Hispanic Heritage Month: Celebrating SIPA Alumni

“Hispanic Heritage Month [September 15 – October 15] recognizes Hispanic Americans for their achievements and their contributions to our culture and society. At SIPA we use the occasion to salute all of our Hispanic alumni and students—in the United States, Latin America, and beyond—and highlight their work to make the world a better place.”

— Dean Merit E. Janow

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In January 2021, Maria Jose Abud MPA ’15 was appointed under secretary of Chile’s Ministry of Women and Gender Equality.

Raphael Chavez-Fernandez MPA ’19 was recently appointed deputy assistant secretary for intergovernmental affairs at the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs.

Carlos Cuevas MPA ’12, chief strategy officer at Somos, was included among Crain’s New York Business’s “40 under 40” for 2019. 

Adriana Diaz MPA ’09, IF ’09 is a CBS News national correspondent based in Chicago and anchor of the Saturday edition of the CBS Weekend News.

Carolina Duran MIA ’08 is the secretary of economic development of Bogotá, Colombia.

Carolina Escalera MPA ’13, a career Foreign Service officer at the U.S. Department of State, was recently named as one of the National Endowment for Democracy’s Penn Kemble fellows for 2021-22. Escalera was previously recognized by New America as one of its Latino National Security & Foreign Policy Next Generation Leaders for 2020.

Melissa D. González MIA ’08 is the associate director, operations for the Open Society Foundations’s Latin America Program. 

Nellie Gorbea MPA ’92 was elected as Rhode Island's secretary of state in November 2014, becoming the first Hispanic to win statewide office in New England. She was reelected in 2018 and earlier this year announced a run for governor in 2022, making her the first Latina to run for governor in a New England state.

Rebeca Moreno Jimenez MPA ’15 is lead data scientist of UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, at its Innovation team in its HQ office in Geneva. 

In 2019, Claudia Lopez MPA ’03 became the first woman to be elected mayor of Colombia's capital, Bogotá.

Jonathan Malagón MPA-EPM ’11 was appointed as Colombia’s minister of housing in 2018. Aged 33 at the time, he became the country’s youngest cabinet member. Malagón had been serving as vice president of the Colombian Banking Association and was cited among WEF’s Young Global Leaders and by APOLITICAL as one of the World’s 100 Most Influential Young People in Government.

Economist Andrés Osorio MPA-EPM ’18 served as director of the Office of Productivity and National Entrepreneurship (OPEN) in Chile’s Ministry of Economy and is currently head of microeconomic analysis at Econsult and a part-time lecturer of economics at Universidad Catolica de Chile.

Michelle Meza Reusche MPA ’20 recently headed to Capitol Hill to serve as scheduler to U.S. Rep. Nanette Diaz Barragán (CA-44).

Jamie S. Reyes MPA ’14, director of compliance and enterprise risk management at the City University of New York, was recognized in City & State NY’s 2021 Albany 40 Under 40 Rising Stars.

In July 2021, Lourdes Rosado MIA ’90 was named president and general counsel of LatinoJustice.

Tito Armando Velasco MIA-EPM ’98 recently served as Bolivia's vice minister of public investment and external financing and is currently a consultant to the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB)’s Fiscal Management Division.

Please send your professional and other updates to Susan Storms, SIPA’s director of alumni affairs.