Data Scientist · Economist · M.S.CAPP UChicago

Paula
Cadena

I turn complex data into evidence that drives social change — specializing in machine learning and econometric analysis.

7 Years Experience
4M+ Records Processed
Python R SQL PyTorch scikit-learn AWS NLP Econometrics
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About Me

I'm a Data Scientist and Economist with a Master's from the University of Chicago's Harris School of Public Policy, where I specialized in computational analysis, machine learning, and applied statistics.

My work sits at the intersection of rigorous quantitative methods and real-world social impact. I've built ML pipelines for the Bogotá Chamber of Commerce, conducted econometric impact evaluations for early childhood interventions at UChicago's CEHD, automated data systems for Colombia's Special Jurisdiction for Peace, and now support education policy research at the IDB.

What drives me is the question behind every dataset: who is affected, and how can we measure it honestly? I'm fluent in both code and context, equally comfortable writing a PyTorch model or presenting findings to a policy audience.

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Projects

Visualization

Migration in Motion

Interactive D3.js visualization of global migration flows (1990–2020). Chord diagrams, animated time-series maps, and regional breakdowns — exploring push/pull factors across 195 countries.

D3.jsJavaScriptPythonHTML/CSS
ML · Policy

Costa Rica Proxy Means Test

Supervised ML model using household survey data to classify poverty status in Costa Rica, replicating and improving the national PMT methodology used to target social programs to 300K+ families.

Pythonscikit-learnEconometricsR
Visualization

Unveiling Global Socioeconomic Patterns

Multi-panel interactive visualization examining correlations between GDP, education, health, and inequality across 180+ countries using layered Altair & D3 charts with linked brushing and filtering.

AltairD3.jsPythonJavaScript
Healthcare · ML

Ghost-Hunter: Medicaid Directory Audit

Detected "ghost providers" in Medicaid directories using record linkage, geospatial validation, and classification models. Built as a team capstone at UChicago.

PythonRecord LinkageGISSQL
Full-Stack

miau: Real-Time Messaging Platform

Full-stack Slack clone with real-time WebSocket messaging, channel management, and file sharing. Flask (Python) API backend, React frontend, PostgreSQL, deployed on AWS.

FlaskReactPostgreSQLAWSWebSockets
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Experience

Nov 2025 – Present Inter-American Development Bank

Economic Consultant — Education Division

  • Systematic literature reviews on EdTech to inform evidence-based policy for Latin America & the Caribbean
  • Screened and analyzed 300+ academic papers, extracting quantitative results for policy synthesis on skills & lifelong learning
May 2024 – Jun 2025 UChicago Center for the Economics of Human Development

Research Assistant

  • Econometric impact evaluations & cost-benefit analysis for two longitudinal early childhood studies in Stata & R
  • Mediation/moderation analyses to isolate intervention drivers for stakeholder policy recommendations
  • Standardized statistical workflows enabling replicable cross-study comparisons
Aug 2023 – Jun 2024 The Special Peace Jurisdiction

Data Integration Consultant

  • Automated data cleaning & migration in Python, reducing manual errors by 40% across legal/forensic workflows
  • Audited 1.48TB (58,597 files), removed 51% duplicates, built search interface cutting retrieval time 60% for 30+ teams
  • Trained 30+ users enabling 2× faster victim identification through centralized evidence access
Feb 2022 – Jul 2023 Bogota Chamber of Commerce

Senior Data Analyst

  • Migrated 4M+ observations across 8 sources from Excel/Stata to Python, cutting cleaning time by 50%
  • ML classification on 2M+ companies at 85% accuracy; real-time Power BI dashboards for 60+ stakeholders
  • Mentored 5 analysts; built Python alert systems for contract tracking
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Skills

Machine Learning & AI

scikit-learn PyTorch TensorFlow Keras XGBoost BERTopic HuggingFace

NLP & Text Analysis

spaCy NLTK Topic Modeling LDA NER

Data & Econometrics

Pandas NumPy Stata R (lme4, caret) Impact Evaluation Causal Inference

Visualization

D3.js Plotly Altair ggplot2 Power BI Tableau

Engineering & Cloud

AWS SQL FastAPI Flask Django Git Docker

Frontend & Full-Stack

React JavaScript HTML/CSS GIS Power Automate
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Get In Touch

I'm open to data science and research roles where rigorous analysis meets real-world impact — especially in education, public policy, and social development. Let's talk.