Tell us about your journey since graduating from LSE
I faced serious health problems during my time at LSE. After graduation in 2023, I moved to Spain and focused on my health. During my treatment I helped some friends who opened a restaurant in Madrid with the financial aspects of the business.
After my health improved, I have been able to build a boutique advisory firm through my professional network. We provide geopolitical risk assessment and institutional relations advise across the Americas, East and Southeast Asia. Our real value comes from validating contextual evidence with local partners. Sometimes models can provide a solid answer, but I believe in the power of local cues and building trust to achieve deals that benefit everyone involved. For example, we are currently building a female financial advisory start-up based in Japan, with a dual aim to reduce unemployment among vulnerable female profiles while helping small and medium companies in developing economies that cannot afford traditional financial vehicles in their global interactions.
Also, I dedicate some time helping a foundation, that promotes fine arts and culture throughout exhibitions and research, with an international outlook. They recently held an International Exhibition of Children's and Teenagers Painting in Madrid to help the communities affected by the Mediterranean storms in Southern Spain, with participants from the Americas, Japan, and Spain. The same paintings are currently being exhibited at the Municipal Museum of Osaka, Japan.
If you could tell your younger student self one piece of wisdom, what would it be and why?
Do not be afraid of being proven wrong: ask the question, try the new perspective, test your assumptions, and challenge your boundaries.
Traditionally in Chile, students need to memorize and cater to the taste of their lecturers to achieve academic success. Later on, professional life does not provide many spaces to try perspectives that do not align with the expectations of your role. In the sense that more often than not, institutions lack incentives to want to try something different to what they do best, ideally with efficiency while reducing potential risks and uncertainty.
As a student, regardless of your age or background, you have access to an open field to test the feasibility of new ideas and discuss them openly without endangering people or assets. Furthermore, academic debate allows you to identify personal limits and unconscious biases. If you are lucky, those exchanges will provide comprehensive ways to improve and learn.
How has studying in the Department of Government helped you since graduation?
I enrolled at the Department of Government as a mature student with more than 16 years of experience in government and consultancy. Thus, my answer might feel odd. My time there reminded me to be humble and acknowledge that experience alone is not everything, some leading experts in their field were younger than me and their passion was admirable.
On the other hand, you could argue, either by age or beliefs, that my profile is not the one of a typical LSE Department of Government student. My time there was an opportunity for personal growth but also a challenge in understanding peers who aligned with causes that initially didn't make sense to me. Those exchanges proved useful to update my understanding of views beyond generational and cultural differences, as a way of sharing the concerns through different outputs. Now, instead of reacting, my objective is to comprehend the standing of the people in front of me, try to build agreements if possible, and share success. Which has added value in my venture.
What’s the one piece of career guidance that has most impacted you?
On a behavioural perspective, a supervisor told me at the beginning of my career: ‘Always try to be kind to those around you. You don’t know their struggles. If you have to be cold-hearted, never lose your manners.’ In one phrase: ‘treat everyone with respect and don’t be a bully’.
Following that advice can be frustrating, especially as a young professional. I tend to be socially clumsy and sometimes people wondered if was flirting. But as a result, despite our differences I have been recommended by former adversaries, invited to family events of business partners, and I have the luxury to keep a good relationship with people from all the places I have worked before.
Thinking about practice, the same individual said: ‘any project with more than two assumptions is doomed to fail, try to reduce as much uncertainty as you can’.
I try to bring that phrase in every project. That consideration has provided me with a good record of completing projects in time and budget, while being able to take distance from reasonable but unsound proposals that would endanger the interests of my team.
You recently presented the results of your dissertation (What motivates authoritarian regimes to adopt free trade policies? A single case study of Vietnam and the role of trust in domestic political institutions) to the Hungarian government. How did this opportunity arise and what were your main takeaways from it?
I was aiming to present my dissertation to the 2025 International Political Science Association Congress in Seoul this year (it was accepted). While I revised and edited the document to comply with their requirements, I asked some friends in Spanish academia for their feedback. One of them specializes in the contemporary history of former Soviet block countries. He commented that Hungary as a former Soviet State has close links with South East Asia, particularly Vietnam, and asked my permission to share the dissertation with the Hungarian Ambassador.
After a while, I received an invitation to participate in the International Visitor Program of the Prime Minister’s Office of Hungary, as an external member of the Spanish delegation to visit the country in the second week of April 2025. In nature, it is a similar programme to the US International Leadership Visitor Programme (ILVP).
Overall, my main takeaways are the high grade of transparency of Hungarian authorities and government officials regarding the questions of the delegation. Even on topics that are challenges from the European Union, they showed evidence of conducting public consultations among their citizens, that provided them with a legitimate mandate (+80%) for said policies. Their view on international integration reminded of the globalizations in the periphery mentioned in Berger’s 2003 book Many Globalizations.
On a personal level, the programme catered to the interests of the members of the delegation. I had the chance to dinner with Hungary’s Deputy State Secretary for External Economic Affairs and the Head of Department of Strategic Analysis. Both complimented my work and showed a genuine interest in the topics I covered. They highlighted its simplicity (something valuable in policy implementation) and indirectly foresaw a solution to the ongoing tariffs issues by steering manufacturing focus to middle powers like Vietnam. They also motivated me to apply for a research fellowship at one of Hungary’s academic institutions to assess potential links with my work and their perspectives on trade and international cooperation in South East Asia.
What’s been the highlight of your career so far?
On a personal level, that I am blessed to receive birthday greeting from across the world. I like to call it my social sciences way to prove the relativity of time, when you receive calls one day beforehand from the other half of the planet. It is a highlight because it means that I build long lasting relationships with different people regardless of our cultural or political background.
At a professional level, I would highlight the year 2019. That year I was elected treasurer of my community council at my hometown and Pope Francis awarded me, among several thousand candidates, as one of the 500 Global Changemakers in policy and economy, despite being a Protestant. At the time I was working in alternative finance and contextual evidence-based policy design to support the local development of isolated communities across the Chilean Patagonia. Avoiding the premise of one size fits all solutions, while working to improve the economic system of the region with on-the-ground experiences. The Pope asked us to promote an economic model centred in the humans and the environment. Also, by the end of that year, I was awarded a scholarship to pursue graduate studies in Japan. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, most of the work on these initiatives had to be done online. Japan did not open its borders, and I only attended a few lectures online. But I enjoyed the experience of returning to school and decided to apply to LSE when international travel was possible.
What is your fondest memory from LSE?
The strong bonds built with students and lecturers from different programmes that I can proudly call friends now. Up to this day we keep in constant touch. We embraced our differences and shared our tiny perspective of the world to make our time far from home as cozy as possible. As such, we organised country-themed cooking nights, visits to different places across the UK, not-so-surprise birthday celebrations, and even attended weddings after graduation.
Coincidentally, one of them is a Hungarian. I reached out to him when I received the invitation to his country, we coordinated to meet in Budapest and watch a football match (which my team lost), and it felt like we had talked during seminar last week.
They are special to me. Whenever I am having fun or enjoying a conversation, my mind tends to think how much joy they would have if they were sitting on the same table. Personally, I enjoy writing letters, and whenever I have something relevant to tell or a special day is coming, I try to reach them through written words to include a bit of essence in what could have been a forgettable text message. This has led to discover an entertaining aspect of postal mail, although reliable, it has no standard delivery times and birthday presents have arrived one weeks beforehand, which builds lovable anecdotes to share in times when we are connected in distance.