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Alex Chen
Special Assistant to Senior Director, Special Initiatives
Alex Chen is the Special Assistant for Special Initiatives at the New Lines Institute. Prior to joining the institute, Alex was a Senior Policy Associate at the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) at MIT, where he worked on political economy and governance policies and supported research projects in North Macedonia and Uzbekistan. Previously, Chen held positions at the United Nations Development Programme in Kosovo, writing policies to increase access to justice for women and minorities, and for the U.S. Department of Commerce. He also served as the Executive Director of a middle and high school summer program called Eat Pie Institute of Mathematics, which he founded in 2011.
Chen holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics and Political Science from Columbia University, and a Master of Arts degree from Columbia University’s Harriman Institute for Russian, Eurasian, and East European Studies, where he built an econometric model of LGBTQ activism and backlash in post-Soviet countries.