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Lucy Lake joined CAMFED in 1994, shortly after it was founded to support girls in secondary school in Zimbabwe. Over the past 30 years, Lucy has overseen the scale-up of CAMFED’s model in five African countries, supporting more than seven million children and young people to go to school — cited in Forbes, “How some of the poorest girls in the world get exactly the education they need”. One of the most profound outcomes of CAMFED’s model is its graduate Association of women leaders — now 279,000 strong — among them doctors, teachers, lawyers, business leaders, and government officials, now at the forefront of a pan-African movement for girls’ education. 

One of the most powerful examples of Lucy and the team’s collaborative approach to building and scaling movements is CAMFED’s award-winning Learner Guide initiative. It’s a structured peer support program through which young women graduates volunteer in their local schools to provide a social, emotional, and academic lifeline to girls in their communities most at risk of dropping out of education. CAMFED is now working with government ministries to further scale and embed the program.

Lucy is a founding member and former Co-Chair of the United Nations Girls' Education Initiative, a member of the High-Level Steering Committee of the Education Commission’s Workforce Initiative, and has represented CAMFED on the Advisory Board of the Global Education Monitoring Report.

In 2023, Lucy stepped aside as CAMFED’s CEO and passed the baton to Angeline Murimirwa, demonstrating the organization’s commitment to African women’s leadership in the decisions that affect their lives. She continues as an advisor to CAMFED and to other organizations, in promoting the importance of gender equality in education at every level.