Lucila Venturi

Lucila joined the Growth Lab as a Research Fellow in 2022. Previously, she worked at the Lab as a Research Intern for the Jordan Project.

Before joining the Growth Lab, Lucila obtained her Master’s in Public Administration in International Development from the Harvard Kennedy School. Prior to that, she worked as a Research Analyst at the World Bank’s Chief Economist’s Office for Latin America and the Caribbean on social and fiscal policy topics. In particular, she analyzed the effects of income tax changes on income and labor outcomes. Before the World Bank, she worked as an Economic Advisor at the Ministry of Finance of both the state and national governments in Argentina on debt and macroeconomic policy.

Lucila also holds a B.Sc and M.Sc in Economics from Universidad Nacional de La Plata (Argentina). Her research interests focus on growth, fiscal policy, labor markets, social development, and inequality.

Lucas Lamby

Lucas joined the Growth Lab at Harvard’s Center for International Development as an Economic Analysis and Data Management Fellow in 2022.

Prior to joining the Growth Lab, Lucas graduated from the Master of Public Administration at the London School of Economics with a distinction and a specialization in Economic Policy. In his thesis, he studied the impact of special economic zones in Colombia on regional growth, trade volumes and tax revenues. He received his BA degree in Politics & Economics from the University of Muenster, Germany, which included an academic year at Harvard College as a visiting student.

Lucas has worked as a consultant at the OECD’s directorate for Employment, Labour and Social Affairs, where he co-authored a paper on the AI talent pool across OECD countries. Other work experiences include working for the German development bank, KfW, in Jordan and the public sector consulting division of PwC. Additionally, Lucas co-founded a social start-up in the educational tech sphere in Germany focused on political education.

His research interests include labor markets, regional development, trade and the socio-economic impact of technological innovations.

Felicia Belostecinic

Felicia joined the Center for International Development’s Growth Lab as a Research Fellow in 2022.

Before joining the Growth Lab, Felicia obtained her Master in Public Administration in International Development from the Harvard Kennedy School. Prior to that, she worked with IDinsight to provide policy recommendations to governments and multilateral agencies and support them to maximize their social impact via tools such as monitoring and evaluation programs and randomized control trials. Before IDinsight, Felicia had worked with the International Monetary Fund where she conducted econometric panel data analysis that supported the policy recommendations published in the World Economic Outlook.

Felicia has a Bachelor of Science in Foreign Service in International Political Economy from Georgetown University School of Foreign Service and a Master in Public Administration in International Development from Harvard Kennedy School. Her research interests include improving institutional decision making and macroeconomic growth theory.

Jesús Daboin Pacheco

Jesús joined the Center for International Development’s Growth Lab as an Economic Analysis and Data Management Fellow in 2022 and is now a Research Manager.

He graduated in 2019 with a MA in Specialized Economic Analysis from Barcelona School of Economics where he took courses in International Trade, Finance and Development. In his thesis he studied the effect that political connections to the national government have on local economic growth within municipalities in Colombia. He received his BA degree in Business Economics from Universidad Metropolitana in Caracas.

Before joining the Growth Lab, Jesús worked as a Project Manager and Data Analyst for two years in a project where he explored the intersection between public policy and geospatial data inside Venezuela, where he covered areas such as healthcare, environmental science, security and economic growth. His experience also includes working as Policy Consultant for a political party’s project and a Transfer Pricing Consultant for Deloitte.

Jesús’ interests focus on the challenges to implement social and economic policy inside developing countries while making data-driven decisions. 

Alexia Lochmann

Alexia Lochmann joined the Center for International Development’s Growth Lab as a Visiting Scholar in 2017 and as a Research Fellow in 2021. 

Prior to joining the Growth Lab, Alexia was a post-doctoral researcher at the Free University of Bolzano, Italy and a fellow at the Institut Convergences Migrations, France. She conducted research in the field of migration and cultural economics, as well as studies on social innovation and economic development. Previously, Alexia worked on the evaluation of immigrants’ integration policies in France, and led applied data analysis workshops in the field.

Alexia holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the Paris School of Economics, Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, and a Master’s Degree in International and Development Economics from the same institution.

Andrés Fortunato

Andrés joined the Growth Lab as a Research Fellow in 2021 and is now a Research Manager. 

Before joining the Growth Lab, Andrés spent seven years in the public sector of Argentina working on policy implementation with multiple public agencies. He worked in the Ministry of Social Development, the National Airports Police, the Government of Tierra del Fuego, and the Ministry of Production.  

