Lucy Lake

Lucy Lake serves as Director of Global Engagement for the Yidan Prize Foundation, leading its efforts to highlight best practice and build the global community committed to creating a better world through education. Lucy is herself a laureate of the Yidan Prize (2020), for which she was recognized for her leadership of CAMFED, an organization dedicated to girls’ education and women’s leadership in Africa.

Lucy joined CAMFED in 1994 and led its major growth to support millions of girls through school and establish a graduate network of women leaders, the CAMFED Association, now more than 300,000 strong and at the vanguard of a pan-African movement for girls’ education. Under her tenure, CAMFED’s work received wide acclaim, awarded the Hilton Humanitarian Prize and the Princess of Asturias Award for International Cooperation, and winning recognition and investment as one of the “big ideas for the world’s most urgent challenges” through the TED Audacious Project. 30 years on from when she joined, Lucy stepped aside as CEO and passed the reins to Angie Murimirwa, one of the first graduates of CAMFED’s support for girls’ education.

Lucy represents foundations on the Board of the Global Partnership for Education, a multi-stakeholder partnership and the largest global fund dedicated to transforming education in lower income countries. She also serves on the board of the Malala Fund and Advisory Council of Bridgespan Africa. Lucy is a founding member and former Chair of the United Nations Girls’ Education Initiative, and has served on the High-Level Steering Group of the Global Education Commission’s Workforce Initiative, and the Advisory Board of the UNESCO Global Education Monitoring Report. Lucy holds a degree in Human Sciences from Oxford University, is an Honorary Fellow of Wadham College in Oxford, and a Visiting Fellow of Jesus College at the University of Cambridge.