Jon Isham

Jon Isham is the George Adams Ellis Professor of Liberal Arts and Professor of Economics and Environmental Studies at Middlebury College, where he has taught since 1999. He is the Director of Environmental Studies, a position he also held from 2011–2014. He co-founded the Middlebury Center for Social Entrepreneurship in 2012–since evolved into Middlebury’s Innovation Hub–serving as its director from 2012–16 and again in 2019–20; and was a Fulbright Scholar at Ashesi University in 2016–17. From 2006–09 he was the Luce Professor of International Environmental Economics, during which he led the “Getting to 350” conference.

Jon teaches classes about microeconomics, environmental economics, environmental policy, and social change, including a new first-year seminar, “Capitalism, Economic Growth, and Their Discontents.” His 2005 Winter Term course, “Building the New Climate Movement,” which culminated in the “What Works? New Strategies for a Melting Planet” conference, led to the founding of Middlebury’s Sunday Night Group. His teaching has been recognized with Middlebury’s Marjorie Lamberti Faculty Appreciation Award (2005) and the Vermont Campus Compact’s Engaged Scholar Award (2006).

Jon’s research has encompassed a broad range of questions about the institutional determinants of well-being and sustainability. He is currently writing Whole Earth Finance: Beyond Bretton Woods Solutions for the 21st Century, with Frank Van Gansbeke, under contract with Cambridge University Press. He previously co-edited Ignition: What You Can Do to Fight Global Warming and Spark a Movement (Island Press, 2007) and Social Capital and Economic Development: Well-Being in Developing Countries (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2002). He has published articles in Economic Development and Cultural Change, The Journal of African Economies, The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Rural Sociology, Society and Natural Resources, The Vermont Law Review, World Bank Economic Review, and other journals; and book chapters in volumes from Ashgate Press, University Press of New England, Oxford University Press, and Cambridge University Press. He has also written public commentary for outlets including The Guardian, Grist, and The Solutions Journal.

Jon is the Vice-President of the Board of Directors of the Opera Company of Middlebury and served on the Steering Committee of Beyond Bretton, for which he helped organize the 2024 conference at Middlebury’s Bread Loaf campus. Previously, he has served on the boards of directors of the Save the Children Federation and St. George’s School. In 2025 he received the Alumni Award from New Canaan Country School, in recognition of his “outstanding contributions to education, sustainability, and social impact.”

Jon earned an AB cum laude (General Studies, concentration in Anthropology) from Harvard College in 1984; served in the Peace Corps in Benin from 1984–87; earned in 1990 an MA in International Studies from Johns Hopkins University, where he studied under Grace Goodell; worked from 1990–93 as a Research Assistant and Assistant Task Manager at the World Bank; and completed in 2000 his Ph.D. in Economics at the University of Maryland, where he studied under Roger Betancourt, Mancur Olson, and Wallace Oates. 

Jon and his wife, Tracy Himmel Isham, Senior Associate Director of the Center for Careers and Internships, live in Cornwall, VT. In his spare time, he plays hockey and (when invited) performs in operas and musicals.