Dr. Julio Guzman is a Peruvian economist, with over twenty years of experience at the intersection of politics, government, public policy, and research in trade and development in Latin America.
Dr. Guzman is Founder and President of the centrist political party Partido Morado (Purple Party), an organization he founded from scratch and became two-time candidate for the Peruvian Presidency, nearly elected in 2016. He steered the victory of the political party in two consecutive parliamentary elections passing legislation to enforce women’s rights, maximize women’s political participation, protect LGTBQ+ rights and enhance working conditions for agricultural laborers. Previously, he served in government as Secretary General of the Office of the Prime Minister — appointed President of the Cabinet of Vice Ministers — and Vice Minister of Micro and Small Enterprises, leading national strategic reforms in science and technology, open and e-government and trade-related industrial policy.
In 2014, Dr. Guzman joined Deloitte Peru as Partner to forge the public sector consulting division, where he championed the research evaluation strategy to back the state acquisition of the first Peruvian satellite. From 2001 to 2011, as Trade Economist at the Inter-American Development Bank in Washington D.C., Dr. Guzman led the Bank’s agenda on trade and poverty, in charge of the Computable General Equilibrium Model Program to evaluate the pro-poor effects of Free Trade Agreements and as advisor of Latin American countries for the design and implementation of fair trade policy.
He has briefed the U.S. Congress House of Representatives and the U.S State Department on China-Latin American relations and the Americas Partnership for Economic Prosperity. Currently, Dr. Guzman serves as Director of International Programs at the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland. Throughout his career, Dr. Guzman has published in several venues, from a 2016 Peru’s best seller “Our Own Path to Development: Investing in People”, to Foreign Affairs and TIME magazines. He has been interviewed by CNN, Foreign Policy, Reuters, Aljazeera, The Economist, Bloomberg, and many other international media.
Dr. Guzman holds a Ph.D. in public policy from the University of Maryland, a master’s degree in public policy from Georgetown University and a bachelor’s degree in economics at the Universidad Católica del Perú. He is a Maurice R. Greenberg World Fellow at Yale University (2018), Draper Hills Fellow at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law at Stanford University (2019), Reagan-Fascell Fellow at the National Endowment for Democracy (2022) and Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council in Washington D.C. He taught at the School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland and the McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown University. He is currently teaching at the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland.
Currently Dr. Guzman’s research and policymaking agenda focus on the effects of China’s influence in Latin America’s economy, democracy, and the rule of law; the measurement of the effects of near-shoring investment on human development in Latin America; and the design of tech-based innovative tools to mentor global young leaders to promote democratic values.
