Jessica Leight Email & Phone Number

I am a Senior Research Fellow in the Poverty, Gender, and Inclusion unit at the International Food Policy Research Institute. More generally, I am a development economist focusing on generating high-quality policy-relevant evidence on questions related to agriculture, structural transformation, social protection, gender, and human capital in low- and middle-income countries. I have worked in a range of settings around the world, including but not limited to China, India, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Kenya, and Bangladesh.Previously, I served as an assistant professor of economics at American University from 2017 to 2019 and Williams College from 2013 to 2017. I received a Ph.D. in economics at MIT in 2013, a M.Phil. in Economics at Oxford as a Rhodes scholar in 2008, and a B.A. from Yale University in 2006.