Renata Millet Ponce

Renata Millet is an MPP candidate at Harvard Kennedy School (‘26) and the co-founder of Elvia, a WhatsApp-first platform that makes the school-to-work transition work for technical students across Latin America. 

Ten years ago, she chose her mission: to improve the lives of young people through education. At Vía Educación, she worked with ministries in 13 states and supported Jóvenes Atiempo, where she saw how many graduates – especially from technical schools – become invisible after finishing school. In Mexico, 60% of youth work informally (vs. 54% nationally), while 73% of mid-sized employers can’t fill technical roles, despite 1.8M technical students and 400K graduates annually (INEGI, 2022; MBR, 2023). OECD (2023) data indicate that up to 35% of young workers face skill mismatches, reducing income by as much as 30%. With one career and job adviser for hundreds of students on many campuses, and the largest number of educated youth we have ever had, stories of students who study by day, work by night, and still don’t know how to find a good formal job that can help them build a career made the problem urgent. 

Renata co-founded Elvia alongside Antía Vazquez and Melissa Manrique to repair that broken pipeline by guiding students and translating between two worlds that rarely speak: education and industry. Elvia helps students understand and certify their skills, build CVs, and apply to aligned internships and jobs, while employers receive access to verified, prepared talent, and schools receive data on labor demand to improve curricula. Within months of a strategic pivot, Elvia launched pilots on seven campuses, raised pre-seed funding, and began national outreach. 

Before Elvia, Renata led the evaluation and monitoring team at Vía Educación, earned dual bachelor’s degrees in Political Science (ITAM) and Pedagogy (UNAM), and won the Banamex Economics Award for her thesis on the long-run effects of the Caste War in Yucatán. She has built and led volunteer efforts – from earthquake response to grassroots civic campaigns – and founded Compartir, a student initiative that supported families at Mérida’s public hospital. She believes in building exceptional teams and learning directly from students and employers.