Ms. Suzanne Grant Lewis was appointed Director at IIEP in 2014. In this position she provides strategic vision and leadership for the Institute, develops strategic partnerships and mobilises resources, and provides oversight of the staff, financial resources, programme and administration of IIEP Paris, Dakar and Buenos Aires.
She has over twenty-five years of experience in improving educational opportunities in the developing world, particularly in education policy and planning in Africa. In 2011, she helped launch the International Education Funders Group, a new collaborative of over 50 foundations, whose purpose is to help private donors play a catalytic role in advancing Education for All. Prior to this, Ms. Grant Lewis directed the Partnership for Higher Education in Africa, the initiative of seven private US foundations to strengthen African universities.
As a Harvard University faculty member (1997-2006) she co-developed and directed the International Educational Policy Programme, a skills-based Master's degree programme. She also taught postgraduate courses on gender inequalities in education and on education planning and policy-making in international settings.
Ms. Grant Lewis has experience in designing and managing applied educational research programmes across many contexts and has published works for a wide range of audiences on participation in school governance, democratic policy-making in education, funding trends in education internationally, among many others.
She has lived in the USA, Kenya, Tanzania, Namibia, Malawi, and France.
Education
- PhD, Stanford University
Publications
- Accomplishments of the Partnership for Higher Education in Africa, 2000-2010. Report on a decade of collaborative foundation investment. With Jonathan Friedman and John Schoneboom. New York: New York University, 2010.
- “Foundations should invest in higher level intellectual capital”, Alliance Magazine (March 2009).
- “Technocratic School Governance and South Africa’s Quest for Democratic Participation” (2007) with Jordan Naidoo in School Decentralization in the Context of Globalizing Governance, edited by Holger Daun. London: Springer Netherlands: 133-158.
- “On Teaching for Social Change: Creating a Bridge between Academia and Practice” (2006) in International Education in the Millennium: Towards Access, Equity and Quality, edited by Benjamin Piper, Sarah Dryden-Peterson, and Young-Suk Kim. Cambridge: Harvard Education Review: 305-312.
- “School Governance and the Pursuit of Democratic Participation: Lessons from South Africa” with Jordan Naidoo (2006) International Journal for Educational Development. 26 (2006) 415–427.
- Education in Africa. Broomall, PA: Mason Crest, 2006. Volume in African Issues Series edited by Robert I. Rotberg. [Reference book for US middle and high schools.]
- “Whose Theory of Participation? School Governance Policy and Practice in South Africa” (2004) with Jordan Naidoo. Current Issues in Comparative Education. Vol. 6 (2).
- “Educational De/Centralisation and the Quest for Equity, Democracy and Quality” (2004) with Shireen Motala in Changing Class. Education and Social Change in South Africa since 1994, edited by Linda Chisholm. Cape Town: Human Sciences Research Council Publishers and Zed Press.
- Informing Reform. Namibian Research to Inform Education Policy and Practice (editor), Volume 1 and 2. Windhoek: Namibian Educational Research Association, 2002.
- “Education in Africa” (1999) in Encarta Africana edited by Kwame Anthony Appiah and Henry Louis Gates. Microsoft Corporation
- “Promoting Democratic Processes in Educational Decision Making: Reflections from Namibia’s First 5 Years” with Nahas Angula (1997). International Journal of Education Development. Vol. 17, No. 3.
- How Much Do Namibia's Children Learn in School? Findings from the 1992 National Learner Baseline Assessment. With Bruce Fuller and Haiyan Hua. Windhoek: New Namibia Books, 1994.
- Microcomputers in African Development: Critical Perspectives. Co-edited with Joel Samoff. Boulder: Westview Press, 1992.