Mauricio Moura, MA'03 (MAPSS), discusses his multiple roles as a founder, CEO, and chairman of a marketing research firm, investor, and board member as well as visiting scholar at the George Washington University Graduate School of Political Management, and the impact MAPSS had on his career.
Mauricio Moura is the founder, CEO, and chairman of the board of IDEIA, a market research consultancy firm based in Brazil. He is also co-founder of the Zaftra Fund, as well as board member and visiting researcher at the George Washington University Graduate School of Political Management.
Moura earned his BA in Economics from the University of São Paulo, going on to earn his MA from the University of Chicago MAPSS program in 2003. He then pursued an MA in Political Management from George Washington University as well as a PhD in Economics and Politics from Fundação Getulio Vargas.
Kelly Pollack:
Hello and welcome to Dialogo an alumni podcast. In each episode, we interview an alum of a graduate program in the social sciences here at the University of Chicago, exploring both their career path and reflecting on their time at UChicago. I am Kelly Pollack, dean of students in the Division of the Social Sciences at the University of Chicago.
Paul Poast :
I'm Paul Poast, deputy dean in the Social Science Division at the University of Chicago.
Kelly Pollack:
Joining us today is our guest, Dr. Mauricio Moura, the founder and chief executive Officer of IDEIA Big Data, and a visiting scholar at George Washington University. Dr. Moura is an alum of our master of arts program in the social sciences graduating in 2003. He later went on to earn a master's degree in political management from George Washington University and a PhD in public sector economics from FGV. Welcome, Dr. Moura.
Dr. Mauricio Moura:
Thank you so much, Paul. Thank you so much, Kelly, for the invitation. It's a pleasure to talk to UChicago anytime.
Kelly Pollack:
Great. We would love to hear a little bit about sort of starting backwards, what you are doing right now, the kind of work that you're pursuing. Then we'll start talking too about your time at UChicago.
Dr. Mauricio Moura:
Right now I have basically three hats. One is, like you said, I'm a chairman of the company that does market research and political polling with lots of technology behind it. Since two years ago in my second hat, I opened a fund that we trade based on election predictions. I follow elections around the globe and try to predict the outcome and then we trade on that.
I also part of GSPM at the Georgia Washington University, the Graduate School of Political Management. I'm a researcher and I also member of the board of the department. Basically, that's what I'm doing right now.
Paul Poast :
All right. I'm going to have to ask right away, given the second of your hats, which is did you predict accurately that Trump would win the 2024 election?
Dr. Mauricio Moura:
I did. Especially, I was not expecting him to win the popular vote to be honest, but I was expecting that he was in a good position to win the swing states, especially because of the perception that people had about the Joe Biden administration. Having said that was super close. If you get the blue wall Michigan, Pennsylvania, we're talking about 400,000 votes, so was a super close race in the end.
Kelly Pollack:
I would love to hear a little bit about how you ended up coming to the master's program in the social sciences at UChicago. What brought you here and the kind of work that you did in the program?
Dr. Mauricio Moura:
Actually when I was 14 years old, I was an exchange student in the Chicago area. I went to a high school called Hinsdale Central High School, so I had the chance to visit the University of Chicago at that time. It was my first interaction with the U of C. Then when I graduated college back in Brazil, I was seeing the programs that I could pursue to spend like a year, a year and a half abroad.
What attracted me about the program itself was the idea that I could grab courses in different areas. I ended up doing courses in economics, in social science and public policy. For me, it was the opportunity to go back to Chicago in a sense, but also to have a sense of a graduate school with different options. Basically, that was my decision to go to Chicago and I got a scholarship from the Rotary Club.
I had to do something related to economic development. Then I studied microfinance actually at my MA program in Indiana. I did a paper on microfinance at that time. The decision was that the university felt, but also the options that I had to grab different courses in different areas.
Paul Poast :
That's great to hear and it makes a lot of sense given that the MAPS program, which you're an alumna of, is designed to allow students to be able to have an experience with all the various social sciences. Obviously there's certain tracks to it, but it's great to hear that that was one of the things that made it attractive was the interdisciplinary nature of it. I mean you mentioned it a little bit, but do you recall exactly your thesis that you wrote at the time? Maybe even the title of it?
