Lakshmi Sundaram

Lakshmi is a strategic leader who nurtures global movements and builds effective partnerships between individuals, organisations and sectors coming from very different perspectives. Her work has led to tangible, sustainable and systemic changes in the fields of global health and gender equality. She has had the opportunity to lead, advocate and speak publicly on a wide range of issues – including HIV/AIDS, democracy, diagnostic technologies and girls’ rights – and to translate complicated topics into messages that resonate with community and youth activists, policy makers, donors and world leaders.

As a consultant with Lucent Consultancy, Lakshmi is currently supporting leaders and boards to develop strategies, build partnerships, strengthen learning and embed equity, diversity and inclusion. She is also on the Advisory Board of Co-Impact’s Gender Fund. She was most recently the interim Executive Director of openDemocracy, an independent global media organisation.

Previously, Lakshmi was the first Executive Director of Girls Not Brides: The Global Partnership to End Child Marriage, which she grew from a small project to a thriving global movement bringing together 1200 civil society organisations working in over 100 countries. Through this work, she is particularly proud to have supported local civil society to organise at a national level and drive change in their communities, and to have helped bring global attention and millions of dollars of new funding into the field.

Prior to Girls Not Brides, Lakshmi has had varied roles, including partnering with the Ministry of Health in Rwanda on technology initiatives for AIDS programmes, running the World Economic Forum’s global health portfolio, and supporting the development of diagnostics for various diseases at FIND, the Foundation for Innovative New Diagnostics.

Lakshmi has a BA in Biochemistry from the University of Cambridge, as well as Master of Public Health and Master of International Affairs degrees from Columbia University.