Raúl Herrera

Babson SEE and Babson Luksic Fellows

PhD in Computer Sciences. Director of the Engineering and IT department at Universidad de Tarapacá

I have always believed that the northern regions of our beloved Chile have held a huge human potential to develop new ideas and innovations that can be shared with the rest of the world.

That’s why when my colleagues told me about the Babson SEE Program (Viña del Mar, Chile, June 2017), I was immediately interested in participating. Through this program, I had the opportunity to meet several other lecturers from all over the country and received wonderful feedback about my idea to establish Arica as the ideal place to develop technological entrepreneurship and innovation, drawing upon all of the unique characteristics of the city. This [Babson SEE] experience was extremely useful in the development of my line of research as it provided me with the opportunity to achieve several personal goals.

The following year with a hunger to improve my abilities in understanding and teaching entrepreneurship, I submitted an application to be part of the Luksic Fellows Program (Wellesley, Massachusetts, USA, April 2018). Through this second program, I was able to visit Babson College where I was able to better develop my idea, as well as receive expert advice, alongside new perspectives and insights; all of which I wouldn’t have been able to discover on my own. Overall, the experience was fantastic and I have very fond memories of all of the travels, classes, and conversations I had there. But most of all, I will always remember the new friends I made.

Babson professors, Matt Allen and Andrew Corbett with Raúl, at Babson’s Campus in Wellesley

Last year I was able to travel to Sao Paulo to attend MIT’s “The Future of Work” Conference (Sao Paulo, Brazil, August 2019). It was here in which I many of the aspects of my future research became clearer to me, as well as new challenges related to human factors that needed to be addressed if I wanted to truly achieve the ultimate goal of making my dream come true.

Raúl and fellow Luksic Scholars with MIT’s Professor, Roberto Rigobón, in Sao Paulo

I have always believed that the northern regions of our beloved Chile have held a huge human potential to develop new ideas and innovations that can be shared with the rest of the world.”

Now, as a Director of one of the departments of the Faculty of Engineering at the Universidad de Tarapacá, I intend to use all the knowledge I have obtained from these three different opportunities that the Luksic Scholars Foundation has granted me. They will ultimately help me to improve the opportunities for all entrepreneurs in the north of Chile and because of that, I am grateful for all these experiences.