Dr. Mauricio Moura:
Yes, I did of course and it was a very important my career as well. I did an study about a microfinance initiative in Brazil in the northeast of Brazil in a very poor area of Brazil. I studied how they were lending, they were doing group lending, microlending and was my first time actually understanding microfinance in very sense. I actually had the opportunity to go back to Brazil and go to those places.
I met a lot of people that were getting the loans, the microloans were in a very poor area. It was all about microfinance. Basically, the title was Understanding Microfinance in Brazil. The program itself had a name called [foreign language 00:05:43] and was one of the biggest microloans in Latin America, so it was really good actually.
Kelly Pollack:
Paul always likes to ask about the academic side and I like to hear about the rest of your time in MAPS. I wonder if you could talk a little bit about what it was like living in Chicago? The things that you did while you were here, the friendships that you made?
Dr. Mauricio Moura:
No, no, actually, like I said, I had experience being in the Chicago area before, so it was a familiar place for me including the winter that is very tough, especially when you come from Brazil to be a winter in Chicago. It's a tough experience. I had a chance to do two things that were very important for me in parallel to the program.
One was to, I played volleyball for the University of Chicago Club volleyball club, so was really interesting and I always played volleyball in my life, so it was a way to have an activity outside the academia, outside the regular schedule. I also was in the summer in Chicago, I was part of research outside the university. I was basically interviewing people that were Mexicans immigrants in the Chicago area.
We did a work, I was basically collecting data to understand how they were sending money to Mexico. I went to many neighborhoods and Latino neighbors in Chicago. I was knocking on doors and getting the exercise into doing the interviews myself. I was using Spanish. It was a very interesting to know the real Chicago, not the real areas, the real neighborhoods.
Of course, I lived in the Hyde Park, so I know the south side of Chicago, but that experience to go into understand the Latino and the Mexican, how they were living, how they were making money, how they were sending money back to Mexico was really cool to do it.
Paul Poast :
It's really fascinating that you were able to spend your time at UChicago both academically and practically studying two aspects of the same phenomenon, which is, as you said, your thesis was focused on microfinance. Then you were also doing this research related to remittances, people sending money back home and so forth. Did that type of dual experience of studying as well, studying it in those two different ways. Is that what set you up then for what you went into immediately after UChicago?
Dr. Mauricio Moura:
Totally, in two aspects. One is that the job that I got after I graduated in Chicago was basically I went back to Brazil to run an operation that was combination of a local bank in Brazil and the IFC, the private sector arm of the World Bank. They did a joint agreement to establish new operation of microfinance in Brazil. I went back and I actually was doing microfinance. I established microfinance operations in very poor areas in Sao Paulo in Rio like slums very complicated areas from socially in terms of security.
It was actually a very real [inaudible 00:08:55] experience that I had to make implementing operation. One thing is to study microfinance, another thing is to run an operation of microfinance. In that sense was super correlated. I studied microfinance and I went to work for microfinance, but the experience that I had collecting data in the Mexican neighborhoods in Chicago was the first time that I actually run a survey myself.
Of course I was the one doing the interviews and it was like a piece of the machine, but it was my first time that I understood the dynamics and behind collecting data behind running a survey. It was very important not only for my PhD thesis afterwards because my PhD thesis was also a survey in a poor area, but also when I run the company, when I learned the firm was actually my first experience on the ground. The both experience that I had in Chicago were key factors of my career afterwards.
Kelly Pollack:
People who graduate from MAPS of course sometimes go on to do PhD, sometimes go on to go into other types of jobs like in government or in business. You've done all of those things. Wonder if you could talk a little bit about your decision to go on then for further education after MAPS and how the MAPS degree set you up to be prepared for that kind of work.
Dr. Mauricio Moura:
Absolutely. First of all is an introduction to graduate school in that sense it's good because it's very hard coming just after college to know if you want to pursue a PhD or not. It's too much. That have this kind of a middle ground and have a first time experiencing graduate school was very important for me. The PhD happened in my life in an accidental way, and it's related to Chicago as well. When I was in Chicago, I met a PhD student economics, actually a Brazilian that was studying at the econ department.
