Board Member
Professor of Development Economics, Cornell University, USA
Jenny C. Aker is the Daniel G. Sisler Professor of Development Economics at Cornell University. Prior to Cornell, she was a Professor of Development Economics at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and Department of Economics at Tufts University for 14 years. At Fletcher, she was the Co-Director of the Center for International Environment and Resource Policy (CIERP) and the Director of the Fletcher Leadership Program for Financial Inclusion (FLPFI). Prior to academic work, she worked for Catholic Relief Services in West and Central Africa between 1998 and 2003.
Jenny is a development economist studying the challenges facing poor households in lower-income countries. She collaborates with a variety of academic, governmental and non-governmental partners to identify interventions and co-develop policies that can help overcome these challenges, based upon extensive fieldwork. Her ongoing research includes studies on the use of digital technology in adult education, interventions to encourage the adoption of environmental technologies, and the drivers of farmer-herder conflicts. Since 2005, the bulk of her research has taken place in Niger, but she has also conducted research in the DRC, Mozambique, Tanzania, Liberia, Ghana and Sierra Leone.
She is the co-Chair of the Digital Identification and Finance Initiative in Africa Initiative at J-PAL Africa, and an affiliate of the Bureau for Research and Economic Analysis of Development (BREAD).
Jenny obtained her PhD in agricultural economics from the University of California Berkeley in 2008, a MA from the Fletcher School at Tufts University in 1997, and an AB from Duke University in 1993.