Andrés holds a B.A. in Philosophy from Universidad de Buenos Aires and a Master of Public Policy from the Harris School of Public Policy at the University of Chicago, with certificates in Data Analytics, International Development, and Policy Analysis. 

His research interests include growth diagnostics, capacity building, and innovation policy.  

Fernando García

Fernando García is a Senior Applied Research Fellow at the Growth Lab at Harvard Kennedy School, which he joined in 2021. He leads applied research and policy engagements with governments and senior policymakers, focusing on growth diagnostics, macroeconomic stabilization, and structural transformation. His work combines quantitative economic analysis with country-level research to inform the design and implementation of economic policies. He has contributed to research and policy engagements in Azerbaijan, Bolivia, Jordan, Namibia, Spain, and the United Arab Emirates.

Before joining the Growth Lab, Fernando worked in public policy advisory roles in Argentina, banking sector analysis at Banco Ciudad, and as a research assistant at the University of Chicago. He has also taught microeconomics and macroeconomics at Universidad Torcuato Di Tella. Fernando holds a BA in Economics from Universidad Torcuato Di Tella and a Master of Public Policy with honors and a certificate in data analytics from the University of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy. 

Kishan Shah

Kishan joined the Growth Lab as a Research Fellow in 2021 and is now a Research Manager.

Before joining the Growth Lab, Kishan worked at Dalberg Advisors, where he led research, strategy, and evaluation projects across Asia. Previously, he also worked in the Office of the Chief Economic Advisor to the Union Government of India, conducting policy research, and at Innovations for Poverty Action, where he worked on a large-scale program evaluation.

He received his A.B. in Economics and Certificate in South Asian Studies from Princeton University, and holds a Master’s degree in Public Administration in International Development (MPA/ID, 2020) from the Harvard Kennedy School.

His research interests include trade, labor markets, regional/sub-national development, and structural transformation.

Shreyas Gadgin Matha

Shreyas Gadgin Matha is a Senior Computational Social Scientist at Harvard’s Growth Lab. With a background in technology and policy from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and dual degrees in Economics and Electronics Engineering from Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani, Shreyas brings an interdisciplinary perspective to his research.

At the Growth Lab, Shreyas collaborates with Prof. Ricardo Hausmann on economic research utilizing non-traditional data sources such as satellite imagery, textual data, international trade networks, citation networks, and credit card transactions. Some projects of note include analyzing the evolution of occupational tasks in the US over the past 80 years through BERT-based multi-label text classification models and studying production networks in Albania to understand the economic impacts of COVID-19 and shock propagation.

Previously, Shreyas was a Graduate Research Assistant to Prof. Jonathan Gruber at MIT’s Institute for Data, Systems and Society, Shreyas investigated the the impacts of US public R&D investments using NLP and econometric techniques. As a Graduate RA, his work contributed to the book “Jump-Starting America” by Jonathan Gruber and Simon Johnson, which explores strategies to revive American economic growth.

Prior to MIT, Shreyas was a Senior Research Associate at J-PAL South Asia, working on randomized controlled trials (RCTs) to evaluate the impact of environmental policies in India. His projects included the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) for industrial particulate matter and the public disclosure of industrial emissions in Maharashtra, in collaboration with key governmental agencies.

Shreyas has authored several research papers and policy reports, and has also developed software tools such as py-ecomplexity, a Python package for economic complexity calculations that has been downloaded over 25,000 times, tools for zonal statistics using Google Earth Engine, creating detailed concordances between arbitrary classifications based on textual information, and data visualization platforms tracking country patents and publications, and a platform to visualize aggregations of global satellite imagery over detailed administrative boundaries.

Tim O’Brien

Tim O’Brien has managed Growth Lab applied research projects on five continents since joining the team in 2015.

He has led diagnostic work, capacity building, and execution of the Growth Lab’s overall research collaborations in South Africa, Ethiopia, Sri Lanka, Jordan, Albania, Western Australia, and Wyoming. Tim has also led the Growth Lab’s student engagement efforts, including the growth of its summer internship program, and works to build rich collaborations across Harvard Kennedy School research programs to target place-based challenges and practical research needs.

Before joining the Growth Lab, Tim completed the MPA/ID program at the HKS. He served as a Peace Corps volunteer in rural Malawi and holds a degree in mechanical engineering from Northwestern University.