Alum's Candidate Is Hot in Chile

Behind one of the hottest women in the political world, there is a Harvard man.

Sebastian “Seba” Brown ’05, the only Chilean attending the College during his time at Harvard, returned to Chile after graduating last June to work on the campaign of Michelle Bachelet, who is expected to become Chile’s first female president next month.

In an election held this past Sunday, Bachelet received a plurality of about 46 percent of the vote, meaning she will have to face the second-place candidate in a runoff on Jan. 15. Brown describes the day as “nerve-racking.”

“I am not going to lie,” Brown writes in an e-mail. “I wish we had won right away. But this makes it more interesting. I am sure that in January we will win again, and we’ll become the first country in South America to elect a woman to the presidency.”

Brown says he usually starts his day around 8 a.m. with a bowl of Chocapic, the Chilean equivalent of Cocoa Puffs. He then leaves his parents’ home for the campaign office, where he recently has remained until about 11 p.m. each night.

“I’ve been living with my parents, so life is great and easy,” he writes. “In the office, things are not as relaxed as at home.”

At work, Brown typically alternates between writing Bachelet’s speeches, answering her correspondence, working on the party’s platform, and performing economic analysis.

“My favorite part of working on the campaign is being in the backstage area of politics and figuring out how things really work,” Brown says. “What you see on T.V. and what you see in the newspaper is not the truth. It’s a very incomplete story of what really is going on.”

Brown compares working on a presidential campaign in Chile to working in a “poor circus.”

“The same dude who swallows swords sometimes sells the tickets outside, and the bearded woman might be in charge of helping you find your seat,” Brown writes. “Presidential campaigns in Chile do not have as many resources as campaigns in the U.S. This means that everyone who is involved has a ton of work to do—multitasking is key.”

Born in the Chilean capital of Santiago, Brown was the first student from his high school to apply to a college outside of Chile.

“I had to be kind of entrepreneurial to find out how to apply,” Brown writes. “It wasn’t easy as my parents were not very cool with the idea of me going abroad.”

Before coming to Harvard in the fall of 2001, Brown spent a year first studying engineering on scholarship at the University of Chile and then working as Winnie the Pooh at Disneyworld.

“I spent five months hugging people and hanging out with Pocahontas, who was my best friend over there,” Brown writes.

Brown says that during his time at Harvard, he developed a relationship with three economics professors who sparked his curiosity about politics: Andrés Velasco, the Sumitomo-FASID professor of international development, Robert J. Barro, the Warburg professor of economics, and Andrei Shleifer ’82, the Jones professor of economics.

“When the chance of working on a presidential campaign for a couple of months came up, I took it,” Brown writes. “Even though I was never particularly interested in politics, I thought it would be a wonderful opportunity to learn about the way politicians work and policy decisions are made.”

Brown was admitted to Harvard’s Ph.D. program in economics—to be a “full time nerd,” he jokes—but opted to take a year off first.

“Spending nine years in a row in Cambridge was not very appealing,” he writes, adding that he plans to spend the next eight months studying economics in Barcelona before returning to Harvard in September.

Brown, who defines himself as economically conservative but socially liberal, says that Harvard had a great influence on his own social views.

“Personally, I am more liberal than the left wing in Chile when it comes to values,” he writes. “That is what Harvard did to me.”

Although Bachelet’s socialist party supports market regulation, Brown says the speeches he has written for Bachelet have been consistent with his own values.

“I understand that there are constraints given by Chile’s culture and history that would make my ideal platform an absolute loser

in any election,” he writes. “Given all of that, I am happy supporting Dr.

Bachelet, and I do believe in her program.”

Brown’s former blockmate, Joshua Ludmir ’05, says he thinks working on the campaign “has maybe softened his attachment to free-market economic principles as the be-all and end-all of any governmental society.”

Brown says working on the campaign has made him a lot more pragmatic.

“What happens when you study is that you know that certain solutions are the best for a problem,” Brown says. “Once you really realize what’s going on in politics, though, you figure out that it’s really hard to put those ideal solutions in place because there are constraints that you don’t really learn about until you actually start participating in this ‘game of politics.’”

Brown adds that he enjoys working with Bachelet, whom he calls “an extremely nice and cheerful woman.”

“She knows the name of everyone in the campaign headquarters and is a very attentive listener,” he says. “She is a hard worker and demands a lot from

people—but always in a respectful way.”

On Chile’s Independence Day, a tipsy Brown managed to snag a free lesson in “cumbia”—a Latin American music and dance style—from Bachelet.

“I confidently walked all across the dance floor, crashing against a couple of chairs on my way there,” Brown recounts. “Rather than ignoring the ‘happy’ young man walking towards her—as I would have—Dr. Bachelet said hello and took me to the dance floor.”

While in Santiago, Brown is working with Velasco on a book that analyzes competitive markets in Chile. Brown is also working with two Harvard economics researchers on a project involving experiments at Brown’s former high school in Santiago.

“Seba has an incredible drive to do interesting and important work, and he’s passionate about the things he believes in,” says one of the researchers, Dan J. Benjamin ’99. “He’s willing to devote his time and energy to causes that he believes in.”

Brown’s other colleague, Jesse Shapiro ’01, calls Brown “a very intellectually curious, interesting, charismatic guy—very smart.”

“He has the potential to do terrific things,” Shapiro says.

And what sort of terrific things?

“I honestly think that in a few decades, Sebastian’s going to be the president of Chile,” Ludmir says.

But Brown downplays his political aspirations.

“I am very proud of being Chilean, and I will always be available and willing to work for the future of my country,” he writes. “It would be fantastic to be involved in

Chilean politics while I develop my [academic] career, but saying I want to be

President of Chile is as arbitrary as saying that I would like to be the world champion of sumo wrestling in Japan.”