Then he went back to Brazil, became a professor in the school that I did my PhD. One day, we were discussing and he said, "I need to find someone to be my first student that I'm going to advise as a professor." Then he became my advisor. I actually met my PhD advisor in Chicago and we had an opportunity to run a survey about the effect of land title in credit access, in supply of labor. It was a really cool social experiment that we did.
I basically went to PhD knowing what I was about to research and knowing my advisor and it was tough one side because I was working and running the thesis. It was not an easy time for me at all. I don't recommend it. I think looking backwards it's very hard to work in a thesis and work in parallel, but it ended up that worked for me. It was funny because I met my advisor, he was a PhD student in Chicago as well.
Paul Poast :
All roads lead back to Chicago. This is great. This is wonderful. At this point, you're wrapping up your PhD as you just said, you've had this experience of your both a student and working at the same time, but they're all related in many ways and they're building on each other, they're reinforcing skills and knowledge. Then what became the very next step for you once you completed your PhD?
Dr. Mauricio Moura:
Actually, just a little bit about background. After I ran this microfinance operation in Brazil, that was part owned by the IFC and I was hired to come to work for the IFC in Washington. That's why I came to D.C. and I have been in D.C. since 2008, so a long time. I came here to work for the IFC, so I was responsible to a different department there. It was an incredible experience working for the World Bank.
I was basically covering Latin America, but I had the chance to work with people from all over the place with different backgrounds. By the time I came to D.C. I was in the middle of my PhD thesis, so I ended up writing from here. During my PhD thesis, I start to attending some courses at the GW with George Washington University. It was funny because I was working at the bank doing my thesis and at that time it was during the Obama campaign in 2008.
Basically, in Washington D.C. all about politics, as you guys know. I was very curious to understand the operation, especially the data side behind the political campaign. That was my first step to working in politics, understanding the dynamic. I was basically doing my PhD writing, but also it helped me to engage in a place in a university that was basically breathing and everyone was talking about politics and about, especially at that time, the Obama campaign.
Paul Poast :
There's so many directions that I could go just on what you just said there as a political science professor. There's a lot of ways we could go with this. This is so fascinating. I think I'll start with just the one question, which is focusing on your time with the World Bank, is there a particular episode that either you are especially proud of or that you found particularly challenging?
It doesn't have to necessarily be an episode that you found that you drew on your experience from UChicago and that helps you through it, but really just to help our listeners understand what did the work entail and what are the challenges with doing projects for the World Bank through the IFC?
Dr. Mauricio Moura:
First of all, the World Bank gave me the opportunity to work in countries that I would never dream of working. I have worked in places like El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Haiti, so Bolivia. In that sense was places that was incredible experience to go on the ground and do some work, especially because of difficult places to work to lend money, to do finance projects. It is funny because the World Bank is a combination of technical skills for sure.
Lots of people from finance background, economic background, statistics. There's a lot of skills that you have to have to work in a bank because in the end of the day the bank is basically lending money. On the other hand, you have to have this buy-ins of economic development and you have to have to understand that the goal of the World Bank too, it is to go in places that the markets are not there to push forward demonstration effect, to bring investment, to bring funding to difficult projects.
At that time, we were very focused on climate change and renewables and microfinance and gender finance. All of those things were actually was for me was great because that was doing economic development in a bank. Just something, before I went to the University of Chicago, my first job was as a trader. I was a trader in a bank that doesn't exist any more called BankBoston. I was basically doing two things that I loved the finance side combined with the economic development, but it's a mission.
You have to understand this kind of as a mission to bring development, to bring opportunity and especially the one that I was very, very, very important for me to be part of was when the Haiti in 2010 that we had a hurricane in Haiti. We had to have mobilize funds, mobilize resources in a very short way with a very delicate situation on the ground. I was able to go there and see the situation. It's very sad to see when in a poor country after a earthquake, it's a very sad situation in many aspects.
For me it was important to be part of the solution, to be part of the recovery. For me, it was the best job that I did in my time in the World Bank.
Kelly Pollack:
With the kinds of skills and education that you have, you could have taken that either inside of government to work on policy or outside of government. You've sort of done both. Could you talk a little bit about the ways that people can influence policy can help people both inside and outside of government and how you have navigated where you want to situate yourself?
