Mariana Alfonso is Senior Education Specialist at the Inter-American Development Bank. In this role, Mariana leads the technical and operational dialogue of the IDB with the education sector in Peru and provides analytical and operational support to the IDB’s education team in the Andean countries. In addition, Mariana co - leads the Division’s research activities on teacher quality and supports specialists in the design and implementation of impact evaluations of IDB’s educational programs.

Mariana joined the IDB in 2006 through the Young Professionals Program, serving first in the Research Department and then in the Education Division. Since her arrival at the IDB, she has worked on lending operations of the education sector in the Dominican Republic, Uruguay, Brazil, Honduras, Ecuador and Colombia, and she has carried out applied research on education policy, particularly on the subject of teacher quality. Before joining the IDB, Mariana worked as a postdoctoral researcher and associate professor of Educational Policy at Brown University and as researcher at the Center for Research on Community Colleges at Columbia University. Mariana has published articles on teaching quality, higher education, comparative education, and educational policy in peer-reviewed journals and books.

Mariana holds a PhD in Education Economics from Columbia University and a BA in Economics from Universidad Nacional de Cordoba, Argentina.