Samantha Perez Davila is a doctoral student in the Research, Analysis, and Design Stream at the Pardee RAND Graduate School of Public Policy and an assistant policy analyst at RAND. She has conducted research on drug policy, mental health of Latino communities, gun policy, and international security. She also has experience in program evaluation using mixed methods.

Before joining Pardee RAND, Perez Davila was an associate researcher at the Center for Research and Teaching in Economics (CIDE) in Mexico. At CIDE, she was the executive coordinator of the Drug Policy Program and managed research projects analyzing Mexico’s drug policy, violence levels, and the government’s strategy to address insecurity. She also taught public economics in the public policy undergraduate program and, from 2019–2021, taught a course on impact evaluation for drug policy at the CIDE Drug Policy, Health and Human Rights Seminar, which she coordinated. Perez Davila has also worked as a consultant for the Interamerican Development Bank, developing monitoring and evaluation plans for labor markets, social security, and international trade projects in Latin American and the Caribbean. She earned a master’s degree in applied science from Johns Hopkins University and a bachelor’s degree in economics and finance from the School of Banking and Commerce.