Dr. Mauricio Moura:
Absolutely. I think one of good things that the skills that I developed as you mentioned was the ability to work inside the government. World Bank is a government entity because it's won by many governments and requires this technical skills and the experience from people from everywhere. I think one of the most important assets of the institution is still is that brings people together from different backgrounds, different countries and also bring that perspective to the daily business.
Again, the tools and the work that I developed in my academic career, you could also research, you could also do good work in a civil society. You could also do work in academia related to policy, related to government. Today when I began my career, the options were today we have much more options to work outside the government with government-related topics, with government related issues. The only thing that I can share is that if you want to work on that, there is much more options.
Of course, you have to be an expert on something, you have to specialize in a subject, but there's much more options to work outside the government with government-related issue. I see here in the sea that goes beyond lobby, beyond, there's lots of think tanks, lots of people that contribute to the policy itself. I see that this market expanded since I began my career.
Paul Poast :
Building on that and building on ways that you've been able to have influence, but also the ways in which you've started to analyze policy so forth. I'd love it if you started to go back into that time when you're in D.C. you said it was during the Obama administration, you started seeing the different ways in which there was data being used on the political side, and that was something that you started to want to explore, move more into, which obviously going back to what we said at the beginning, you have now done.
Do you want to talk a little bit about that process of how you came to realize the use of data to maybe understand elections, policies so forth, and then how that led into some of the current business endeavors you have?
Dr. Mauricio Moura:
Actually, I saw a guy at the Obama data team talking at the university, and I was impressed by the process itself. I did volunteer myself to be on the ground collecting data from the Obama campaign. I remember I was going door to door in Virginia to collect data, to run a survey about the campaign about politics in general. Then I followed the process. I got the data on the ground on the street, and then they have a place that they, like a central data system that was centralizing information and data gathering from many sources.
Then they were running models and that was the part that impressed me that they could give for each household, each place a probability to vote for Obama. They have a map, and it was the first time that I saw that, it was incredible. They had a map, a neighborhood in Virginia, "So that house, the probability 60%, that house 75, that house is 90, that house is 15." Based on that probability, they were basically sending people with the higher probability to vote to make sure that people were voting, were getting out to vote.
Then I was impressed by that process and I knew because I always loved politics. I always followed elections in my country and I knew they didn't have this technology in Latin America, they didn't have it. I was impressed how they were using data to do microtargeting. This was 2008 and even for 2008, that was advanced, but I was impressed. That was the first time in my life because I've never thought of being a business owner or an entrepreneur before.
I always thought that I'm going to be a PhD. I'm going to work for the World Bank. I'm going to be happy. For the first time, I saw a business opportunity. I said, "I have to bring this process, this method to other countries because this is something that makes political campaigns, political, communication much more professional." That was the trigger to think about opening a business. Then I remember I got a leave without pay from the World Bank.
I went to work for a political campaign in Rio, a mayor campaign. I basically brought the method structure from the Obama campaign to this mayor campaign in Rio. I don't know, Rio has 10 million voters and we won the election by 50,000 votes. It was very close election. I remember that I said, "This actually works." It was my first, and then when I went back to the bank, I said, "I need to open a business and work there." First of all, I love working with data that has been my career.
I love politics and I love social science, and I don't know if you guys work in a political campaign, but political campaign combines everything, combines the data side, the political side, the social part, the competition part. I always be a competitor. The first time that I worked in the election in Rio, I said, "I want that for me. That was a game changer in my career, actually in my life." I spent one year and a half basically preparing myself to leave the bank.
When I got my first client, I left the bank and that was 2011. For 11 years, I did lots of political campaigns. Before coming here, I was trying to get the right number. I worked in 12 countries working political campaigns, national elections in 12 countries. Basically doing polling, doing data analysis, helping microtargeting. I love so much because each political campaign is a story. It's a different thing. It's lots of learning.
Kelly Pollack:
Do you find that the same kinds of processes work well in different countries? Are there things that are very different from one region to another? I imagine that how you model might be the same, but the type of outreach to a voter may or may not be the same.
