Jessica Harrison Fullerton

Jessica Harrison Fullerton is a Managing Director of the Strategy and Build team at GDI Americas. Across her career, she has spent over fifteen years building and strengthening organizations seeking to improve life outcomes for people experiencing poverty, displacement and conflict.

At GDI, Jess is spearheading a portfolio of initiatives focused on early childhood development and child protection. She launched and serves as the interim COO for NurtureFirst, a global funding and capacity building organization working to improve the quality of care for young children by creating supportive ecosystems for home-based childcare providers. Jess is also exploring global opportunities to combat lead poisoning in children and child trauma associated with conflict and disaster. Among her other GDI initiatives, Jess is the acting COO for Malengo, a nonprofit that seeks transformative income gains for low-income youth in Africa through international educational migration to higher income countries.

Jess began her career as a Strategy and Management Consultant at Bridgespan and Dalberg Global Development Advisors. Subsequently, at Evidence Action, she launched a $35M effort in collaboration with the Ethiopian Ministry of Health and SCI to treat 100M children in five years across the country. Most recently prior to GDI, Jess spent seven years in strategy and operational leadership roles in the Program Quality Unit, the Emergencies Team, External Relations and the Office of the CEO at the International Rescue Committee, a $1B organization delivering programming to crisis and conflict-affected populations globally. She has an MBA from Columbia, an MPA from Harvard Kennedy School and a BA from Middlebury College. She is a former Term Member of the Council on Foreign Relations and has written for Stanford Social Innovation Review. When she’s not working, you can find her hiking the trails in Colorado where she lives with her husband, three young sons and rescue dog, Tabasco.