Meet the Beyond Oil Team- researchers, students, faculty, and practitioners joining forces to reimagine what education can do for Venezuela’s future

Our Team

Valentina Maza

Venezuelan-born educator and Ed.M. candidate in Education Policy and Analysis. She brings experience in teaching, college access, and public policy to her work on strengthening education systems in Latin America.

Co-Chair

Emiliana Vegas

Professor of Practice at HGSE and Director of the Education Lab for Latin America (ELLA), whose work focuses on expanding educational opportunities in Latin America, the Caribbean, and other developing regions. A former leader at the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, and the Brookings Institution, she brings extensive global experience in education systems, finance, teachers, and early childhood development.

Faculty Director

Co-Chair

Veronica Rosich

Venezuelan educator and Ed.M. candidate in Education Policy and Analysis focused on advancing educational equity in Latin America and other low-income contexts. She studies high-impact education policies that improve learning outcomes and expand life opportunities.

Eduardo Piña

Venezuelan economist with two master’s degrees in Applied Economics and Machine Learning. His research focuses on improving educational quality in developing countries and reducing learning gaps among students from different socioeconomic backgrounds through evidence-based public policies.

 Author

Lorena Pardo

Student Author

Colombian political scientist, lawyer, and Ed.M. candidate in Education Policy and Analysis. She believes education is the space where more just, peaceful, and humanistic societies can take shape, and focuses on deeper learning, social-emotional learning, and civic-democratic education at the systems level.

Student Author

Samuel Rivero

Peruvian Ed.M. candidate in Education Policy and Analysis at HGSE. A Beca Generación Bicentenario fellow, he draws on experience with the UN, the OAS, and coordinating human rights and citizenship programs across schools in Latin America to examine equity, democratic school governance, and civic competencies.

Felipe Vergara

Chilean educator, industrial engineer, and Ed.M. candidate in Education Policy and Analysis. His work integrates social-emotional learning (SEL) & wellbeing in school communities, teacher policies and emerging technologies to enhance system effectiveness and expand life opportunities through policy implementation and scalable innovations.

Student Author

Emilia Alvear

M.Ed. student exploring what it takes to design transformative learning experiences that foster equity and peace, especially in contexts of vulnerability. Her work focuses on creating pedagogical strategies that strengthen critical thinking, reading comprehension, and the relationship between schools and their communities. Emilia is particularly interested in how education can promote integrity, equity, and opportunities for people facing structural disadvantage, always aiming for concrete, meaningful impact in classrooms and local territories.

Student Author

Student Author

Manuela Jaramillo

Human Development and Education Ed.M candidate studying early-childhood development at the intersection of education and public health. She is also a part of the Child Protection 2026 Cohort at the FXB Center for Health and Human Rights.

Valeria Ortiz

Colombian educator, engineer, and Ed.M. candidate in Education Leadership, Organizations and Entrepreneurship. She is passionate about rural education in Latin America, especially one-room schools in Colombia, and focuses her work on reducing educational inequalities through community-driven models that strengthen and elevate teachers’ work through Colombiando, the nonprofit she co-founded.

Student Author

Ignacio Rodriguez

Colombian educator, Fulbright Scholar, and Ed.M. candidate in Education Policy and Analysis at Harvard. His work lives at the intersection of violence, inequality, and learning. He studies how policy can create real opportunity for children that systems have historically left behind. He believes the answers are already in communities. His job is to make sure those voices reach the table.

Student Author

Student Author

Valentina Rincón

Colombian Early Childhood Educator, Psychologist, and Ed.M. Candidate in the Human Development and Education program with a concentration in Early Childhood. Her work is focused on early childhood development, research in social and emotional learning, synergetic play therapy, and helping all children thrive by leveraging art, literature, and play.

Emilia Tagle

Chilean educational psychologist and Master in Public Policy (MPP), and Ed.M. candidate in Learning Design, Innovation and Technology. Her experience focuses on public - private collaboration and work within NGOs to design, implement, and evaluate educational programs aimed at learning recovery in high-vulnerability contexts, with a particular focus on literacy development.

Student Author

Juan Wulff

Venezuelan undergraduate at Harvard College concentrating in Government. He is interested in many fields, whether it's public opinion, immigration policy, or democracy and comparative government.

Student Author

Author

Callysta Thony

Leads Impact, Evaluation, and Research at NUBOR, an education startup transforming learning through personalized, practical, and technology-supported experiences for students in Mexico. Callysta was a Teaching Fellow at HGSE, where she completed her masters in Education Policy and Analysis. Prior to HGSE, Callysta worked with the Ministry of Education of Indonesia supporting the digital transformation of the country’s education system, and was a social impact consultant working on projects across Southeast Asia. Callysta holds her bachelor’s degree from Yale-NUS College.

Sol Giesso

Argentinian mathematics and science educator and Ed.M. candidate in Teaching and Teacher Leadership at Harvard. Sol is interested in building climate and civic literacy and action in youth, as well as in standardized testing for college access.

Student Editor

Sofia Spektor

Master’s candidate in Education Policy and Analysis at HGSE. She has worked across academia and the public and private sectors in Uruguay on education-related initiatives. Her interests focus on expanding opportunities to marginalized communities, education technology and the intersection of education and workforce development. She is a Teach For Uruguay alumna and holds a B.A. in Economics from Universidad ORT Uruguay.

Student Event Support

Communications Lead

Naolin Crosthwaite-Gonzalez

Mexican American educator and researcher studying Education Policy and Analysis at HGSE. She holds a B.A. in Sociology and American Studies from Fordham University and focuses on migration, educational access, and how public institutions support marginalized communities. She has worked with migrant families at the U.S.–Mexico border and in New York City.