Vicky Colbert

Laureate of the first edition of the Yidan Prize for Education Development (2017) and the 2013 WISE Prize for Education, Vicky Colbert is the founder and director of Fundación Escuela Nueva. Colbert is a Sociologist from Javeriana University in Colombia and pursued her graduate studies in Sociology of Education at Stanford University in the United States. In 2015, the American University of Nigeria distinguished her with an Honoris Causa Doctorate in Philosophy. She is co-author of the worldwide renowned Escuela Nueva model and was its first National Coordinator.

Colbert has pioneered, expanded, and sustained this educational innovation from many organizational spheres: as First National Coordinator of Escuela Nueva in the Ministry of Education, Director of Open and Distance University at Javeriana University, Vice Minister of Education of Colombia, UNICEF’s Education Adviser for the Latin America and Caribbean Region, and now from Fundación Escuela Nueva (FEN), an NGO she founded to ensure its quality, sustainability, and innovation.

She has been recognized with several awards and distinctions in the fields of leadership and social entrepreneurship, such as the Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship, the Clinton Global Citizenship Award, and the Kravis Prize. She has also been recognized as an Outstanding Social Entrepreneur by the Schwab Foundation and Ashoka, as well as a winner of the 2024 Jacobs Foundation Best Practice Prize and the World Technology Network. She is a member of the Board of Advisers of the Varkey Foundation and of the Board of Directors of the Fe y Alegria Movement in Colombia. She is also a member of the International Jury for the Yidan Prize Development Prize and has also been a member of the Jury for the WISE Prize in Qatar.