Cassandra Sweet is a researcher, lecturer and international consultant. Her work focuses on the politics of economic development, specifically innovation systems, technological change and trade.
She has worked for a range of international agencies including the United Nation’s Economic Commission on Latin America (CEPAL), the World Bank, the French national research agency ANRS, and Latin American NGOs. Her recent projects examine pharmaceutical innovation systems, intellectual property, and COVID-19 critical care supply chains in Latin America.
Based in New York, Cassandra has conducted extensive field research in South Asia and lived and worked in Latin America for over a decade, primarily in Brazil and Chile. She has been awarded the Fulbright Scholarship, Truman Scholarship, and Gates Cambridge Scholarship. She holds a BA in political science from Stanford University, an MA in development studies from Cambridge University and a PhD in political economy from Cambridge University.
Cassandra has authored of over a dozen studies published in peer-reviewed journals and editorial houses on myriad subjects, including global health, Latin American politics, and trade and economic systems. She is interested in how democratic institutions become more or less inclusive over time and the relationship between voting systems and the provision of social services.
Long before the COVID-19 crisis, Cassandra wrote about increasing access to medicine through regulation of pharmaceutical industries, responses to global public health crises such as the HIV/AIDS crisis and the impact of patents on innovation. The themes of innovation and technological change run through much of Cassandra’s research. She has written extensively about innovation output and how developing countries navigate international trade negotiations, especially regarding access to technology and technology diffusion. Cassandra believes in the importance of bringing empirical analysis to policy discussions and has served on the board of directors of leading Santiago-based think-tank Espacio Público since 2016.
Cassandra is a regular contributor to CNN Chile and other Latin American news networks where she provides analysis of global political and economic topics in Spanish. Check out some of her recent appearances on the MEDIA page. She enjoys sharing analysis of economic and political issues with public and private institutions seeking to understand a complex international environment. Her most recent talks have included: geopolitics in a post-COVID world, the impact of US elections on Latin America, and global patent and innovation systems. To inquire about reviews of previous presentations, potential subjects or formats, please reach out.
