Carolina Vargas

Carolina is a Ph.D. candidate (and master’s graduate) in the Department of Agricultural, Food, and Resource Economics (AFRE) at Michigan State University. She is currently finishing her dissertation on the relationship between violence and urbanization on the structuring of the agri-food value chain as well as the actors within it. She has worked closely with CIAT (International Center for Tropical Agriculture), RIMISP (Latin American Center for Rural Development) and more recently she was part of a Gates initiative, CERES2030, whose objective is to provide leaders with better tools and information to address food insecurity and inclusivity of small farmers.

Before starting her Ph.D. program, she worked for four years in a think tank within the Colombian Ministry of National Defense and, subsequently, within the National Planning Department, in a program designed to revamp the methodology used by the ministry in order to align the budgeting processes and procurement quotas with the strategic national objectives.