Giovani Rocha

Gio Rocha headshot

Ph.D. Student in Comparative Politics

Giovani Rocha is a Penn Presidential PhD Fellow in the Joint PhD Program in Political Science and Africana Studies. He holds a MSc in Government, Institutions and Public Policy from the Brazilian School of Public and Business Administration of the Getúlio Vargas Foundation (EBAPE/FGV) and a BA in Economics from the Brazilian Institute of Markets and Capitals (IBMEC/RJ).

A first-generation student originally from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, he worked for the government in Brazil at the local and federal levels before coming to Penn. He worked at the Secretariat of Education of Pará as a consultant to the Inter-American Development Bank, at the World Bank and at the Brazilian Ministry of Education. With more than 10 years of experience leading social projects focused on the promotion of racial equality, Giovani is a Lemann fellow, a Fundação Estudar fellow, an alumni at the United States Department of State and has been a TED speaker twice. 

His research focuses on the experience of Afro-Latin American bureaucrats, and on the implementation of racial equality policies in education and in the provision of land rights to traditional black communities in Latin American countries.