We are pleased to announce the 2021-2022 Jackson Institute Senior Fellows.
Jackson Senior Fellows are leading practitioners in various fields of international affairs who spend a year or semester at Yale teaching courses and mentoring students. This year’s group includes six newcomers and 17 returning Fellows.
Ezekwesili is the Founder-Chairperson of the Board of SPPG- School of Politics Policy and Governance in Abuja, Nigeria. She was a candidate for office of the President of Nigeria in the 2019 election and became the Founder-Chairperson of #FixPolitics Initiative a research-based citizens-led initiative.
Ezekwesili was a Vice President of World Bank- Africa Region in Washington DC between 2007 and 2012. She served in the government of Nigeria between 2000 and 2007. She was the Minister of Minerals and later of Education. She was a presidential aide and headed the Budget Monitoring and Price Intelligence Unit which later became the Bureau for Public Procurement- BPP. She was concurrently the pioneer Chairperson of the Nigerian Extractive Industry and Transparency Initiative- NEITI in which capacity she successfully designed and implemented the global principles for Nigeria. Ezekwesili also worked as the Director of the Harvard-Nigeria Economic Strategy Project at the Center for International Development at the Kennedy School of Government, Massachusetts.
A Chartered Accountant and consultant, she holds an MA in International Law and Diplomacy and an MA in Public Policy and Administration from the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University.
Jessica Faieta is a Senior Fellow and lecturer at the Jackson School of Global Affairs at Yale University, where she teaches on development in Latin America and the Caribbean and on the United Nations.
She retired from the UN System after 30 years of distinguished service that spanned the development, peace and humanitarian pillars. She served in Colombia as Deputy Special Representative of the Secretary-General in the UN Mission for the verification of the Peace Accords, and led the UN response to the Venezuela migration crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic.
Faieta was UN Assistant Secretary-General and United Nations Development Program (UNDP) Regional Director for Latin America and the Caribbean and held other UN leadership positions, including during the recovery efforts for the 2010 earthquake in Haiti and the 2017 Category 5 hurricanes in the Caribbean. She also served in the executive offices of the UN Secretary-General and the UNDP Administrator and had assignments in El Salvador, Belize, Argentina, Cuba, Guyana, and Panama. She was responsible for important publications, including the UNDP Regional Human Development Reports.
A national from Ecuador, Faieta is a member of GWL Voices, an organization of global women leaders, and serves on various boards. She holds a master’s degree in international affairs and an MBA from Columbia University. She was awarded an honorary doctorate from the State University of New York where she also obtained her bachelor’s degree in economics. She has been a World Fellow at Yale and an Advanced Leadership fellow at Harvard.
Ambassador Anne W. Patterson served as a Jackson Senior Fellow during the 2017-2018 and 2021-2022 academic years. She was the Assistant Secretary for Near Eastern and North African Affairs at the Department of State (2013-2017). She served as Ambassador to Egypt (2011-2013), to Pakistan (2007-2010), to Colombia (2000-2003) and to El Salvador (1997-2000). She retired in 2017 with the rank of Career Ambassador after more than four decades in the Foreign Service. Ambassador Patterson also served as Assistant Secretary of State for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs and as Deputy Permanent Representative to the United Nations.
Patterson was named one of Foreign Policy’s 100 Top Global Thinkers in 2011. She is a two-time recipient of the State Department’s Distinguished Service award. She has been appointed to two congressional commissions: the Commission on National Defense Strategy in 2017 and the Syria Study Group in 2019.
Seddon also serves on the advisory board of the Wilderhill Global Clean Energy Index (NEX) and the academic councils of Krea University, a new liberal arts initiative in South India, and the Indian School of Public Policy in New Delhi. Prior to joining WRI, Seddon co-founded and led Okapi, an India-based strategy group incubated at Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras that focuses on institutional design for social innovation. Her earlier career spans academic and strategic advisory roles focused on institutional design for integrating science into policy and social initiatives. She has worked with numerous institutions in India, including as visiting fellow at IDFC Institute (Mumbai) and senior fellow at the Center for Technology and Policy, IIT Madras.
Seddon 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.