Julio Guzman is a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center. He 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. Currently, his research and advocacy work focus on the effects of China’s influence in the region’s economy, democracy, and the rule of law, intended to contribute to the design of a holistic grand strategy to counter Beijing’s geopolitical agenda in the region. He has briefed the US House of Representatives and the State Department on China-Latin American relations and the Americas Partnership for Economic Prosperity. Currently, Guzman also serves as director of international programs at the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland.

Guzman is founder president of Partido Morado (Purple Party), a centrist political party he founded from scratch and with which he twice became the candidate for the Peruvian presidency, nearly elected in 2016. He steered the victory of the political party in two consecutive parliamentary elections, contributing to the passage of legislation to enforce women’s rights, maximize women’s political participation, protect LGTBQI+ 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, 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, DC, 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.

Guzman holds a PhD 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, Draper Hills fellow at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law at Stanford University, and Reagan-Fascell fellow at the National Endowment for Democracy. 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.

Throughout his career, Guzman has published in several venues, from a 2016 Peruvian best seller Our Own Path to Development: Investing in People, to Foreign Affairs and TIME magazine. He has been interviewed in CNN, Foreign Policy, Reuters, Al Jazeera, the Economist, Bloomberg, and many other international media.