Jessica Seddon

Global Lead, Air Quality, WRI Ross Center for Sustainable Cities

Bio

Jessica Seddon is the Global Lead for Air Quality at WRI. She leads a team of scientists, strategists, and practitioners who are focused on helping cities and countries manage their air to achieve health, ecosystem, and climate goals. Her own work focuses on the way that new sources of information and environmental awareness can be leveraged to motivate and guide cost-effective strategies for reducing polluting emissions and achieving clean air for all. Outside of WRI, Jessica serves on the advisory board of the Wilderhill Global Clean Energy Index (NEX) and the Academic Council of Krea University, a new liberal arts initiative in South India. She is a Non-Resident Fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and a Visiting Research Scholar at the Chadha Center on Global India at Princeton and the Princeton Environmental Institute.

Prior to joining WRI, Jessica co-founded and led Okapi, an India-based strategy group incubated at 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. Jessica has worked with a number of institutions in India, including as Visiting Fellow at IDFC Institute (Mumbai); Senior Fellow at the Center for Technology and Policy, IIT Madras; Head of Research at the Indian Institute for Human Settlements (Bangalore); and Director of the Centre for Development Finance at the Institute for Financial Management and Research (Chennai). In her U.S.-based work, she has served as Strategic Advisor for the California Institute of Telecommunications and Information Technology (CALIT2) and Assistant Professor, University of California, San Diego. She was also a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow with the United States Environmental Protection Agency, working on institutional design for global air quality management.

Jessica has published book chapters and articles on infrastructure, Indian political economy, IT and governance, environmental regulation and other institutional design topics in international academic and policy venues including Cambridge University Press, Journal of Development Economics, Stanford Social Innovation Review, Foreign Affairs, Bloomberg Business Week and Harvard Business Review.

Dr. 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.

Blogs

The Most Successful Air Pollution Treaty You’ve Never Heard Of
by Elizabeth Moses, Beatriz Cardenas and Jessica Seddon - February 25, 2020
International consensus on cross-border environmental issues has been hard to come by, but a 40-year-old air pollution treaty has enjoyed great if largely unsung success, leading to cleaner air, healthier forests and the prevention of hundreds of thousands of premature deaths.
INSIDER: What’s in a Question? Finding Innovative Solutions for Air Pollution
by Beatriz Cardenas, Jessica Seddon and Stefaan Verhulst - October 24, 2019
We know that air pollution is a big problem – for health, climate, food security and more. But there’s a difference between generally knowing that “we need to do something” and actually marshalling the allies, resources and power to act.

Before...
5 Under-recognized Impacts of Air Pollution
by Jessica Seddon, Seth Contreras and Beth Elliott - June 05, 2019
Most people think of air pollution as strictly a health issue. The reality is that dirty air affects climate, water, agriculture and renewable energy systems.
5 Things We Learned About Urban Transformation
by Anne Maassen and Jessica Seddon - May 15, 2019
Positive change is happening in cities, but it’s often lost in a sea of bad news about air pollution, rising costs of living and traffic jams. Projects from Dar es Salaam, Medellín, Pune and more provide inspiration.
Curbing Climate Change and Preventing Deaths from Air Pollution Go Hand-in-Hand
by Katherine Ross and Jessica Seddon - October 29, 2018
More than 7 million people die prematurely every year due to air pollution. Curbing short-lived climate pollutants like methane and black carbon can help while also reining in global warming.

Commentaries

In the Distance: Clean Air Post-COVID-19

June 18, 2020

External Publications

"Monitoring environmental change and human health: Planetary Health Watch."
By Seddon Jessica, Belesova Kristine, Haines Andy, Ranganathan Janet, Wilkinson Paul.
The Lancet 395 (2020): 96-98 DOI: 10.1016/S0140-6736(19)33042-9.

"Reducing Urban Greenhouse Gas Footprints."
By Seddon Jessica, Pichler Peter-Paul, Zwickel Timm, Chavez Abel, Kretschmer Tino, Weisz Helga.
Scientific Reports 7 (2017): 14659 DOI: 10.1038/s41598-017-15303-x.

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Jessica Seddon

The Most Successful Air Pollution Treaty You’ve Never Heard Of

INSIDER: What’s in a Question? Finding Innovative Solutions for Air Pollution

5 Under-recognized Impacts of Air Pollution

5 Things We Learned About Urban Transformation

Curbing Climate Change and Preventing Deaths from Air Pollution Go Hand-in-Hand

In the Distance: Clean Air Post-COVID-19

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The Most Successful Air Pollution Treaty You’ve Never Heard Of

INSIDER: What’s in a Question? Finding Innovative Solutions for Air Pollution

5 Under-recognized Impacts of Air Pollution

5 Things We Learned About Urban Transformation

Curbing Climate Change and Preventing Deaths from Air Pollution Go Hand-in-Hand

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