Henrique Ferreira Menezes is a Graduate Coach with a passion for public service, research, public policy, and the role of education in changing people’s lives. He received his BA from the University of California, Berkeley, with minors in Public Policy and Race & the Law, and is currently a student in MIT’s MicroMasters program in Data, Economics, and Design of Policy as a Lemann Foundation Scholar.
During his undergraduate studies, Henrique was involved with student advocacy, mentorship, counseling, programming, and outreach. He served as a Student Ambassador at Berkeley City College, providing personalized mentorship to international and low-income students transitioning to higher education and assisting with academic transfer plans and university/course selection. He also worked as a Resident Assistant for UC Berkeley’s Transfer Living & Learning Community, where he mentored and coordinated academic support for 40 transfer students. Henrique has extensive experience mentoring students from non-traditional backgrounds and underrepresented identities, focusing on maximizing their success through available resources.
Beyond his mentorship experience, Henrique is a passionate and seasoned researcher in International Relations, Legal Studies, Political Science, Sociology, and Public Policy. During his undergraduate studies, he worked as a Research Assistant for Professor Travis J. Bristol at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Education, and at the Black Studies Collaboratory, researching criminal justice policies from an international jurisprudence perspective.
After graduating, Henrique worked as a Development Associate, and then Research & Development Assistant at the Equality Action Center at UC Law San Francisco. There, he worked with fundraising, project development and management, and piloting research tools for the center’s Bias Interrupters initiative, which aimed to study how to disrupt workplace discrimination through policy interventions.
Currently, Henrique is an Educational Projects Analyst at Instituto Max Fabiani, a Brazil-based educational policy non-profit. In this role, he is responsible for designing and managing district-level interventions aimed at improving educational outcomes for rural and low-income communities in Brazil. Through experiences coaching and mentoring students, he encourages them to be inquisitive, find their passions, and take advantage of the right opportunities for a rewarding educational and professional career.
