic Analysis and Data Management Fellow at Harvard’s Growth Lab, where he applies his expertise in data science, economics, and policy analysis to support research on global economic growth. He holds a Bachelor’s and Master’s in Economics from Universidad Externado de Colombia and a Master’s in Computational Analysis and Public Policy (MSCAPP) from the University of Chicago.
Prior to joining Harvard, Santiago served as a Senior Advisor in the Financial Stability Department at the Central Bank of Colombia, where he led the implementation of AI-driven tools to enhance policy decision-making and strengthen financial stability frameworks. His role also involved international collaborations to train advanced and emerging economies in financial stability methodologies.
He gained further international experience as a consultant with The World Bank, leveraging geospatial data for spatial welfare analysis. His technical proficiency spans data science, machine learning, and geospatial analysis, with several impactful projects developed at the University of Chicago’s Data Science Institute, where he contributed to community-driven initiatives. As a Summer Fellow at Imago Global Grassroots, Santiago used data science techniques to evaluate the impact of large-scale social development programs in India, specifically analyzing women-led initiatives.
His diverse experiences reflect a commitment to using data-driven insights to address global economic and social challenges.
Ana Abad
Ana Abad joined Harvard’s Growth Lab as a Research Fellow in 2024. Previously she worked at the LSE’s Growth Co-Lab, as a Research Assistant on the Tanzania project.
Before joining the Growth Lab, Ana worked as a Research Associate at the Latin America Political Economy and Globalization (LAPEG) program, a joint initiative by Georgetown Law and Universidad de Valparaiso, identifying opportunities for productive diversification, industrial policy, and green growth in Latin America, in the context of a shifting international economic law landscape.
She has also collaborated on projects with the Associate Dean of the LSE School of Public Policy, contributing to research on Mexico’s macroeconomic and political economy landscape, and was a Latin America Associate at the political risk consulting firm Eurasia Group, advising corporate and financial clients on issues related to the region’s political economy including fiscal and trade policies and structural reforms.
Ana obtained a BA in Economics and International Affairs from The George Washington University, and a Master of Public Administration from the London School of Economics. Her research interests include regional development, green growth, trade and industrial policy, social policy, and capacity-building.
Adeline Hipps
Adeline joined the Growth Lab as a Research Assistant in 2023. Before this, she developed a statistical model of forest fires, forest growth, and fire suppression policies in the United States. During her undergraduate studies, she worked on various projects, including analysis of the economic impacts of imports and exports post-NAFTA and the causality of rising hate crime rates in the US. Adeline spent four years as a Knapp Media and Technology Intern, where she managed and developed multidisciplinary technology projects. She also interned at Social Accountability International, conducting policy research and analysis on global living wages. Adeline holds a BA in Data Science from Wellesley College, with a concentration in Linguistics and a minor in English.
Johan Cañas Odreman
Johan joined the Growth Lab as a Research Fellow in 2024. Before joining the Growth Lab, Johan worked as a Macroeconomics Studies Official at the CAF Development Bank of Latin America in Caracas, Venezuela. In this role, he provided in-depth macroeconomic intelligence on 19 Latin American countries and monitored both internal and external economic risks to assess their impact on regional economic stability and development.
Other previous experiences include working with Mongolia’s Prime Minister’s office on energy policy strategy and with MEG Inteligencia de Datos in his home country, where he applied advanced statistical methods and machine learning techniques for business and policy consulting.
Johan holds a Master’s degree in Public Administration in International Development from the Harvard Kennedy School and a Bachelor’s degree in Economics from Universidad Central de Venezuela. His research interests focus on growth diagnostics, economic complexity, energy economics, and the formulation of data-driven economic policies to promote equitable growth.
Robert Pell
Bob Pell joined the Growth Lab as a Visiting Fellow in 2024. He is an urban planner with a career in forming, building and leading multidisciplinary firms and teams across five continents. He has worked in the UK in the public sector and then private consulting, mostly in Europe, the Middle East and Asia. In 1999 he moved to the USA and for ten years he worked for AECOM, the largest publicly traded AEC (Architecture, Engineering, Construction) firm, where he was the Director of Operations. In 2016, Bob joined Hatch, a Canadian international consulting firm, where he created a unique international team – Urban Solutions – a team of urban economists, planners, designers and policy analysts- in the USA, Canada, UK, South Africa and Australia.
In 2023 Bob was a Fellow in the Harvard Advanced Leadership Initiative where he worked on forming a coalition to work with cities and communities in developing countries that are tackling the issues of climate change, urbanization and economic growth opportunities.
Bob has a degree in Politics and Economics from University of Southampton, UK and a Graduate Diploma in Town Planning from Oxford Brookes University, UK.
Guillermo Arcay
Before joining, Guillermo worked as a Senior Economist at Ecoanalítica, a Venezuelan-based macroeconomic research & consulting firm. There, he served foreign and local private, multilateral, public and social sector organizations providing data, analysis, and advise to understand and navigate the Venezuelan macroeconomy.
He was also a professor of macroeconomics and international finance at Universidad Católica Andrés Bello (Venezuela). Other previous experience include working on economic reform plans with the Venezuelan Opposition and the Government of Kazakhstan. His research interests are focused on industrial policy, innovation, sovereign wealth management, trade shocks, debt, inflation, fiscal policy, sanctions, and political economy.
He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Economics from the Universidad Católica Andrés Bello (Venezuela) and a Master in Public Administration and International Development from the Harvard Kennedy School (MPA/ID 2023).
Taimur Shah
Taimur Shah joined the Growth Lab as a Research Fellow in 2023.
Before joining the Growth Lab, Taimur founded the Labs team at the Centre for Economic Research in Pakistan, a revenue-generating innovation unit focused on producing software with researchers, development practitioners, social entrepreneurs and the government in order to address development issues in the country. They produced work particularly in the areas of education, health, COVID recovery and food security.
Prior to his work in Pakistan, Taimur was a Software Architect on the Watson Prototypes and Cognitive Environments teams at IBM in New York City, where he worked on over a dozen projects and products which leveraged Watson’s Natural Language abilities in different business verticals. He started and sold his first startup in the product recommendation space while an undergrad at Columbia University, and then served as the VP of Engineering at Parrable.
Taimur holds a bachelors in Computer Science from Columbia Engineering, and a Master in Public Administration in International Development from Harvard Kennedy School.
Ketan Ahuja
Ketan Ahuja joined Harvard’s Growth Lab as a Research Fellow in 2022.
His focus is on the Growth Lab’s green growth research agenda which helps countries leverage the energy transition to transform their economies and generate economic growth. He’s investigating how hydrogen, and decarbonization more generally, will transform global production by creating new industries, markets, and paths for economic development.
Prior to the Growth Lab, Ketan worked on commercializing solar energy technologies at the US Department of Energy, and on competition policy and competitive strategy in the public and private sectors.
Ketan received a BA in Law from the University of Oxford and a Master’s in Public Policy from Harvard Kennedy School.