Emiliana Vegas is a senior fellow and co-director of the Center for Universal Education at the Brookings Institution. A leading expert on education in developing countries, Emiliana has written extensively on issues affecting education systems in Latin America and the Caribbean and other developing regions. Her papers and books cover topics ranging from policies to raise teacher effectiveness, to school finance and early childhood development policies.

Before joining Brookings, Emiliana served as the chief of the Education Division at the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), where she led a team of 30-50 professionals working in the Bank’s lending operations and analytical activities to support education systems throughout Latin America and the Caribbean. In this role, she led a shift in the composition of the Bank’s lending operations to focus on system-wide change to promote learning and skills to ensure that all children and youth can reach their full potential; ensured Bank funding to create SUMMA, the first regional Laboratory for Research and Innovation in Education in Latin America and the Caribbean; oversaw the development of an online program to train education leaders and influencers throughout Latin America and the Caribbean; and oversaw the development of instruments to help ministries of education leverage technology to transform how they manage their education data for system improvement.