Jessica Leino

Jessica Leino is the Interim Director and Executive Director of the King Center on Global Development. She served as the King Center’s deputy director from 2014 to 2019 and the center's interim director from 2019 to 2020. Prior to joining Stanford, Leino was a Senior Economist at the World Bank, where her work focused on expanding coverage and improving the quality of social protection programs in South Asia. She joined the Bank in 2008 through the Young Professionals Program.

Leino holds a BA in economics from Harvard, an MPhil in development studies from the University of Cambridge, and a PhD in economics from the University of California, Berkeley. She has previously worked at the Brookings Institution and as a project evaluation consultant in East Africa. Her research has appeared in the Quarterly Journal of Economics and other academic and policy outlets.