Alexandra Castillo Email & Phone Number

Columbus, Ohio, United States

Washington, District Of Columbia, United States

- Created a new framework for down-ranking low-quality creator content: Designed a novel assessment framework to identify new problems, validate existing signals, and create new signals in the creator ecosystem on Facebook. Worked collaboratively with a team of cross-functional partners to understand distribution and ranking systems to better promote high-quality creators. Identified patterns of undesirable behavior and removed overrides in the systems that bypassed quality benchmarks. Yielded higher quality, original top content in the creator ecosystem.- Uncovered relationship between creator sentiment and on-platform metrics: Analyzed data from a sentiment survey, tying the survey indicators to on-platform variables. Made recommendations for concrete actions and product changes to improve sentiment using both quantitative and qualitative insights.- Built foundational understanding of creators and identified acquisition opportunities: Leveraged an existing, large-scale survey dataset for multiple projects to build foundational understanding of creator needs, goals, and motivations on Facebook. Corrected misconceptions about the strengths and weaknesses of Facebook for creators and made accompanying product recommendations to meet these needs. Recommended opportunities for targeted, geographic creator acquisition for both Facebook and Instagram.- Identified a new signal to improve creator ranking and distribution: Analyzed existing research, identified gaps in knowledge, and made recommendations for diverse cross-functional partners to pursue an underutilized on-platform user signal to improve creator ranking systems and better match users with creator content.- Increased the number of on-platform surveys: Served as survey budget liaison for on-platform app surveys by critically reviewing sample size calculations and survey designs to maximize the number of surveys that are possible to be run on platform without exhausting the survey population.

Washington, District Of Columbia, United States

- Identified substantial annual cost savings for phone surveys: Conducted independent analysis on the implications of using screened sample in international phone surveys over time. Wrote recommendations for internal stakeholders and presented at conferences on this and similar methodological topics that informed internal decision-making. Recommended to leadership that screened sample in two countries yielded similar demographic and attitudinal point estimates with significant yearly cost savings.- Found additional cost savings through mode shift from phone to online panel: Led experimental initiatives for mode shifts from phone to online panels with an emphasis on data quality and comparability for international, probability-based nationally representative surveys. Analyzed phone and online panel demographic and attitudinal differences, finding that most survey estimates were comparable, while a small minority of questions were more sensitive to mode transitions. My recommendation to transition from a phone to an online panel in one country yielded additional annual savings for the Center.- Recommended vendors for international survey projects: Reviewed proposals and made recommendations to project teams on vendor contracting for multiple large-scale, cross-national survey projects, ranging from nationally representative to more complex, disproportionate designs. Balanced the rigor of the proposals with budget constraints and country-specifications to strike a balance to maximize cross-national coverage, while guaranteeing high-quality data.- Advised subject matter experts on all aspects of survey projects: Served as primary methodological consultant for project teams and external partners. Consulted with subject-matter experts on questionnaire design, country viability, and timeline management. Oversaw the successful completion of multiple international survey projects through careful monitoring of data and agile responses to problems with data collection.

Washington, District Of Columbia, United States

- Assisted in all stages of an international survey project in 28+ countries: Contributed to the design, implementation, project management, and analysis of data. Conducted basic and advanced data analysis, such as significance testing, correlation analysis, and multivariate logistic regression for independent and joint projects. Published multiple substantive reports from novel survey findings on the Pew Research Center website and blog.- Designed a focus group screener and discussion guide: Observed focus groups in the UK and Germany and adjusted the discussion guide as necessary. Attended interviewer training for an international survey to ensure adherence to the survey protocol and questionnaire. Monitored survey fieldwork reports, communicating issues directly with the vendor to verify the successful implementation of both the qualitative and quantitative components of the project.- Led quality control for international projects: Wrote syntax and monitored output on pretest, contact, and substantive datasets, also provided number and fact checking for written reports while on the Global Attitudes Project. This contributed to the Center’s mission to provide the public with informed, reliable, well-researched facts about the world.

Columbus, Ohio Area

- Used a mixed-methods approach to improve a digital product: Conducted a company-wide survey, focus groups, and guided interviews with associates to identify, understand, and provide recommendations for potential pain points within a digital service. Designed data visualizations and communicated top-level findings of research activities in a clear manner to stakeholders in both written and oral format. Leadership implemented these recommendations into the redesign of the digital product to improve usability.

Columbus, Ohio Area

- Applied qualitative findings to inform experimental design: Employed qualitative methodologies such as participant observation and interviews to explore the link between individual opinions and political outcomes while conducting three months of fieldwork in Bolivia. Applied the findings to the design, testing, and implementation of a unique survey experiment of 747 respondents in two countries to test the causal mechanism between psychological identities, economic evaluations, and institutional outcomes. Analyzed the experimental data to uncover the interaction between salient sociographic characteristics and support for the removal of presidential term limits in Latin America.- Worked with complex data and advanced models: Cleaned, analyzed, and interpreted cross-national public opinion surveys over a 17-year period in 18 countries using maximum likelihood estimation and event history models in Stata and R.- Created and taught independent courses: Designed syllabi, organized classroom instruction, and oversaw all grading responsibilities. Courses included six terms of Latin American Politics and four terms of Politics of the Developing World.

Delaware, Oh

Three terms of Democracy, Dictatorship, and Political Change (an overview of comparative politics) and one term of Conduct of Political Inquiry (an introduction to social science research design and methods)

Doctor Of Philosophy - Phd, Political Science

Major in Comparative Politics with a focus on Latin America Minor in Political Psychology

Master’S Degree, Political Science

Bachelor’S Degree, International/Global Studies, English, And Spanish