Alejandro Albanez Rivas was the Associate Director for Data and Research Operations at CPOST. He is an experienced project manager with a demonstrated history of building and managing highly efficient and motivated teams. His work has often required producing data analyses and crafting visualizations to be presented to internal and external stakeholders with diverse seniority and knowledge levels. Alejandro's primary responsibility at CPOST is the Open-Source Intelligence (OSINT) research on suicide attacks, political violence, and militant networks.

He was born and raised in Caracas, Venezuela. He received his Master in Public Policy from the Harris School at the University of Chicago in 2016. Before his MPP, he worked as a Crime Analyst at the Sucre Mayor’s Office in Caracas. During that time, Alejandro monitored the development and compliance of the homicide reduction program (Hot Spots) in coordination with Sucre’s Police Department and supported its impact evaluation in collaboration with the Development Bank of Latin American’s Impact Evaluation and Policy Learning office. He has also worked at the Miranda Governor’s Office, where he led the Data Analysis and Monitoring team, in charge of assessing opportunities for building political support for the Governor’s agenda through coalition-building, grassroots organizing, media coverage, and message development. Alejandro participated in several political campaigns in his home country, including two presidential races, performing data analysis and strategic planning.

For his undergraduate dissertation, Alejandro co-wrote a study of the factors associated with the fear of crime in the Sucre municipality, which by that time was the municipality with the second highest homicide rate in Caracas and its suburban areas. He completed his undergraduate studies in Sociology at the Universidad Católica Andrés Bello (Caracas, Venezuela).