Laura Ochoa Foschini

Laura is the Lead, Early Years in the Foundation’s Knowledge for Policy Team. She brings more than 10 years of experience in public policy design and implementation, early childhood development, programme management, coordination, partnership building and strategic communications. She works to facilitate the conditions for children to develop and thrive regardless of their context.

Before joining the Foundation, Laura served as Deputy Director for Early Childhood Development Services in the Colombian Institute of Family Welfare (ICBF) where she was responsible for planning, programme design, quality improvement, monitoring and evaluation of early childhood care and education services in home-, centre- and community-based settings, in urban and rural areas of Colombia. She won the Colombian government’s High Management Award in Public Service in 2020 for her role in co-leading the organisation’s response to the Covid-19 crisis, rapidly providing digital learning, food and psychosocial support to almost 1.7 million children and their families. She has worked on developing a new home-visiting programme for rural areas, driving evidence-based innovations to improve the quality of early years services, and the professional development of teachers. She has also worked with conflict-affected communities.

Laura holds a Master of Public Administration from Columbia University, a Master of Science in Development Management from the London School of Economics and Political Science, and a Bachelor’s Degree in Business Administration from Universidad de la Sabana.