In today's PurposePhil Pulse newsletter edition, I am excited to share my recent exchange I had with Amy Bellinger. Amy is someone whose journey perfectly embodies the evolution from witnessing education's potential to actively transforming systems at scale. What struck me most about our conversation was how her early experiences teaching in Tanzanian and Ugandan villages continue to ground her work today as Director of the The Learning Generation Initiative at edc.org (Education Development Center).
Amy brings a rare combination of corporate strategy expertise, gained through her years as a management consultant with firms like Deloitte and IBM, and deep, lived understanding of education's transformative power from her time in rural classrooms. Her approach to systems change isn't theoretical; it's rooted in relationships, collaboration, and an unwavering belief that sustainable transformation happens when we empower the entire 'learning team' around each child.
In our conversation, Amy opens up about how motherhood has shaped her leadership style, the challenges of balancing depth versus breadth in development work, and her vision for a more collaborative education sector. Her insights on building authentic partnerships and navigating the tension between evidence-based interventions and long-term system change offer valuable lessons for anyone working in international development.
Thank you for joining this exchange, dear Amy. I'm excited to have you here. As a start, can you tell me more about what you're doing, what your role is, and how you came into education? Has your perspective changed over the years?
Thank you, Nora. I'm delighted to be here. My role is Director of the Learning Generation Initiative, which emerged from the Education Commission. The Education Commission was established by Gordon Brown in 2015 to reinvigorate the case for investments in education. We developed a report and then implemented its recommendations until a year and a half ago when we decided to close the commission.
It had been operational for seven years, considerably longer than a commission normally exists. When Liesbet Steer, the Executive Director, moved to Education Development Center, we saw an opportunity to continue the Commission's agenda. We transferred the agenda, team, and projects to Education Development Center (EDC) and renamed ourselves the Learning Generation Initiative.
The Learning Generation Initiative (LGI) maintains the same vision: that all children are in school and learning the skills they need to thrive. Our focus at LGI is empowering people within and connected to education systems, because without empowered individuals who understand what to do, we won't see sustainable change.
We do this through three areas. First, we work on developing a more collaborative education workforce, including teachers, school leaders, and others. Second, we help improve system delivery, effectively translating policy into practice. Third, we work on financing school meals because we believe children cannot learn unless they're prepared and able to learn.
Can you tell me a bit about how you entered the field of education?
I began my career as a management consultant but always knew I wanted to work in development. I had completed a geography degree and particularly enjoyed my international development module. Every three years, I decided to take a career break. The first career break, I spent living in a village in Tanzania, and the second career break in a village in Uganda, truly living with people and trying to understand their daily lives.
In Tanzania, I had the opportunity to teach English in a Tanzanian public school and also taught teenagers after school. What struck me was the profound thirst for education and its possibilities. The same was true in Uganda, where although I wasn't teaching, I would regularly visit schools to discuss education and opportunities. This thirst, combined with my mother's influence as a teacher, made the importance and value people place on education very clear to me.
When I left consulting, I applied to Ark , the hedge fund charity in the UK, partly because of its strong focus on education. Ark operates numerous Academy schools in the UK and was just beginning to explore international opportunities. I was fortunate to have had the chance to develop Ark's international education portfolio.
I believe our role is to help realize the value people place on education. The challenge is that the reality of education's value is not always manifested in practice. I feel our responsibility is to support countries as they develop the education systems they believe their citizens need to thrive.
Has your perspective changed from your village experiences in Tanzania and Uganda to your current work with the Learning Generation Initiative?
I don't believe the fundamental value of education has changed, that has actually remained a common thread. Everyone I interact with holds that strong appreciation for education, passion, and dedication. There are simply numerous challenges to overcome, and it's about finding the path forward.
What has evolved in my experience is moving from a village-level perspective to a project focus, and now to systems-level work. The progression has been toward understanding how to support governments in leading systemic change. But the core value of education in the countries we work with remains constant, as does the commitment to seeing improvement from many leaders.
You've mentioned systems change, which was one of the topics I wanted to discuss with you. I'm curious to understand how LGI approaches systems change, a term that's become quite prevalent in our space. How do you translate this concept into concrete action, and where do you see the main barriers?
There are two ways to address this question. At LGI, we've conceptualized our work around what we call a "learning teams approach." We believe the learner must be at the center of everything, and all system-related activities should place the learner at the heart.
