Sharon Tao is the Education Director and Team Leader of the Girls Education Challenge (GEC), the UK Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office's (FCDO) 12-year, £855 million Global Fund that aims to improve the educational opportunities of the world's most marginalized girls. The GEC is comprised of 41 projects across 17 countries in Africa and Asia and focuses on girls most at-risk of dropping out, and girls who have already dropped out or never been to school. Prior to the GEC, Sharon worked on several large-scale, FCDO-funded education programs in Uganda, Sierra Leone, Ghana, Tanzania, Nigeria, India and the Eastern Caribbean, providing technical leadership on the Gender and Inclusion and Teacher Development components of these programs. Sharon's professional focus on education, gender and social justice has been underpinned and inspired by her experience of teaching classes of 100+ students in government primary schools in Tanzania and Rwanda; and her doctoral thesis focused on teacher practice and behaviour, particularly with regard to its effects on and mediation through gender. She obtained her Ph.D. in education and international development from the Institute of Education, University College London, UK.