Emiliana Vegas is a Professor of Practice and Faculty Chair of the Education Policy and Analysis program at the Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE), where she is also the Director of the Education Lab for Latin America. Her research and practice focus on improving educational opportunities in developing countries. She holds a Doctor of Education from HGSE, a Master’s in Public Policy from Duke University, and a Bachelor’s degree in Communications from Universidad Católica Andrés Bello in Caracas, Venezuela.
Before returning to HGSE, Vegas was Co-Director of the Center for Universal Education at the Brookings Institution. Between 2012 and 2019, she served as Chief of the Education Division at the Inter-American Development Bank, where she oversaw the Bank’s lending operations and technical assistance projects across Latin America and the Caribbean. Prior to joining the IDB, she worked for more than ten years at the World Bank, where she led research and operations focused on education systems in several low- and middle-income countries.
She has written extensively on issues affecting education systems in Latin America and the Caribbean and other developing regions. Her articles and books cover topics such as policies to leverage technology to accelerate learning and skills development, increasing teacher effectiveness, school finance policies, and early childhood development policies. Her latest book, Let’s Change the World: How to Work Within International Development Organizations to Make a Difference, was published by Rowman & Littlefield (now Bloomsbury) in September 2024.
