Innovations for Poverty Action

Graduate Student Opportunity

Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA) is a research and policy nonprofit that discovers and promotes effective solutions to global poverty problems. IPA brings together researchers and decision-makers to design, rigorously evaluate, and refine these solutions and their applications, ensuring that the evidence created is used to improve the lives of the world’s poor.

Internship Description

Crime, violence, and a weak rule of law jointly present some of the most pressing issues for Latin America. They affect citizen behavior and relations at every level of society, so these shortcomings impose a significant cost on the economy and constitute a severe threat to economic development and political stability. The program “Building Effective, Resilient, and Trusted Police Organizations in Mexico” seeks to explore how to design local police forces in Mexico (and Latin America more broadly) that can rise to the challenge of reducing violence, increasing institutional legitimacy and trust in institutions, and strengthening the rule of law. The project thus focuses on three sets of questions:

  1. The specific organizational capabilities and structural characteristics that are systematically proven to deliver better results (or questions of basic organizational design);

  2. The process and sequence through which these organizational capabilities should be incorporated into new or existing police organizations (or questions of organizational construction and change);

  3. How, given an organizational design, police organizations can build citizen engagement, participation, and trust through their protocols, practices, and interactions with citizens (or questions of the enactment of practices). This includes an understanding of how police organizations in Mexico should implement evidence-based interventions that have been proven to effectively reduce violence.

Internship Responsibilities

  • Support the literature review for research projects

  • Work with PIs and IPA staff to analyze the data and interpret the findings

  • Monitor the implementation of fieldwork

  • Support the development of reports and presentations for different audiences in English and Spanish

Internship Qualifications

  • A Bachelor's degree in economics, public policy, international development, or related fields

  • At least 6 months of work experience, preferably in a research setting and data analysis

  • Excellent project management and organizational skills; meticulous attention to detail; ability to work independently 

  • Familiarity with randomized controlled trials

  • Excellent verbal and written communication skills in Spanish and English, including ability to effectively communicate

  • Strong quantitative skills and very good knowledge of Stata required; programming and other technical knowledge a strong plus

See also: