Jessica Faieta

About

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. 

Prior to Yale, Faieta served with distinction in the United Nations for three decades in senior leadership positions across the UN system’s development, humanitarian and peace pillars. She was posted in Colombia as Deputy Special Representative of the Secretary-General in the UN Mission for the Verification of the Peace Accords, where she also coordinated the UN’s response to the Venezuela migration crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic. Earlier, she was UN Assistant Secretary-General and Regional Director for Latin America and the Caribbean at the United Nations Development Programme.

Throughout her UN career, Faieta held multiple leadership roles in crisis and recovery settings, including overseeing post-earthquake recovery efforts in Haiti and coordinating responses to 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 held assignments across Latin America and the Caribbean, including El Salvador, Belize, Argentina, Cuba, Guyana, and Panama. She contributed to key policy work, including the UNDP Regional Human Development Reports.  

A national of Ecuador, Faieta is a member of Global Women Leader Voices, an Harvard fellow and serves on several boards. She holds a master’s degree in international affairs and an MBA from Columbia University, and received an honorary doctorate from the State University of New York, where she earned her bachelor’s degree in economics.

Education

• MA in International Affairs, Columbia University
• MBA in International Finance, Columbia University
• BS in Economics, State University of New York