We recognize that each learner needs support from a team: teachers, school leaders, parents, and caregivers. For system change, we believe there needs to be intentional consideration of how this team of adults works together to support learner needs at classroom, school, community, district, and national levels.
Genuine system change only occurs when there's coherence, collaboration, and a strong connection between national policy and classroom practice, with feedback loops that travel in both directions. We conceptualize everything around this alignment centered on the child's needs.
Fundamental to this is the education workforce. Our mission is to empower people because without individuals implementing necessary changes, system transformation cannot occur. This isn't just about teachers, although they're most crucial for learning outcomes. It's about how teachers are supported by school leaders, how school leaders are supported by district officials, and how agencies like teacher training institutions support this entire structure.
The second component involves system delivery. We conducted research on delivery approaches, examining whether strong implementation at scale leads to improved outcomes. We investigated whether functions like political will, prioritization, data use, and accountability improve learning outcomes. The evidence indicated these approaches were beneficial at the national level for coordination and communication, but implementation at the classroom level remained challenging.
We identified two areas that could strengthen this connection. First is data for decision-making: without information, stakeholders cannot make informed decisions about what support to provide. Second is building organizational learning cultures and effective problem-solving mechanisms within systems.
When you have committed people, strong political leadership, reliable data, and empowered stakeholders through training and development, you still need mechanisms to address inevitable problems and challenges. Building a culture that enables people to address issues themselves is critical.
Regarding financing school meals, we believe children must be ready and able to learn, which includes not being hungry. A principle of our work is connecting education with other sectors. School meals improve education while also enhancing the rural economy, nutrition, and health, there are numerous benefits. By addressing this area, we're addressing education alongside other factors that influence educational outcomes.
Thanks for those different perspectives on systems change which includes focusing on people, procedures, data information flow, and cross-sector collaboration. I'd like to follow up on the aspect of partnerships, which seem essential when working with the variety of stakeholders that you’ve mentioned previously. Have you seen successful cases or learned lessons about establishing partnerships within different layers of the education system?
As a small team, we at LGI must work in partnership. We strongly believe in collaborating with national partners who understand the context and can support governments over the long term through various transitions.
We typically select, or rather, engage in a dialogue with a local partner, though we work with both national and global partners depending on the issue. Successful partnerships require a common vision and openness to collaboration. When partnerships have been most effective, we've co-created the approach from the beginning.
For cross-country initiatives, such as a project we conducted with the Lego Foundation across three countries, we co-created the work with the three respective national partners and established regular knowledge sharing mechanisms. Continuously maintaining focus on our objectives has been essential.
Partnerships adapt and change over time, which is appropriate as the needs of partners or the governments we serve evolve. Being able to recognize when to adjust or change direction has been important. With government partners, trust and relationships are paramount, as is responsiveness to their needs.
To give you an example: in Sierra Leone, we've been working with the government since 2018. Throughout this partnership, we've conducted various types of research, analysis, and co-design. Now we're engaged in policy work. Over time, we've adapted to their evolving needs and brought in different partners, both national and global, to address those changing needs.
Great to hear those initial lessons learned, which align with my experience on partnerships as well. I'd like to move to the question of depth versus breadth of impact, namely deepening impact in specific pilots or aspects versus scaling more broadly. How do you approach this delicate balance?
It's an excellent question that we discussed frequently at Ark, where the focus was definitely on depth. At LGI, with such a small team, we can't operate at large scale, nor do we choose to work directly at the classroom level, with one exception, High Touch High Tech, an initiative where we work with partners to implement adaptive learning technology to support learners and teachers in the classroom.
For us, it's more about focus by concentrating on areas where we have expertise: education workforce, delivery approaches, and financing school meals. That said, our work can have breadth in certain contexts. For instance, we're conducting a systematic review with UNESCO-IIEP on the middle tier of education systems. This has breadth in examining the middle tier overall.
Regarding the education workforce, we achieve depth by examining multiple levels: teachers, school leaders, middle-tier officials, and community members. How you frame it affects whether it's considered depth or breadth.
This is where partnerships become crucial. We cannot and should not attempt to do everything ourselves. Our role is to support partners and governments to reach scale, serving as catalysts that provide what they need to achieve this. Being a small organization means that focus is essential for us.
It's inspiring to see how a small team can tackle significant concepts like systems change and delivery mechanisms in education. Looking ahead, what are your hopes or vision for the next five years as we approach the end of the SDG decade, and even further to the next ten years?