Dr. Mauricio Moura:
Each country has their own dynamic, but what I try to do is always try to adapt. One of the ways that I was successful was that the ability to adapt the techniques from us to other countries, because usually the US consultants that work outside the US, they try to basically bring their expertise. I come from Brazil, so I was able to adapt. I did a lot of work in Mexico. I did a lot of work of course in Brazil, but I also worked in places like South Africa, India.
One of the different things that I did was actually to adapt the data techniques, data analysis from what we had on the ground from the constraints that we have working with places that most of information is not there. Sometimes there's local laws that don't allow you to get information of voters. Sometimes only the people that are in government, they have the information. I had many different experiences.
For example, I worked in places that were very hard to work. I did an election in Venezuela national election. I was working from the opposition. We had no information at all because all the information was basically from the government and the government was running their own thing. It's the ability to adapt. The good thing about the US politics and elections in America, because in America there's elections all the time. There's always new ideas, there's always new techniques.
Most of the countries, they have elections or four in four years or every couple years. The good thing about America in that sense is there's always technology. There is always new things going on. Last year for example, was the year of the artificial intelligence everywhere. I always try to bring to my clients to bring to the racists the new technology, but of course adapting to the local realities.
Paul Poast :
One of the things I find fascinating about what you're sharing is how a lot of the techniques, but also philosophical approaches that you had working for the World Bank, going into microfinance, talking to communities in Chicago, trying to understand why they're sending money back home, that micro level exploration is exactly the same thing that you then started to apply to elections.
In that way it's fascinating from a mythological standpoint. I wonder if you could also speak to, and this is what I mean by the philosophical side, is one of the very poignant things you said about working for the World Bank was it's not, yes, it's a bank and you have to have technical skills and you have to have certain knowledge, but it's also about a buy-in with the mission of the bank and so forth.
I wonder the extent to which that similar idea also informed about why you moved into the political pulling and the interest you had in going around bringing these techniques into a variety of countries, as you said, that weren't previously using those techniques.
Dr. Mauricio Moura:
Some people don't understand why sometimes I left the bank and a very stable job to become a business owner. Sometimes I miss the payday because it was much easier in that sense. I don't regret it, not any second because one of the things that I learned working, microfinance, working on the bank on the ground is that we have to be good listeners on the ground to make good policy. You cannot disconnect with the reality on the ground.
I'm a privileged guy. I went to college, I went to study abroad. I did everything. Then sometimes that gives you a distance of the reality that's not good for anything. One of my passions is to go on the ground, to be close to people, to develop mechanisms, to listen to voters, to citizens. I learned a lot and I try and one of the things that is very important about collecting data, doing surveys, running polling, you have to leave your bias at home.
I know we live in a very polarized situation right now, everywhere. My passion was always to, and I didn't do it. I didn't change jobs because of the money. I did because I thought I would be working in political survey or polling working on those elections. I would put myself in positions to learn much more about people, about different situations. I always tell that I run a lot of, I participate in lots of political campaigns in the Americas from Canada to Argentina.
I remember first time I went to work in a political campaign in Europe was I did a lot of work in Portugal and Spain, but I went to Portugal. It was my first experience in Europe running a political campaign. I was shocked when I saw something very different. In America, that's not what's happening right now, but it used to be, in America, United States or Brazil or Mexico, people used to have the feeling that the future would be always better than the past.
It's not what's going on right now, but it used to be that people basically watch a political campaign to sell dreams, to sell that everything's going to be better. In Europe, it's completely the other way around. People are completely sure that the future is going to be worse than the past. When I came to Portugal and Spain realized, "This is a completely different mindset of communication of social engagement and everything." That was my passion, to be on the ground, to be learning about new things.
It's tough because being an entrepreneur is very tough. I always tell that if you want to open your business to run a business, it is very tough for many issues. I was not trained to be a business owner. I've never had management leadership training. On the other hand gives you the opportunity to run your own ideas, to test your own things. I put myself in the position so I want to do a business that I always would be learning, and that was the driver for me.
Kelly Pollack:
What sorts of advice would you give to people who are thinking now about someday I might want to do this kind of thing. I might want to work in political polling or I might want to work in data and ideas. What's your advice to them?
Dr. Mauricio Moura:
Oh my god, this is one of the things that I should mention that why I moved to open the fund after seven, eight years working political campaigns, something become very harder because most of the countries, including the US, become so polarized. If I was working from one side, the other side would see me as an enemy basically. That's terrible, especially for professionals. Many places I work for the left, for the right center, but right now it's impossible because of the polarized fashion.
