Jessica Shao

Grants and Program Associate, Pandemics, Skoll Global Threats Fund

Biography

Jessica joins the Skoll Global Threats Fund with over a decade of experience working in the social justice and international development sector. Jessica has worked in Latin America, China, and the USA, with leadership experience in diverse nonprofit organizations, covering economic development, poverty alleviation, women’s human rights and philanthropy. Prior to the Skoll Global Threats Fund, she served as the Program Associate for the California Democracy Program at the James Irvine Foundation. In this role, she supported the California Democracy program to administer a grantmaking portfolio of $15M annually to advance effective public policy decisionmaking by funding grassroots organizations to reform election practices, improve civic engagement and fully integrate immigrants in California. Previously, Jessica worked as a Fundraising and Evaluation consultant, having led fundraising initiatives for the Asia Foundation and conducted in-depth research on evaluation of social programs in women’s empowerment, youth development, economic development and health, enabling internal staff and external project stakeholders to enhance understanding of project impact. Jessica is fluent in Spanish, Chinese Mandarin and Cantonese, English and Japanese. - See more at: http://www.skollglobalthreats.org/about-us/staff/#jessicashao