Laura joined the Edge Future Learning team in 2020 as Strategy and Partnerships Manager with seven years’ work experience in Education, Social Innovation & Entrepreneurship, and Communications. With an M.A. in Social Innovation from the University of Cambridge, and a B.A. in Linguistics and International Studies from Duke University, Laura’s background sits broadly in the social sciences and humanities.
Passionate about empowering all young people to be and become changemakers, Laura began on her mission at DoSomething.org, a New York-based, global youth social action organisation with five million active members. Following this, she began working in education as an outdoor educator in Los Angeles through the Garden School Foundation – teaching a range of topics from climate change and environmental sciences to sustainability and nutrition. Alongside teaching, she worked with SIMA, the largest online catalogue of curated social impact films, with the aim of inspiring young people to lead change in their communities.
This work led her to Ashoka – the oldest and largest network of social entrepreneurs – where she spent five years leading their Empathy Education and Young Changemakers initiatives aimed at transforming education systems for the twenty-first century. In this role, she led the search, selection, and management of over 90 Changemaker Schools – some of the most diverse and innovative schools in the United States – working with them to re-define notions of success; transform their curricula to include skills like empathy, creativity, collaboration, and youth leadership; help them seed an organisation-wide culture of agency, innovation, and learning; and establish systems and processes that support these values and practices.
Alongside this work, she completed her Master’s in Social Innovation from the Cambridge Judge Business School, taking advantage of the dissertation process to explore the intersection of her two biggest professional passions: education and social innovation.
