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Jessica Acosta is a third year undergraduate student at Harvard College concentrating in Latin American Studies. She is interested in the history and politics of Latin American countries, in particular of Brazil, as well as issues of education and immigration in the Unites States. She is a native Spanish speaker and has studied Portuguese for the past three years at Harvard and in Rio de Janeiro. An Ecuadorian American, Jessica is heavily involved in the Harvard Latino student community and has served as president of a cultural student organization. Additionally, she spends her extracurricular time as an intern in the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies, Centro Presente, an immigration center in Somerville Massachusetts, and as a Spanish and English tutor for Harvard undergraduates and graduates. Her other hobbies and interests include photography and graphic design.

Ethan Amaker, born and raised in Philadelphia, is an undergraduate at Harvard University where he is currently pursuing a Bachelor’s in Government. He is also considering pursuing a career in medicine and has volunteered in several hospitals and various medically affiliated organizations. He has a very strong interest in international politics that he has pursued through his curriculum and through various extracurricular activities. While at college he has participated in Mock Trial, a courtroom based simulation, a musical, mentoring programs for middle-school students and various other activities. Outside of his academic interests, Ethan enjoys travelling, reading, films, and cycling.

Julian Arni, a student of Harvard College, is seeking a Bachelors Degree in Philosophy. Originally from Brazil, he spent the last five years variously in India, the U.S., and traveling the world (part of the time as a researcher for the guidebook Let’s Go). Having founded a high school newspaper, he has always been interested in journalism. Among his extracurricular activities are the Harvard College radio station, WHRB; the Harvard Book Review; and the Harvard Chess Club.

Lucy Chen is a rising junior pursuing a bachelor's degree in economics at Harvard College. She is excited to use her theoretical training in real-world situations. In her spare time at Harvard, Lucy rows for the varsity heavyweight crew team and writes for The Harvard Crimson, the University's daily student newspaper. In addition, she is a tour guide and greeter for the Harvard College Admissions Office and a peer advising fellow for first-year students.

Samuel C. Downing is a Master in Public Policy and Urban Planning Candidate at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. He is interested in promoting human development and civic engagement through better governance and better public places. He is especially concerned with uncovering the political factors that limit effective regional development in many parts of the United States and Latin America. Before coming to the Kennedy School, Sam served as policy director for the budget chair of the Metropolitan King County Council in Seattle. Sam was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship to Uruguay in 2006 to teach in the country’s new system of regional teacher training colleges. As part of his fellowship, Sam studied the political obstacles to decentralizing higher education. Prior to his time in Uruguay, Sam managed a political campaign and interned with United States Senator Maria Cantwell. An avid writer, Sam serves on the editorial staff of the Harvard Citizen and has published columns on Latin American politics, democratization and historic preservation. His (unsolicited) recommendations to President Obama for improving U.S. relations with Latin America are forthcoming in the 2009 Kennedy School Review. He worked as a translator for the Social Watch Report on international development financing published by the Instituto del Tercer Mundo in Montevideo, Uruguay. Sam is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Bowdoin College in Brunswick, where he studied political theory and won the Philip C. Bradley prize for the outstanding Spanish major. As an undergraduate, he was a visiting student in politics and urban planning at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile and the Bartlett Faculty of the Built Environment at University College London. His community involvement includes active service with Historic Seattle, a preservation advocacy organization, the World Affairs Council of Seattle and the Small Business Development Center of the University of Washington, Bothell. Although he loves living in large South American cities and small Maine towns, Sam is a Seattle native.

Rosana Galaviz, a native of San Antonio, Texas, is a sophomore in Harvard College who plans to concentrate in Social Anthropology and earn a secondary field in Portuguese. Born to Mexican parents, she embraces her Mexican-American heritage and hopes to become a successful secondary school educator. She plans on earning her Teaching Certificate and began teaching in a socioeconomically disadvantaged school after graduation. Her goal in life is to make a difference in students’ lives and guide students towards a future of immense opportunities while preparing them for a post-secondary education. She enjoys participating in organizations dedicated to community service, education, cultural diversity, and promoting human rights and community involvement. In her free time at home, she enjoys spending time with her family, especially having sleepovers and dancing with her nieces and nephews. At Harvard, she enjoys listening to all types of music while staying up to study and having random conversations with interesting individuals.

