Guilherme Lichand

Guilherme Lichand is an Assistant Professor of Education at Stanford University and co-Director of the Stanford Lemann Center. Previously, he held an Assistant Professorship at the University of Zurich’s Department of Economics, supported by UNICEF Switzerland. His research focuses on understanding barriers to children’s human capital investments in developing countries, particularly addressing why parents sometimes fail to invest or even harm their children’s development. He holds a PhD in Political Economy and Government from Harvard University. Notably, he was recognized as Brazil’s top social entrepreneur (2020) and social innovator under-35 (2014). Lichand is a social innovation specialist at the World Economic Forum and co-founder/chair of Movva, an edtech startup improving learning outcomes for low-income students in Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa. His work bridges behavioral economics, policy design, and global development challenges.

Education: PhD in Political Economy and Government from Harvard University. Professional affiliations include Stanford King Center on Global Development, Stanford Center on Early Childhood, and Movva. Awards include MIT Technology Review’s top innovator distinction and Schwab Foundation accolades.

Research interests span Development Economics, Political Economy, and Behavioral Economics, with a focus on education policy, child well-being, and behavioral nudges. His projects include participatory surveillance for disease outbreak detection, analyzing school closures’ impacts, and designing behavioral interventions to reduce child labor and educational inequities.