Jessica Harrison Fullerton

As a Managing Director of the Strategy and Build team at GDI Americas, Jessica is spearheading a portfolio of cross-sector initiatives focused on child development. Within the portfolio, she has focused on launching ventures centered on eliminating the largest barriers to child health and education outcomes – like lead poisoning – and on improving channels that support nurturing care in early childhood, particularly for the most vulnerable children. 

She is the interim Executive Director of Partnership for Battery Action (Pb Action), a new effort to make safer lead-acid battery recycling financially sustainable to address one of the largest and most neglected causes of child lead poisoning globally. She is also working with a team to launch a new India-led venture, “Lead-Free India,” focused on eliminating lead poisoning, starting with removing lead from spices. Jessica launched and served as an interim leader for NurtureFirst and is working with UBS Optimus Foundation to identify scalable, affordable childcare models that can be funded through private investment. 

Jessica began her career over 20 years ago as a Strategy and Management Consultant in the private sector and shifted towards mission-oriented work at Dalberg Global Development Advisors and Bridgespan. Subsequently, she was one of the first employees at Evidence Action, where 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 through school-based health programs. Prior to GDI, she spent seven years in strategy and operational leadership roles at the International Rescue Committee, a $1B organization delivering programming to crisis and conflict-affected populations globally. Jessica has an MBA from Columbia, an MPA from Harvard Kennedy School, and a BA from Middlebury College. She is a former Term Member at 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 spouse, three young sons, and rescue dog, Tabasco.