Developing public policy solutions to advance holistic human development

Tony Guidotti ’20 MGA

Justice, Health, and Democracy Fellow, Edmund and Lily Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University

Seeking to facilitate sustainable, integral human development at both home and abroad, Tony Guidotti ’20 MGA has made it his life’s vocation to examine and promote policy strategies that significantly improve individual and community well-being.

After graduating from Notre Dame’s Keough School with a masters in global affairs, Guidotti focused his talent and energy on serving his local community in South Bend. As an Innovation Fellow with enFocus during the COVID-19 pandemic, Guidotti partnered with municipal and county governments to create policy solutions tailored to the needs of the local South Bend region. During his fellowship, Guidotti led the design of a new housing plan for a rural Indiana community, developed a strategic reporting framework for a federally-funded workforce development agency in Northern Indiana, and designed and implemented an $8 million county-wide emergency rental assistance program. His decision to stay in South Bend after graduation greatly enhanced the lives of those in the community.

Guidotti’s passion for creating equitable policy solutions didn’t end with South Bend. At the global scale, as a research partner for Catholic Relief Services in Bangladesh and Uganda, Guidotti has helped to coordinate projects that study how humanitarian cash transfers could be leveraged to improve economic conditions for refugees. He also served as a Livelihood Consultant with Food for the Poor in Honduras, helping families in need to have greater access to nourishment, housing, and emergency relief.

Now, as a Justice, Health, and Humanity Fellow at Harvard University’s Edmund and Lily Safra Center for Ethics, Guidotti leads a research portfolio exploring the principles of economic dignity and how policy paradigms — including community wealth-building, property-owning democracy, and civil economy — provide opportunities for locally-rooted, comprehensive, and inclusive forms of prosperity. His work also examines the role of non-financial forms of wealth in integral human development, focusing on the well-being of the whole person and integrating tenets of Catholic Social Teaching into his research.

A first-generation college student, graduating from St. Thomas University in 2013, Guidotti is also the first in his family to receive a graduate-level education.