Santiago is the Country Coordinator for Young Lives Peru and leads the policy and communications work in Peru. He is Research Director at GRADE in Lima, specializing in education. He holds a degree in Educational Psychology from the Catholic University in Peru and a PhD from Indiana University (Bloomington, USA).

In 2010, he received the National Award in Psychology by the Professional Board of Psychologists in Peru. He has been a visiting researcher at the Universities of California (Davis) and Oxford, and a consultant for international organizations such as the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, and UNESCO and was a member of their Global Education Monitoring Report advisory board. Aside from his position at GRADE, Santiago is also a Professor at the Catholic University in Lima and a member of the National Council of Education in Peru.