Dr. Jessica Seddon (Wallack) – Founder and Managing Director, Okapi Research


Okapi Research is an India-based institutional design consultancy focused on building systems for sustainable development. Her research and consulting focus on designing policy, rules, and norms for governing public and private initiatives seeking to invest in social innovation. She 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 and Harvard Business Review.

Her current consulting engagements include building social impact learning capacity at the Villgro Innovations Foundation, serving as Senior Advisor to the Indian Institute for Human Settlements, and helping set up the Centre for Technology and Policy at IIT Madras. Dr. Seddon has also advised a number of state and national government initiatives in India. She is a Member of the India Working Group for the Institute for New Economic Thinking and co-chair of the Interdisciplinary and Global Working Group on Short Lived Climate Pollutants based at the IASS, Germany. Dr. Seddon is on the advisory boards of the Wilderhill Global Clean Energy Index (NEX) and Prakti Design (Pondicherry).

Prior to founding Okapi, Dr. Seddon served as Head of Research at the Indian Institute for Human Settlements, Director of the Centre for Development Finance at IFMR, and Assistant Professor at UC San Diego. She also worked at the Chief Economist’s Offices of the World Bank and Inter-American Development Bank. Dr. Seddon earned her Ph.D. from Stanford University Graduate School of Business and her B.A. from Harvard University.