>> Return to Lemann Fellows Home

Pedro Henrique H. F. de Cristo is a candidate for a Master in Public Policy (MPP) at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government (HKS). Pedro’s research interests include strategic planning and human development public policies, especially in the areas of education, security and environmental sustainability. Prior to coming to Harvard, Pedro headed the Strategic Planning Unit for the city of João Pessoa, capital of the state of Paraíba, where he oversaw several projects including Operação Respeito (Operation Respect), a management and environmental sustainability program based on the UNDP’s 2006 Human Development Report. Operação Respeito has been recognized by several foundations and international organizations for its innovative and efficient practices in the areas of human development and water management. Pedro is also the founder and president of Emancipação Cidadã, an NGO that seeks to empower community leaders, primarily women and children, as well as public managers through well designed communications system. Pedro holds a Business and Administration degree from Universidade Federal da Paraíba. He is a native of Paraíba, Brazil, and hopes to run for public office in Brazil in the near future.

Ana Luíza Gibertoni Cruz is a Master of Public Health (MPH) candidate at the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH). Ana Luiza’s objective at HSPH is to acquire fundamental skills to properly manage twenty-first century’s public health issues through quantitative and qualitative methods. Her background combines a medical degree from Universidade Estadual de Campinas (Unicamp) and specialization in Infectious Diseases at Instituto de Infectologia Emilio Ribas, one of Sao Paulo’s first public health institutions. She is interested in designing and implementing effective programs on disease control and prevention, and aspires a relevant role at Brazilian’s governmental and international health. By choosing her MPH track on Global Health and Population, she intends to strengthen technical skills to establish collaborative projects for disadvantaged populations worldwide. Ana Luiza participated in the first Harvard-Brazil Collaborative Course on Infectious Diseases offered in São Paulo in January 2008 by the Harvard School of Public Health and the Santa Casa de Misericórdia de São Paulo Medical School with the support of the Brazil Office at Harvard’s David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies (DRCLAS).

Gisela Gasparian Gosling is a second-year student at the Master in Public Administration in International Development (MPA/ID)at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government (HKS). She is interested in promoting more efficient public-private partnerships, industrial policy, private sector development, education policy and institutional development to improve the performance of local government in Brazil. Before coming to Harvard, Gisela worked at McKinsey & Co. in São Paulo as a research analyst focusing in education, public sector and retail. Gisela holds a B.A. in Administration from the Escola de Administração de Empresas de São Paulo da Fundação Getulio Vargas (FGV-EAESP) and an M.A. in International Management from Bocconi and ESADE.

Susana Cordeiro Guerra is a candidate for a Master in Public Administration in International Development (MPA/ID) at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government (HKS). Susana’s academic research and professional experience has focused on education and poverty reduction. She is particularly interested in the impact of fiscal decentralization on interregional equity in education. Prior to coming to Harvard Susana worked at Chartwell Education Group, a for-profit education consulting firm, where she developed and implemented several projects to improve the quality of education in Latin America. These projects sought to establish partnerships between Brazilian and U.S. institutions by way of integrating a digital media management platform across the region. Susana also worked at the World Bank where she conducted research on poverty reduction, fiscal decentralization and education policy. Susana graduated from Harvard College in 2003 with a B.A. in Social Studies.

Camila Philbert Lajolo is pursuing a Master in Public Health (MPH) at the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH). Camilia studied medicine at the Universidade Estadual de Campinas (Unicamp) and is a trained physician specialized in Hematology and Transfusion. She also holds a degree on Health Economy and Management from the Universidade Federal de São Paulo (Unifesp). For the past three years she has been working with hospitals to improve the quality of care as well as patient safety standards. Camilia runs a non-profit that seeks to implement voluntary initiative aimed at harm reduction in Brazilian hospitals. At Harvard, Camila hopes to focus her studies on the challenges facing health care systems as well as ways to improve health policy and management. Upon completion she plans to return to Brazil and apply the knowledge gained at Harvard into practice in order to improve health care at a national scale.

Xinaida Lima is pursuing a Master of Public Health (MPH) at the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH). She moved to Boston in 2007 to participate in the International Training Program in Dermatology at Harvard Medical School and subsequently started working with clinical research at the Massachusetts General Hospital – Department of Dermatology. She hold a degree in Internal Medicine from the Universidade Federal do Ceará (UFC) where she was also a dermatologist in residence. As a Dermatology resident, she had the opportunity to study at the Universidade de São Paulo (USP) and at the University of Miami’s Miller School of Medicine. Xinaida’s research interest includes clinical and epidemiological research, especially in cutaneous infectious diseases such as psoriasis, hidradenitis suppurativa, acne and pigmented disorders. Xinaida’s goal is to improve efficacy of dermatological infectious disease therapies and invest in the health and well-being of Brazil.

Frederico Meinberg is pursuing a Master in Public Administration in International Development (MPA/ID) at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government (HKS). At HKS, he is advancing his interests in data analysis, international trade, international finance and international political economy with a focus on the responses of developing countries to the globalization of capital, goods and labor flows. Prior to coming to Harvard, Fred was a member of the Special Projects Group at Wolfram Research, where he led the development of the financial and linguistic functionality in Mathematica and in the Wolfram|Alpha knowledge engine. Earlier in his life, he spent four years running a farm in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais. Fred received an undergraduate and a graduate degrees in Romance Languages and Linguistics from the University of Freiburg, Germany.

