Leonora Dowley

Leonora is the Country Director for the Varkey Foundation in Ghana, overseeing two donor funded education projects in the country. She was previously the Project Manager for Varkey Foundation’s teacher training pilot project in Ghana, which intends to improve the professional practice of 4,000 teachers in government schools over 2.5 years. Over the past year, Leonora has worked on the Varkey Foundation’s teacher training project in Uganda, and the DfID funded GEC project currently being delivered in Ghana. She is currently working with Results for Development on a landscape study of health and education innovations across West Africa. A former head of Philosophy and Religion at a London school, she has implemented successful improvement programs with students and teachers to impact educational outcomes. She is a trained teacher with a Masters degree in education, specialising in literacy, gender and childhood development, and has published work about student gender, female literacy, and learning engagement. She has a wide range of education experience, having taught in Uganda, France and Hong Kong, and currently mentors Open University students in Bangladesh who are taking courses in social development.