Adilson José Moreira, born and raised in Brazil, is a candidate for a doctorate degree in juridical sciences at Harvard Law School. His dissertation addresses some legal aspects of the current debate about the implementation of race-conscious policies in Brazil, especially the articulation of Brazilian racial ideologies in the process of legal interpretation. He engaged in several activities while pursuing his first degree in law at the Federal University of Minas Gerais. As an intern in institutional programs for the promotion of equality and citizenship, he had the opportunity to develop studies about the role of law in the process of social transformation. He also conducted a research about the possible interactions of law and psychoanalysis during this period, one of the subjects of his mater degree thesis. The question of legal representations of subjectivity became particularly important for his scholarly research, determining the content of subsequent studies. His experience with social movements and the studies of law and psychoanalysis served as an inspiration for the elaboration of his first doctoral dissertation, which proposes a new interpretative approach to equality based on the reconstruction of the notion of the individual in legal theory. The interdisciplinary character of his studies has provided him with important conceptual tools to address the complex Brazilian social reality. After completing his master degree thesis, Adilson taught constitutional law and human rights for three years in prominent Brazilian universities. Always trying to challenge the rather formalistic Brazilian legal culture, he consistently encouraged his students to understand law through the eyes of social sciences, which might be a productive approach in a society that faces grave social inequalities.

Bart Quintáns is currently a candidate for a Bachelor of Arts degree in Social Studies at Harvard College, Class of 2010. His studies include political science, economics, and social theory, with an interest in modern institutions of law. Native of Madison, Wisconsin, he also has lived and worked in Spain. In Madrid, Bart spent two summers working for Harvard Kennedy School graduate Juan Verde in consulting for Spanish regional and municipal governments, as well as environmental outreach. At Harvard, Bart has spent two years as a staff member of HACIA Democracy, a conference organized by Harvard undergraduates held yearly in Latin America as a simulation of the Organization of American States for high school students from around the world. He has also worked for the Harvard College Consulting Group, has translated for Harvard Student Agencies, and has engaged in various musical activities on campus. In the fall of 2008, Bart spent a semester abroad in Santiago, Chile, taking classes in the faculty of law at the Universidad de Chile and volunteering in an NGO which works towards spreading access to information technology in Chilean communities.

Andrés Felipe Ramirez, born in Bogotá, Colombia and resident of Miami, Florida, is currently pursuing a Bachelor of Arts degree in Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard College. As a scientist, Andrés is interested in the evolution of disease-causing microorganisms and their effects on the human population. As a consequence of his interest in medicine, Andrés is very interested in public and global health issues. He has developed these interests by getting involved with Project Health-Project Baby, an organization that aims to break the link between poverty and poor health in the United States. As a volunteer for the organization, he works in Boston Medical Center’s maternity ward and spends his time helping the new mothers and their babies’ access adequate resources like food, shelter, and clothing to provide the stability that is needed for a healthy life. Throughout High School, he was heavily involved in the Red Cross society, and for a year he led the organization of blood drives in his school for the South Florida blood bank. After college, Andrés hopes to work in the field of public health by earning a joint Medical degree and Masters in Public Health degree. Along with his Bachelor’s degree, Andrés will earn a citation in Mandarin Chinese and French. He hopes to use his knowledge of languages to help large populations of the world that are in need of proper healthcare.

Linda Rodriguez is a doctoral candidate in the Department of History of Art and Architecture at Harvard University. She is currently completing her dissertation which addresses the lives and works of free people of color artists and artisans in nineteenth-century Cuba. She is more widely interested in the politics of cultural patrimony, the role of museums in contemporary society, and the use of new technologies in the museum environment. In the past, she has interned at El Museo del Barrio and the Museum of Modern Art, both in New York City.

