Steering Committee Member, WELL Labs
Jagdeesh Rao is an environmental practitioner, systems thinker and social entrepreneur with more than three decades of experience working at the intersection of ecology, society and economy. He was part of the founding team of the Foundation for Ecological Security (FES) and served as its Chief Executive from 2001 to 2020.
During his tenure at FES, he worked extensively on commons governance, conservation, land use and rural development, supporting community-led management of natural resources. He subsequently served as an Anchor and Curator at FES, focusing on the Promise of Commons initiative, policy influence and knowledge exchange, and later joined Omidyar Network India as an Entrepreneur in Residence.
His expertise spans commons, decentralised governance, conservation, land and natural resource management, rural livelihoods, biodiversity and systems thinking. He has been recognised with the Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship, the Henry Arnhold (Mulago) Conservation Fellowship and the Senior Ashoka Fellowship. He has an academic background in Agricultural Sciences and studied Forestry for Rural Management in the Netherlands.