Viri Rios

I belong to an emerging generation of scholars that rejects the commonly accepted idea that academia is inexorably detached from policy decisions and social mobilization. Instead, I rely on data analysis, research journalism, and close collaboration with academic peers, to advance an acute understanding of the pressing social problems of Mexico, my home country, and to design and promote novel solutions to them.

Using experimental and observational data, I analyze Mexico's political and economic reality, as well as its main public policy challenges. My most recent book No Es Normal. The rigged game that fuels Mexican inequality and how to change it explores how to create a fair, inclusive, and prosperous Mexico by changing fiscal, labor and competition regulations. Additionally, I have published several peer-reviewed papers at journals like The Journal of Conflict Resolution, Comparative Political Studies, Justice Quarterly, Latin American Research Review, Latin American Politics and Society, and an edited book entitled The Missing Reform about rule of law in Mexico. As professor, I teach U.S.-Mexico politics at Harvard Summer School and have been visiting assistant professor at Harvard University and Purdue University.

In 2020, I was honored to be selected as Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum. I am also a fellow at the International's Women's Forum, and in 2018 I was a selection commissioner of Mexico's National Anti-Corruption System -- a position awarded to top-academics and activists by the Mexican Senate. The Library of Congress classified my work on migration as "Latin America Editor's Pick" and The Economist profiled me as a “mover and shaker” of Mexico's civil society. In 2014, the American Political Science Association awarded me the prize to the best public administration dissertation, and a year before the Harvard Gazette selected me as one of the 15 Harvard’s stellar graduates.

Besides my labor as academic, I regularly collaborate with top political leaders, helping them identify, measure and expose counter-intuitive policy truths using data. I was also the founding CEO of México ¿Cómo Vamos?, a start-up think tank, and of recently Dateras, a group of women who seek to empower civil society through the use of code. I am a columnist at El País, and I also write at Expansión -- one of Mexico's leading business magazines. 

Other websites: Google Scholar
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