Dana Seesel, a native of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, is a rising junior at Harvard College, where she concentrates in Government. In addition to political science and Portuguese, she studies Spanish language literature and will spend the upcoming fall semester in Barcelona. Dana is keenly interested in Latin American comparative politics and is excited to spend this summer working at an organization that seeks to improve the quality of Brazil’s democracy. Her interest in politics and public service extends beyond the classroom, as she devotes her free time to teaching local middle school students about American civic participation and helping to run a model congress for high school students. Dana is considering a career in law or public service, and spent last summer working for the Helen Bader Foundation in Milwaukee. There, she wrote for the foundation’s newsletter and developed a digital survey to reshape its grant making strategies with the input of local leaders. She is also an avid traveler, cook, and sports fan.

Meredith Steuer was born in Houston and raised in Atlanta. She is currently a candidate for an AB in History and Literature of North America and Latin America and a certificate in Latin American Studies at Harvard College. She is interested in the links between the literature of the southern United States and the Boom writers as well as issues of racial and gender violence. Last summer, she participated in DRCLAS’s SIP program in Buenos Aires as an intern with FUNDES, an NGO that provides consulting services and basic training to small businesses. She is the Campus Arts Editor for the Harvard Crimson. She is an intern at DRCLAS’s Cambridge office in the Puerto Rico Winter Institute and visiting scholar programs.

Fabio Tran is currently pursuing a Master's in Public Administration at the Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) concurrent with a Master’s in Business Administration at the Kellogg School of Management (Northwestern University). His studies focus on fostering growth and development in emerging economies through hybrid public-private solutions. Previously, he worked for five years for A.T. Kearney Management Consultants, supporting government and private companies in strategic and finance issues in South America.

Marvin Urzua, a southern California native, is currently a candidate for a History of Science degree at Harvard College who also seeks to obtain a secondary in Neurobiology. He is interested in the study of science through a social and historical perspective, dealing with the social conditions and effects of science, as well as the social structures and processes of scientific activity. In particular, Marvin is greatly interested in the historical study of medicine and is interested in exploring a career in public health or healthcare policy. Marvin is a strong advocate of engaging in community service abroad. Last summer, Marvin volunteered as a teacher in South Africa through a program called World Teach. In the suburbs of Cape Town, he worked as a full-time teacher for 6th, 7th, and 11th grade classes, teaching a variety of subjects. During his free time, Marvin organized an after-school basketball program to teach students the fundamentals of basketball and spark their interest in this relatively unpopular sport in South Africa. The previous two summers, he was also involved with community service programs in Ghana and China. As result of his volunteering abroad, Marvin has acquired a unique global perspective as well as an insatiable need to continue traveling. At school, Marvin is deeply involved with the Harvard Latino community. He is president of Harvard RAZA, a student organization for Mexican-Americans, and also the historian and webmaster of the Latino Men's Collective, a student organization dedicated to the growth of Latino leaders. As part of these student organizations, he has acquired strong leadership and organization skills which he looks to apply to the Public Policy Immersion Program. After graduation, Marvin hopes to attend Harvard's School of Public Health.

Jessica Villegas, from southern California, is an A.B. candidate in Social Anthropology at Harvard College with a focus on Latin America. During the summer of 2008, she researched the traditional model of a 5th grade classroom in San Jose, Costa Rica. She studied the classroom discourse and observed traditional pedagogy at the Fidel Chavez primary school. She then observed the role of the One-Laptop-Per-Child (OLPC) initiative and how the traditional classroom compared to the OLPC classroom in which every student had her/his own laptop. She presented her findings at a conference to the Omar Dengo Foundation and to corporate members of Intel in Costa Rica. She proposed a possible intervention to help with the transition from a traditional model to the OLPC classroom in the 5th grade class that she observed. Jessica is currently an intern at the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau, a non-profit organization that offers legal services to the disadvantaged communities of Cambridge and throughout Massachusetts. Additionally, she is the Director of the Spanish Office of the Small Claims Advisory Service (SCAS), a non-profit organization in Harvard College’s Philips Brooks House Association. SCAS volunteers read up on Small Claims Law in Massachusetts and answer calls from residents (often of low income) from all over the state. As Director of the Spanish Office, one of SCAS’s twelve committees, Jessica manages appointments with clients in the community office at El Concilio Hispano. Aside from appointments, she coordinates volunteers to staff the Spanish Office. Other responsibilities include spearheading outreach events in Spanish-speaking communities and making SCAS more visible in the Boston area.