Néfer Muñoz is a fifth-year Ph.D. candidate in the Romance Languages and Literatures Department at Harvard’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS). Néfer has traveled to Brazil several times and is devoting part of his dissertation to study Brazilian authors. His dissertation hopes to explore the relationship between journalism and literature in Latin America. Néfer holds a Master in Journalism and Latin American Studies from New York University. He grew up in Costa Rica and worked as a cultural reporter for La Nación newspaper. He was also a correspondent for Inter Press Service, Europa Press and served as the president of the Asociación de Prensa Extranjera (Association of Foreign Press), where he worked to make the correct use of the Spanish language by journalists a priority.

Brenna Marea Powell is a fifth-year Ph.D. candidate in Government and Social Policy at Harvard’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS). She is interested in comparative racial politics, transitions from violent conflict to politics and in understanding the conditions under which ethnic and racial stratification improves. Her three-article dissertation project investigates the role of state institutions in the attenuation of ethno-racial hierarchy across a variety of settings including in the United States, Ireland, and Brazil - where she is engaged in a project on the politics of racial classification and racial policy. Before coming to Harvard, Brenna worked at the Stanford Center on Conflict and Negotiation at Stanford University where she helped run a number of long-term conflict resolution, mediation, and peace-building projects that brought together Stanford researchers and grassroots practitioners from Northern Ireland, the Middle East, and the U.S. She has taught courses on conflict resolution and peace-building at Harvard, Stanford, and the National Hispanic University in San Jose, California. Brenna received her B.A. in Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity, with a minor in Political Science, from Stanford in 1999. She is from Seattle, Washington, but feels most at home in warmer, sunnier places.

Valeria Rocha is a Ph.D. candidate in Administration, Planning and Social Policy at the Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE). She is conducting her dissertation research in Brazil to test two survey instruments: the Gender Equitable Scale for Women (GESW), designed to measure women’s attitudes toward gender norms, and the Self-Efficacy Index (SEI), designed to measure a young woman’s judgment about her ability to accomplish a given task or activity. The development and testing of these instruments are part of efforts to promote gender-equitable norms and self-efficacy in Brazil. Should the instruments be validated, they will be used to measure the impact of an intervention called Project M, working with young women to promote health and gender equity in Rio de Janeiro. The development and testing of the scale and the index is part of on-going action research to promote gender-equitable norms and behavior and self-efficacy in Brazil.

Maurílio Santana Jr. is pursuing a Master in Public Administration in International Development (MPA/ID) at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government (HKS). His interests include microcredit and strategic planning designed to foster Brazil’s development. In the summer of 2009, Maurílio worked at the office of then Minister Roberto Mangabeira Unger (HLS Roscoe Pound Professor of Law) in the Long-term Planning Secretariat of the Brazilian Federal Government. Prior to coming to Harvard, Maurílio worked as a manager in Caixa Econômica Federal, a Brazilian publicly-owned bank that is actively engaged in providing access to credit and other financial resources to low-income households. At Caixa Econômica Federal he oversaw the day-to-day management of Bolsa Família, a conditional cash transfer program. Maurílio holds a law degree from the Federal University of Paraná (UFPr).

Amie Shei is a Ph.D. candidate in Health Policy at the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University. Her dissertation research examines incentive-based approaches to improving health. Amie is currently conducting research on the health impacts of Brazil’s Bolsa Família conditional cash transfer program at the population level and at the household and individual level. She assisted with planning, research, and curriculum development for the 2009 Harvard-Brazil Collaborative Course on Infectious Diseases, a unique multi-disciplinary collaborative course held in Bahia. Amie graduated magna cum laude from Amherst College with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English, with departmental distinction. She holds a Master of Science degree in Health Policy and Management from the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH). She has worked at the World Health Organization in Geneva, Switzerland, the Harvard Center for Public Health Preparedness, and the Department of Health Policy and Management at HSPH. Amie is the recipient of a U.S. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality fellowship, a U.S. Department of Education Foreign Language and Area Studies fellowship, and a Harvard Law School Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics fellowship. She has been a Graduate Student Associate at the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard University since 2008.  Amie’s research interests include vulnerable populations, incentives, health decision-making, access to health care, and quality of health care. She has taught courses in microeconomics and health care policy.

Cinthya E. Torres is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures at Harvard’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS). Her dissertation research explores the mechanisms by which national identity and nationhood in Brazil and Peru during the first half of the twentieth century were configured upon an idealized figure of the indigenous. Cinthya will focus on the role of intellectuals and literature writ large in the articulation of the idealized native as an emblem of a more genuine national identity. Cinthya holds a B.A. in Latin American and Peruvian Literature from Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos in Peru, and an M.A. from Harvard University. Before coming to Harvard, she co-directed a literary magazine called Ginebra Magnolia: Revista de Investigación y Creación Literaria. Cinthya was also the co-edited the Dudley Review of Dudley House at Harvard for two years, where she was a Dudley Literary Fellow. Cinthya was born and raised in Peru.

Brandon Van Dyck is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Government at Harvard’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS). He holds an A.B. in Politics from Princeton University and a Master of Philosophy in Political Thought and Intellectual History from Cambridge University, UK. He has traveled widely in Latin America, especially Mexico, Cuba, and Brazil. His dissertation focuses on a group of Latin American left-wing parties formed in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, examining why some of them failed after initially promising results (e.g. the United Left in Peru, the Radical Cause in Venezuela), while others survived and even thrived (e.g. the Workers' Party in Brazil, the Party of the Democratic Revolution in Mexico). Brandon plans to carry out dissertation fieldwork in Brazil and Mexico during the spring semester and summer of 2010. He is originally from Athens, Georgia.

>> Return to Lemann Fellows Home