My hope is that more children are learning effectively. I want the investments that governments are making to translate into improved learning outcomes. I hope these investments are based on evidence of what works, finding the right balance between targeted interventions and long-term system change.
Currently, there are different approaches. Evidence-based interventions are valuable for helping students catch up, but for sustainable change, teachers and school leaders must be empowered and properly supported to lead education transformation themselves. I hope governments invest in areas we know work, such as teachers and school leaders, and that these investments yield improved learning outcomes.
Foundational learning is a major priority and necessary for everything else, but I recognize that governments also want to develop secondary education and ensure citizens have the skills they need to thrive.
For the education sector as a whole, I would like to see much more collaboration. The sector remains quite competitive, and I would love to see greater coordination among the different actors. I often consider what it must be like to be an education minister facing hundreds of different organizations presenting their ideas, many unaware of existing initiatives and not taking time to coordinate their efforts.
My hope is that governments take the lead with clear plans, and organizations support them by filling evidence or capacity gaps, all working together to deliver on the government's vision.
Thanks. That aligns with my experiences in both education and other areas, and is especially relevant for crowded donor spaces like Kenya or Sierra Leone.
Now I'd like to learn more about you as a person and leader, and your experiences. You've shared about different stages in your career, from consultancy to Ark as a school chain both in the UK and internationally, and now in development cooperation with LGI. How would you describe your leadership style, and how has it evolved over time?
I would like to ask my team this question! I hope they would say I'm a highly collaborative leader who enjoys working with others and advancing initiatives together with the team. I'm very open, flexible, and adaptable. These are qualities I've found increasingly important over time.
I'm quite a practical leader, focused on supporting the team and ensuring we produce high-quality work. I'm less of a visionary leader, that's an area for development and not my natural skillset I would say.
An aspect that has developed over time is my compassionate leadership approach. Team members experience various life challenges, and being compassionate, flexible, and adaptable has proven essential as a leader.
How has being a woman influenced your leadership style or your growth process to become a leader in this field?
It's less about being a woman and more about being a mother. Motherhood changed the tensions I’ve experienced as a leader. I've always worked diligently and strived to excel professionally and support my team. As a mother, you balance that with the emotional desire to be present for your children and support them, along with managing daily logistics.
This has shaped my leadership to be much more focused. I was always pretty focused, but motherhood made me super-prioritized. It's also made me more compassionate, flexible, and adaptable because life happens, and what's important is that your team is happy, open, and supported.
As long as they perform well, I'm not concerned about how they accomplish their work. I believe this approach is why many team members have remained with us despite the organizational changes we've experienced in recent years.
In this sector, there are many women leaders who express their leadership in various ways. I don't think there's a standard approach, as we're all individual leaders who act according to what we value. I would say I'm quite values-driven and make judgments based on what I believe is right for our work.
What recommendations would you give to young women entering the field? What would you have liked to know before moving into higher leadership positions?
I would recommend embracing opportunities as they come along. I've been fortunate in my career and have essentially followed opportunities as they've developed. Be open to possibilities while maintaining some idea of your desired direction and the type of organization you want to work with, but remain flexible and adaptable to what comes your way.
I would advise my younger self to establish clearer boundaries. It's challenging in our current environment with remote work and constant connectivity. Be clear about your boundaries, what matters to you, and prioritize accordingly.
I believe anything is possible with proper support. Being open, supportive, and collaborative with both senior leadership and your team enables you to perform effectively. It's also acceptable to pursue different careers. For instance, I value my experience as a management consultant, which provided professional skills I might not have acquired had I entered the education sector directly after my studies. Be open to learning from other sectors and consider transferable skills.
Networking is crucial. Whether you enjoy it or not, you need to connect with people, make yourself known, and put yourself forward. I would tell my younger self to be more proactive and less shy, though leaders should also help identify and promote people who might not otherwise step forward.
I would have loved to have you as a mentor as a young professional! Is there anything else you'd like to share that has occurred to you during our conversation?
Transforming education is an enormous undertaking. What I believe is missing is more peer support for leaders in the sector. As a management consultant, there were formal structures in place for connecting with peer groups. I think there's a need for more peer support in this sector where leaders could have frank, open conversations about challenges they face and their work. This is perhaps a role that you and others could play in the sector, facilitating those authentic connections and conversations.