“The best thing for building empathy with your parents is to become the legal guardian of a kid, especially a teenager.” – Tino Cuéllar
Tino Cuéllar grew up in Matamoros, Mexico, every morning crossing the border to get to school in Texas. Thirty-five years after arriving at Harvard College from Calexico, California, he sits on the Harvard Corporation, the board that governs the university - with stops along the way at the Treasury Department, the Supreme Court of California, and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, which he ran until this summer. He and David talk about how that happens to a kid from the border, why he took legal guardianship of his teenage brother at 21, whether too many Harvard grads go into consulting, and why he thinks the people with the most to gain from AI are the billions who could never afford a lawyer.
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Tino’s story is hard to believe even after he tells it to you. He was born in Matamoros, Mexico, and crossed the border every morning to get to school in Texas. His family later moved to Calexico, California, a small desert town across from Mexicali, where you could get stopped on a morning run and asked for your papers. At 21, when his parents moved back to Mexico, he became the legal guardian of his 15-year-old brother (his verdict on that experience is the quote at the top of this post). From there he went on to Yale Law School, the Treasury Department at 25, a professorship at Stanford, the California Supreme Court, and the presidency of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. I asked him how much of this was planned. Not much, it turns out.
We talked about what Harvard could learn from Stanford, why the internet failed to destroy geography, how a volunteer stint on a campaign turned into that Treasury job, and what AI might do for the billions of people who can’t afford a lawyer. On AI, Tino speaks with more than academic authority: he co-chaired California’s frontier AI working group with Fei-Fei Li, and he was recently appointed a trustee of Anthropic’s Long-Term Benefit Trust, the independent body that ultimately oversees the company’s board.
And because Tino sits on my university’s governing board, I asked him the questions I often get asked: Who checks a board that picks its own members? What should Harvard look like in 2030? Is Harvard a force for good?
Let me know what you think at david@thecontextwindow.com.
Chapters
[0:00:00] Cold open - Tino on the biggest potential benefit of AI.
[0:00:30] Introduction
[0:01:36] A long way from home - Arriving at Harvard from Calexico, and growing up crossing the border.
[0:08:13] A Mexican immigrant in a place of privilege - Finding his footing freshman year.
[0:11:50] Judith Shklar - The professor who shaped how Tino thinks and writes.
[0:16:09] Guardian at 21 - Becoming his 15-year-old brother’s legal guardian.
[0:21:38] What Harvard and Stanford could learn from each other
[0:26:23] Yale, Stanford, and getting sick of school - Law school, PhD, and the decision to get a job.
[0:33:16] The call out of the blue - From Clinton campaign volunteer to the Treasury Department.
[0:36:50] An unusual justice - Six years on the California Supreme Court.
[0:42:41] Clinton’s White House and Obama’s
[0:45:48] Interrogate your motivations - Tino’s advice on career choices, and the jobs he turned down.
[0:49:49] Is 50 percent too high? - On the share of Harvard graduates going into consulting, finance, and tech.
[0:54:43] America’s first think tank - Andrew Carnegie and the founding of the Carnegie Endowment.
[0:57:49] When globalization frayed - The fading consensus on an interconnected world.
[1:01:56] Governing a moving target - California’s frontier AI report, and fitting old law to new technology.
[1:05:40] A chief of staff for billions - AI and access to legal help.
[1:12:06] Inside the Harvard Corporation - How the board works.
[1:13:35] Who checks a self-perpetuating board? - On accountability, insulation, and how judges are chosen.
[1:17:37] Harvard in 2030 - Allston, and a more global university.
[1:19:39] Is Harvard a force for good?
[1:21:15] “Here’s to hunger” - Closing thoughts.
Mentioned in this episode
People
Judith Shklar - political theorist; Tino’s professor at Harvard.
Fei-Fei Li - Stanford computer scientist; co-chaired California’s frontier AI working group with Tino.
John Perry Barlow - Grateful Dead lyricist and early internet writer.
Andrew Carnegie - founder of the Carnegie Endowment.
Elihu Root and Nicholas Murray Butler - Carnegie’s advisers.
José Luis Rojas Villarreal - Tino’s schoolmate in Matamoros; now on the Cambridge School Committee.
Alan Garber - president of Harvard University.
Larry Bacow - former president of Harvard University.
Organizations and institutions
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace - the think tank Tino led from 2021 to 2026.
Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences - the Stanford institute Tino directs.
Anthropic’s Long-Term Benefit Trust - Tino joined as a trustee in January 2026.
Harvard Corporation - Harvard’s principal governing board; Tino has served on it since 2019.
Harvard Board of Overseers - Harvard’s second governing board.
Supreme Court of California - Tino served as a justice from 2015 to 2021.
U.S. Department of the Treasury - where Tino’s Washington career began.
Domestic Policy Council - where Tino served in the Obama White House.
Saint Joseph Academy - Tino’s high school in Brownsville, Texas.
Moments and ideas
“Every tub on its own bottom” - Harvard’s phrase for its decentralized budget model.
The Class of 2025 senior survey - the Crimson data David cites.
Further reading
Joint California Policy Working Group on AI Frontier Models, “The California Report on Frontier AI Policy” (2025).
Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar, “The Tenuous Relationship between the Fight against Money Laundering and the Disruption of Criminal Finance” (Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, 2003).
Judith N. Shklar, On Political Obligation (Yale University Press, 2019).
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Credits
Host: David Deming, Danoff Dean of Harvard College
Executive Producer: Denise Koller Consulting Producers: Tim Smith and Jonathan Palumbo Produced by: Hauser Studio, Harvard University - Anthony Di Bartolo, Adam Dusenberry, Producers; Cabin 3 Media - Justin Callahan, Editor
