Leonora Dowley is a specialist in education and international development, with a focus on girl's education and education for sustainability. She is currently working on an FCDO-funded education system improvement project with the Ministry of Education in Ethiopia, and as head of strategic partnerships for the #LearningPlanet initiative at the Learning Planet Institute in Paris, a global alliance of educational stakeholders working to address the SDGs through education. She was previously chief operating officer for Aqua Africa, a social impact water company operating in West Africa, and prior to that head of partnerships in the UK and country director for the Varkey Foundation in Ghana, where she was responsible for large-scale donor-funded education pilot projects to improve the professional practice of teachers and school leaders, and learning outcomes for students, including displaced children. A former head of philosophy and religion at a London school, Leonora has implemented successful improvement programs with students and teachers to impact educational outcomes. She is a trained teacher with a master's degree in education, specializing in literacy, gender and childhood development, and has published work about student gender, female literacy, and learning engagement.