Alumni Profile: Gabriel Angarita, MPP’23

Gabriel Angarita, MPP’23, grew up in Bogotá, Colombia and said he remembered as a child going with his parents to work. “We would travel to marginalized neighborhoods, where—unlike in the rich parts of the city—there were no roads, electricity, or other public services, and we would often see families displaced by violence living in dire situations.”

Now, as an adult, Angarita works for Bogotá’s local government to improve conditions for all the capital's citizens. “After earning my MPP, I returned to Colombia and worked in the public sector. Then, in January 2024, I began my role as the Director of Economic Studies for the government of Bogotá.”

The office Angarita works in collects and processes data to produce research for the local government and create studies about the economy of Bogotá. “Our work is critical, because all the other departments use it to create data-driven economic development programs.”

His work, Angarita said, requires two different skill sets—research and leadership—both of which he said he developed through the Master of Public Policy (MPP) program at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy.

“Before I went to Harris, my work was more in an advisor capacity. Now, in a director role, I appreciate that I get to combine the leadership and management skills I learned at Harris as well as the technical skills I gained during the program.”

Angarita’s path to leadership began after he earned his bachelor of economics from the Universidad Externado de Colombia in 2012, when he went to work at Fedesarrollo, a think-tank based in Bogotá. Angarita was a research analyst and worked for Daniel Gómez, an economist who earned a PhD from the University of Chicago—and an advocate for the importance of evidence-based policy making.

Angarita subsequently joined the National Federation of Coffee Growers in 2013. “At the time, coffee prices had dropped, and that led to riots. I helped design a coffee subsidy to assist farmers during the market downturn, and that experience became the foundation for the thesis I wrote while earning my master’s in economics from Universidad de los Andes.”

Angarita next served as an advisor to the Microeconomic Policy Director at the Ministry of Finance, working on tax reforms and passing measures to mitigate Colombia's poverty. “However,” he said, “I wanted to make a greater impact. I felt I needed to improve my coding skills and learn more about new technologies used by economists.”

Harris’ approach, he said, appealed to him. “I was impressed by the way Harris combines public policy, computer science, and social science. I felt the interaction among these three themes is complementary and, when integrated with my previous education, would improve my skills.”

Angarita’s intuition, he learned, was accurate. “I am a lucky man. I had the opportunity to earn a degree from the University of Chicago—one of the best universities—and I had a really amazing time at Harris doing it. I had excellent professors, and I learned new skills. My duty now is to continue using these skills to benefit my city—and Colombia.”