Lauren Bradford is the director of global partnerships at Foundation Center. She joined the organization to create a global strategy for developing and managing bilateral and multilateral partnerships that are instrumental in fulfilling the organization's vision to build a global data and knowledge base for philanthropy, strengthen and connect the philanthropic sector to the global development ecosystem, and achieve more effective grant making and development outcomes. Prior to joining Foundation Center, Lauren was with the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development's (OECD) Development Assistance Committee (DAC) where she advised and coordinated the OECD Post-2015 Task Team and supported the work on financing for development including Total Official Support for Sustainable Development (TOSSD). Upon her initial move to the US she joined the World Bank, looking at how best to leverage land to structure urban regeneration private-public partnerships. Lauren began her career in strategic urban planning in Australia before transitioning to the United Nations Resident Coordinators Office in Timor-Leste, where she worked on Millennium Development Goal progress and UN Country Team coordination before joining the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization's (UNESCO) World Heritage Center in Paris. With degrees in both urban planning and international development, Lauren has expertise in strategy and program development and the ability to take technical information and make it digestible for a range of partners and audiences by looking at the big picture while also understanding the finer detail to search for synergies and natural points of connectivity. Lauren's focus is on the global development framework and its relationship to data and knowledge, including the creation and implementation of the Millennium Development Goals, the Sustainable Development Goals, and the financing of the 2030 development agenda.
