As Executive Director, Lakshmi Sundaram is responsible for ensuring that Girls Not Brides delivers on its strategy and advances our collective efforts to end child marriage. Since joining Girls Not Brides in 2012, Lakshmi has taken the Partnership from a special project of The Elders to an independent legal organisation, and overseen its expansion to more than 700 members. She is particularly interested in broadening our understanding of effective approaches to address child marriage, and ensuring that the funding, policy and programme support are available to ensure that girls around the world can thrive.
Lakshmi is experienced in forging alliances across the public, private and NGO sectors, encouraging diverse people and groups to join forces for change. Her background is in global health partnerships, including at the World Economic Forum’s Global Health Initiative and at the Foundation for Innovative New Diagnostics in Switzerland, with Voxiva in the United States and with the Ministry of Health in Rwanda.
Lakshmi holds 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. She is a Global Leadership Fellow of the World Economic Forum. A Swiss citizen, Lakshmi is fluent in French and English, and speaks some Tamil, German and very basic Spanish.
