Miguel Alexandre Barreiro-Laredo

Miguel comes to SPURS with over two decades of experience in the UN system, where he has specialized in Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) and the application of comprehensive Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) criteria. His work supports strategic partnerships, diversity and inclusion, and community awareness, extending to crisis-impacted regions and middle-income countries. Collaborations have involved non-state actors, local councils, MPs, government officials, civil society organizations, private sector entities, and high-net-worth individuals. This expertise has been pivotal in aiding UN agencies and the OECD with strategies for partnership building, diversity and inclusion, and climate change mitigation in countries such as Algeria, Cambodia, Ethiopia, Lebanon, Guinea Bissau, Mozambique, Nicaragua, and Somalia.

Miguel also serves as the Director of the IE Policy Lab and an Associate Professor at IE University, where he teaches courses on Partnership Management, Community Empowerment, and Ethics in AI.

He holds a JD in Law, a PhD in Sociology from Pantheon-Sorbonne University, and advanced executive education in Strategic Communications from Columbia University. 

At MIT, Miguel is focused on extending his research related to sustainable development and community empowerment as well as AI-driven models for urban and coastal resilience. This includes developing computational models to map resource flows and forecast economic diversification opportunities in coastal zones, studying adaptive strategies employed by communities to withstand climate change impacts and leveraging big data technologies and predictive models to develop prescriptive solutions for disaster prevention and risk management.