Julio Franco MPP 2001

Franco Blends Public Service, Training Firm in Puebla, Mexico

Julio Franco, MPP'01 attended the Harris School "to suck up every piece of information that I could bring back home" and subsequently returned to his native state of Puebla, Mexico, to pursue his central ambition of working to help the less fortunate.

Franco's passion for politics, policy, and the poor stems from two sources: his grandfather, a doctor who tended to mostly low-income patients and also served as mayor of the city of Acatlán, in his native state; and his father, who ran a drainage pipe business that sold mostly to poor, rural municipalities. Franco worked his teenage summers for his father and came face-to-face with how the poor were forced to live.

"It is one thing to see the poverty lines and numbers; it is another thing to see how they live, in small houses without cement floors," he says. "Imagine seeing that every summer. When I got out of college, I said I had to do something to change that."

So after graduating from the Harris School, Franco spent three years at the state's Ministry of Finance and in 2005 moved to the Ministry of Social Development, where he serves as deputy minister for planning and evaluation, functions that individual social program offices previously had performed internally.

"It had been that you plan and evaluate yourself," says Franco. That presented an obvious conflict-of-interest and lack of objectivity, he said, and led to a predictable result: "Of course, the numbers were always happy numbers."

Franco has designed numerous initiatives, such as a home improvement program for poor, rural people that included stoves to better expel wood-fire smoke, which otherwise causes respiratory disease, as well as replacing common but unsafe aluminum, cardboard, and asbestos ceilings with high-tech materials. He also has led the restructuring of the ministry, which has shrunk from 700 to 650 employees, while creating regional offices to better monitor their performance.

In addition to his public work, Franco and his brother, Juan, launched and now manage an executive training firm, IEXE, that has-in the past two years-trained more than 2,900 public officials mostly in Mexico but also in Nicaragua and Guatemala, Franco says.

"The combination of the two worlds has been remarkable and enriching," Franco says. "In my government job, I have learned the insights, the politics, the people, and the fulfillment of working for the poor. At IEXE, I have met officials from all over Mexico and discovered the pleasure of sharing and transmitting knowledge."

Franco's impetus to launch IEXE stemmed from his teaching experience at Iberoamericana and UDLAP universities, which he describes as "a hobby that keeps me sharp, updated and gives me extra energy."

But IEXE began sluggishly, netting zero clients in its first three months, Franco says. "Although we knew that starting a business takes time and sacrifice, at some point, we got impatient and almost lost the enthusiasm," he says. "But [our] endurance paid [off]."

IEXE offers standard courses as well as tailored programs when requested. Among those Harris School professors imported to teach are Robert J. LaLonde, who conducted a course on program evaluation last October; and Colm A. O'Muircheartaigh, who taught survey design and administration in March. Both were part of the Harris School's Custom Professional Learning program.

Ultimately, Franco hopes to follow his grandfather's footsteps in politics and become mayor of Puebla, a 475-year-old "beautiful colonial city" and the fourth largest in Mexico. For now, he's saving money to fund a campaign.

"A very important personal objective is not to depend on money coming from persons that will later want to have their money returned - you know how it works - in contracts," he says. "I want to have the resources to fund my campaign."

Franco also just joined the University of Chicago's Alumni Board of Governors (ABG) as the first-ever representative of the Harris School. The ABG, according to its Web page, "and its committees work with the Alumni Association to enhance services for alumni and to voice alumni opinion on issues affecting the University community."

Ed Finkel