Special episode: Q&A with Liliana Alvarado, General Director, Ethos Public Policy Laboratory

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In our first-ever Think Tank Leader Q&A, Enrique Mendizabal sat down with Liliana Alvarado, Executive Director of Ethos in Mexico, for an honest and wide-ranging conversation about leadership, funding shocks, and what it really takes to measure impact as a think tank.

Liliana covers a lot of ground — from her early days at Mexico's Ministry of Finance and her Chevening scholarship at LSE, to becoming the first female and first Mexican Executive Director of Ethos after an open recruitment process in 2021. What makes this conversation particularly valuable is how candid she is about the hard parts: managing funding volatility, making difficult programme cuts, looking after staff wellbeing through uncertainty, and reinventing an organisation's focus mid-stream.

Some highlights from the session:

• Why government experience makes think tankers more effective
• Leading through major funding shocks and political change
• The hard choice to scale back anti-corruption work due to lack of funding
• Diversifying funding through Mexico's private sector
• Practical ways to measure impact beyond policy change
• What she would do differently — and what keeps her going