Meet the Team

Dr. Alvaro Salas Castro is a native of Costa Rica and is the founder of the think tank Democracy Lab. 

He has an MPA in Science, Technology, and Infrastructure from Cornell University in New York. He holds a Ph.D. at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs of Syracuse University.  He also holds a Bachelor of Arts in Foreign Affairs, Bachelor of Arts in Law, and an MBA with a concentration in finance, economics and sustainable development from INCAE Business School as the recipient of the scholarship Leaders for Change. 

While at Cornell, he was the first Latin American to serve as President of the Cornell Public Affairs Society. He became a Presidential Fellow at the Center for the Study of Presidency and Congress in Washington DC, was inducted into Phi Alpha Alpha National Honor Society for Public Affairs and Management, and was the recipient of Cornell’s Adams Award for exemplary scholarship and service in the field of public affairs.

Dr. Salas served at Cornell University as Special Advisor of the Cornell Program in Infrastructure Policy. He has previous experience as a business development officer in a corporate law firm, as a Vice President of an insurance company, as Special Advisor to the Government of  Panama, Costa Rica, a political party in Honduras and as an academic consultant and researcher for the IDB, Grameen Creative Lab, a major Latin American private equity firm and the United Nations (UNDESA) in New York City, Division of Public Administration and Development Management assisting the Chief of Staff of the Division as a researcher for the e-government survey.

His work has been published in the World Economic Forum Global Agenda Council on Latin America Report under Innovative Public-Private Partnerships for Inclusive Development, opinion pieces at the Huffington Post, the Morocco World News, the UN eGov survey (as a member of the research team), and the latest on a book about impact investment in the UK.