Jessica Boccardo is an AP Peace Fellow for SKIP who will be working for Supporting Kids in Peru (SKIP), a nonprofit organization dedicated to enabling children to access education.

Originally from Argentina, where she obtained her BA in economics, she came to the USA in 2004 to further her education in international development and other pressing socioeconomic issues. She completed her master’s degree in public policy in Georgetown University in 2006 with a concentration on international policy development.

During her graduate studies she worked as a research assistant at Georgetown where she worked for the School Choice Demonstration Project (SCDP), a federally funded education voucher program for low-income families.

Her job was divided between statistical analysis and an important qualitative component since she had to conduct interviews and focus groups with the different actors involved, mainly students, parents and teachers. This experience gave her a first-hand experience with educational problems and helped her understand the multi-dimensional constraints that families face when needing to send their children to school.

Lately, she has been working at the World Bank in the Poverty Reduction Unit (PREM), focusing on trade diversification and growth, studying mainly Sub-Saharan African countries. In her job she has also explored other issues of educational policies; more specifically, she has studied the links between tertiary education and development through export growth and the necessary technological capabilities needed to catch up with other countries’ performance.