People

Biographical Note:

Viridiana Rios is a PhD candidate in Government and a doctoral fellow in Inequality and Criminal Justice at the Harvard Kennedy School. She studies drug trafficking, violence and corruption in Mexico. Her research agenda aims to solve several puzzles about Mexico's drug war from our ability to accurately measure drug-related violence, to our understanding of drug cartels' behavior/mobility, and the causes behind recent violence spikes.

She regularly serves as consultant and security policy adviser for private and public institutions in the US and Mexico, and exposes her research in a variety of public forums and media. She recently worked as an adviser to the Mexican President’s Security Spokesman and current Mexican Minister of the Interior (Gobernación), Mr. Alejandro Poiré.

Before coming to Harvard, Viridiana studied Political Science at ITAM, in Mexico City, and graduated top of her class. She has also worked and researched at the Center for US-Mexico Studies (UCSD), the Trans-border Institute (USD), the Counter-terrorism Committee at the United Nations, USAID and Mexico's Ministry of Social Development.

When not being an academic, Viridiana freelances as journalist, tries (and fails) to understand architectural trends, and wonders why only California knows how to party.

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