Lakshmi Sundaram, Global health & gender equality expert
Lakshmi Sundaram
La Grande Boissière, 1997
Global health & gender equality expert
United Kingdom
Learn more about me :
I am now based in London and stepped down in 2019 as the first Executive Director of Girls Not Brides, a global partnership to end child marriage. Since then, I have been taking some time to breathe, reflect, explore new opportunities and - thanks to Covid-19 - subject my two small children to some very poor homeschooling.
I have been lucky enough to focus my career so far on promoting gender equality and global health, by nurturing social movements and supporting effective partnerships between individuals, organisations and sectors who may not necessarily see eye-to-eye. I have had the opportunity to lead, advocate and speak publicly on many topics - from AIDS to diagnostics to child marriage - and to translate complicated issues into messages that resonate with different groups, including community and youth activists, policymakers, donors and world leaders.
There are so many memories of Ecolint! Some of my favourite (albeit particularly nerdy) memories are linked to the Student's League of Nations: visiting embassies around Geneva, poring over piles of national propaganda to get into character, feeling nervous walking into the UN and seeing real diplomats in the audience, finding ways to liven up the sometimes boring debates (I had fun banging the podium with a shoe one year).
Because of Ecolint, I am ‘rooted in un-rootedness’ - my sense of self isn’t defined by a particular place, and I can feel at home simultaneously everywhere and nowhere.
Ecolint didn’t just give me a world-class academic education. It gave me the skills and confidence to dream big, try new things, question my own assumptions and biases, and connect on a deeply personal level with people from all walks of life.
I wish the younger Lakshmi had the self-awareness to understand her incredible privilege, the wisdom to recognise her power to challenge injustice, and the courage to overcome her fears of ‘rocking the boat’ or ‘saying the wrong thing’.
My words of wisdom for Ecolint students: appreciate your privilege, and use it to change the world around you. It doesn’t have to be big or flashy - courageously calling out our own relatives or friends when they make seemingly innocuous racist, homophobic or sexist comments can go a long way in changing our communities and spreading the values that drew us to Ecolint in the first place.