Santiago Ruiz
Santiago Ruiz is a Program Officer at Data-Pop Alliance. He holds an MSc in Econometrics and Statistics from the Toulouse School of Economics and a BS in Economics from Universidad Nacional de Colombia. His working experiences include fieldwork on the Colombian Pacific Coast with the United Nations Development Programme, where he participated in a project aiming to allocate government funds to impoverished regions. He has also been a Research Assistant at the Purdue Center for Regional Development, where he studied how to strengthen the ability of communities in Indiana to withstand economic crises. His research, which implemented spatial econometrics using geo-referenced data, was presented at the World Community Forum and at the Agricultural and Applied Econometrics Association annual meeting. Furthermore, he has worked as a data scientist for the Crédit Agricole, a renowned bank in France for supporting local entrepreneurs. There, he deployed a machine learning model that relied on microeconomic data to identify key customers. He believes that linking technology, statistics, and scientific-based policies is pivotal to achieving the SDG’s.