Jessica Olney joined the Institute of International Studies the Executive Director in January 2026.
Jess brings extensive international experience as a practitioner and researcher on conflict, peacebuilding, human rights, and humanitarian response. She has led studies for and advised various governments, embassies, international NGOs, UN agencies, universities, institutional and private donors, and the International Criminal Court. She is passionate about working with students, and has trained dozens of refugee youth to lead research, advocacy, and humanitarian initiatives to serve their own communities in South Asia, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East. She is also the founder of a nonprofit organization that provides direct humanitarian assistance to conflict-affected civilians in Myanmar and Bangladesh.
Jess has served in advisory roles for PAEMA (Preventing And Ending Mass Atrocities), The Asia Foundation's Conflict and Fragility Unit, and the Yemen Country Office of the UN World Food Programme. From 2019 to 2022 she was a Visiting Researcher at Brac University’s Centre for Peace and Justice in Bangladesh, where she helped establish the Refugee Studies Unit and designed USAID-funded projects engaging Rohingya genocide survivors in civic education, human rights, and peacebuilding initiatives.
Earlier in her career, she managed university scholarships for emerging democratic leaders in Asia Pacific countries under authoritarian rule, ran a community education program serving oil spill-affected communities in the northern Ecuadorian Amazon, trained civilians in conflict-affected regions in Myanmar to conduct ceasefire monitoring, and worked for an NGO supporting land rights and community development initiatives for rural indigenous communities in Southeast Asia and southern India.
She has published policy papers, research reports, and academic journal articles, including in the Journal of Refugee Studies, and is the co-author of two books, Bittersweet Yemen (Medina Publishing, 2024) and Born Lucky: The Memoir of a Rohingya Teenage Girl (Sourcebooks, 2027).
