Executive DirectorGardens for Health International
Jessie Cronan is the Executive Director of Gardens for Health International (GHI), an NGO that works in partnership with local health centers in Rwanda to provide lasting agricultural solutions to chronic childhood malnutrition.
Jessie joined the Gardens for Health team in June 2012. She came to the organization with a broad range of experiences in international development and in Africa specifically.
As a Princeton-in-Africa fellow with the Tanzanian Children’s Fund in 2007 - 2008, Jessie spent 18 months living and working in rural Tanzania to improve educational outcomes of primary school students. Jessie's work in Tanzania inspired her to pursue a career focused on working at the community level to spark sustainable change in the developing world.
While pursuing her Master's degree in Public Policy, Jessie worked as a consultant with the Aceh Women’s League – an Indonesian NGO dedicated to promoting women’s political empowerment – and with the Network of Women Leaders – a group of public and private sector leaders in the Horn of Africa.
Most recently, Jessie served as a Strategy and New Business Development Coordinator with TechnoServe, an NGO dedicated to identifying business solutions to poverty in Swaziland. Jessie holds a Bachelor's degree from Princeton University and a Master's degree in Public Policy from the Harvard Kennedy School.