Marcela Escobari

Marcela Escobari is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, where she leads the Workforce of the Future Initiative. Her research explores economic development strategies for cities in the context of evolving labor markets and job quality, and seeks to promote workers’ upward mobility. Escobari was confirmed by the U.S. Senate to lead USAID’s $1bn Latin America Bureau and its initiatives on poverty, inequality, citizen security, and governance under the Obama administration. Escobari also served as Executive Director at the Center for International Development at Harvard University, a research center working to generate breakthrough ideas that bring stable, shared, and sustainable prosperity to regions around the world. Previously, she led the Americas region at the OTF Group (a spin-off of Monitor Group), and was a Mergers & Acquisitions banker at JP Morgan in New York. The World Economic Forum named her a Young Global Leader in 2013. She co-authored the book “In the River They Swim: Essays from around the World on Enterprise Solutions to Poverty,” holds a B.A. in economics from Swarthmore College and an M.A. in public policy from the Harvard Kennedy School.