Jessica Seddon

Jessica Seddon is a Senior Fellow and Lecturer at the Jackson School of Global Affairs and an EGC affiliate. She is also a Senior Fellow at Artha Global, a networked policy consulting organization that supports governments in the developing world to design, implement, and institutionalize policy frameworks that promote prosperity, stability, and resilience. Her career in India and the U.S. spans academic, program leadership, and strategic advisory roles focused on institutional design for integrating science into policy and social initiatives.

Seddon’s recent work focuses on governance of various aspects of the atmosphere, from climate change to air quality to climate intervention. She built and led the global air quality program among other positions at the World Resources Institute (WRI), co-chairs the Global Air Quality Forecasting and Information Services initiative of the World Meteorological Organization, and serves on the World Economic Forum Global Futures Council on Clean Air. Prior to joining WRI, Seddon co-founded and led Okapi, an India-based strategy group incubated at Indian Institute of Technology in Madras that focuses on institutional design for social innovation.

Seddon has published book chapters and articles on infrastructure, Indian political economy, information technology and governance, environmental regulation, and other institutional design topics in international academic and policy venues, including Cambridge University Press, the Journal of Development Economics, Stanford Social Innovation Review, Foreign Affairs, Bloomberg Businessweek, and Harvard Business Review. She earned her Ph.D. in political economy from Stanford University Graduate School of Business and her B.A. in government and Latin American studies from Harvard University.