First of all, you have to know how to navigate polarized institutions, polarized countries, polarized parties is not easy. It's not easy and you have to be aware because that makes everything much harder. Then I realized that I got lots of demand from financial institutions to understand elections, to understand polling. Basically, I was working, doing lots of political campaigns, and I moved to basically working for financial institutions.
Then I learned how they were basically making money trading on elections. That was my motivation to open the fund. First of all, you have to navigate the polarized fashion, and you have to, of course, especially in polling, you have to be very open to new methodologies because the methodology that worked yesterday doesn't work today, and people are evolving.
For example, in 2014, I had the sense that everything would be going through the cell phone because we need to be inside the cell phone to understand the behavior. Right now, everything will be running from the artificial intelligence. It's a different ballpark right now. For example, today we do a lot of hybrids, the methodology to collect data, especially in pooling, that was something that was unimaginable a few years ago.
Your capacity to adapt is critical to the situation that we are living right now. Also on top of that is the most difficult part. You have to control your own bias because we talk to our family, we talk to your friends, we talk to our colleagues, and that put us in a bubble. That bubble is, that generates the polarized situation that we are living right now.
We don't understand the other side. We don't talk to the other side. We are basically surrounded by the arguments that we are already agree upon. If you want to work in data combined with politics, you have to be able to exercise your bias and leave your bias at home. This is not an easy exercise because you have to practice basically on a daily basis.
Paul Poast :
I know that our listeners can't see the video that we're looking at right now, but just to underscore the fact that you try to not have the bias, I noticed that over your shoulder there is both an elephant and a donkey. Thereby very symbolically emphasizing how you're trying not to have a bias one way or the other, but just to actually understand what's happening with elections.
Dr. Mauricio Moura:
I always tell my students that it was from the time that it was possible to work for Republicans and Democrats. Right now, it's impossible to do it.
Paul Poast :
At this point, we always like to ask our guests, is there something that we should have asked, something that you would hope that you would've had a chance to share with us that we haven't asked you about? There's been so much, you've taken us in so many directions. It's been a really fascinating conversation. Is there anything that we should have asked you?
Dr. Mauricio Moura:
One thing that I always like to say about polling, because every place I go and people say, "The pollings are always wrong, and et cetera." It's funny because that sense was the opportunity that I sought to open the fund. Let me just summarize what I do in the fund. I always try to develop a probability curve of the outcome of the election. I try to see if the markets are pricing the same probability curve.
Basically, if the markets are seeing the same outcome that I'm seeing, there is no trade because there is no what we call asymmetry. When I'm seeing a different outcome from the market, there's that straight. One of the things that I was so shocked about is that people take political polling as a prediction, and political polling is basically a picture of the moment.
At that moment with that, there's undecided voters, there's people that maybe are not going to show up to vote, there's lots of things in a picture. I was impressed that even the players of the financial markets, they also see political polling as any kind of prediction of the future, and it's not. From one side, this was I realized that was, "Oh my god, why we're not communicating that polling is not a prediction model."
On the other side, I saw that as an opportunity because I saw lots of players taking the polls as something that would predict the future, and that generates the symmetry, that opens the chance for me to run a fund that trades on that. Then this is a message that it's very important to have polling all the time, but it's very hard to see, even the press, the political press in America everywhere.
Taking the polling are wrong or right because they're not there to predict the future. They're basically showing a picture of the moment. That's something that I always try to see and that gave me the opportunity to trade on that.
Kelly Pollack:
If our listeners would like to follow along with what you're doing, what you're up to, are you on social media or anywhere that they can follow you?
Dr. Mauricio Moura:
Absolutely. I'm not a social media guy, but I'm LinkedIning. Just put my name and my last name, I'm there. I would love to interact there with the listeners.
Paul Poast :
With that, this has been a fantastic conversation. Thank you so much for joining us. Again, I know our listeners are going to enjoy hearing this conversation. Thank you again.
Dr. Mauricio Moura:
Thank you so much, Kelly, Paul. It was a pleasure to talk to University of Chicago. They have a special place in my heart.