Hello!

My name is Henrique. I’m a pupil of all things data science and visualization, an inveterate latinist, and an unabashed fan of low-end karaoke places. I came to California to study things and meet people to try and understand how to harness the power of data to help the world become a better place.

I was born in the northeastern part of Brazil, where poverty is rife, and the drive to do something to help others followed me through all my life. That drive took me to many places – from going to a slum in the outskirts of Brasília to help children do better in school to living in a refugee camp in Hungary to teaching English and helping Afghanis, Lebanese, Somalis, and others better navigate their new surroundings.

As Horatio well knows, there are many things in heaven and earth, and I have always felt the urge to find new places, talk to new people, and understand better the world in order to understand better my community.

Keeping this in mind I left my hometown and went to the capital of Brazil to get my B.A. in International Relations at the University of Brasília. This experience opened my mind to many different ideas, travels, theories and their applications. By the end of my undergraduate degree I got in touch with the transformative power of ICT in humanitarian work. The idea of using mobile phones to change peoples’ lives changed my own life.

I decided thus to apply to masters’ programs who brought together quantitative methods, policy, and economic theory, and found a home at the School of Global Policy and Strategy at the University of California, San Diego. I’ll be graduating by June 2016, and I already miss the environment of challenging learning that taught me so much in such a short amount of time.