Lucy Bassett is an expert with more than 15 years of experience in humanitarian and development programming connected to the needs of children, caregivers, and their community (early childhood development, education health, nutrition and social protection). An Education and Social Protection Specialist with the World Bank for ten years directly prior to joining the faculty at the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy, her practitioners’ perspective is further grounded by previous work at UNICEF, the World Food Programme, Save the Children and the international Food Policy Research Institute.

Over the course of her career, Lucy has worked with governments in low- and middle-income countries in both development and humanitarian contexts to expand access to quality education, nutrition, and social protection services, particularly for poor and marginalized children and their families. Currently, Lucy is leading a new research agenda on early childhood development in humanitarian contexts and is working with a multisectoral coalition to provide services to refugee children and families on the US/Mexico border. She also focuses on improving education systems, especially ensuring quality at the pre-primary and primary levels, and has contributed to the development of a global measurement tool to assess children’s learning and development outcomes and the quality of learning environments. Prior to that, Lucy worked on projects to increase the participation of Roma children in preschool in Serbia, provide cash transfers and nutrition services to poor families in Honduras, and improve social service delivery after the earthquake in Haiti. Lucy also has expertise in designing social protection programs to contribute to improved nutrition, food security, and early childhood development outcomes and in monitoring the effectiveness of such programs. In addition her work in international development, Lucy has been engaged in local early education policy and teacher training. She has lectured at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University and at Boston University.