Dr. Liesbet Steer is the Director of the Education Commission, chaired by former UK Prime Minister and UN Special Envoy for Global Education, Gordon Brown. She was the director of the Commission’s report The Learning Generation: Investing in Education for a Changing World, and now oversees the implementation of the Commission’s recommendations. This includes the design of the International Finance Facility for Education (IFFEd), the Education Workforce Initiative (EWI), the introduction of reform and results-based approaches, and the development of global accountability measures.
Liesbet has more than 20 years of experience in international development research and policy. Before joining the Commission, Liesbet was a Fellow at the Center for Universal Education at the Brookings Institution and Director of the Overseas Development Institute’s (ODI) flagship program on development progress, financed by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. As a fellow of ODI’s Centre for Aid and Public Expenditure, she also worked on issues of development finance, aid effectiveness, and the production and use of impact evaluations, including in education. Between 1997 and 2007, Liesbet lived and worked in Vietnam, Indonesia, Laos, and Cambodia. She directed the economic reform program for the Asia Foundation in Indonesia, a technical assistance and research program on local economic development and growth. She also worked with the World Bank and IFC on private sector reform and the design and evaluation of SME development programs in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos.
Liesbet has written widely on development finance and education, and presented in a wide range of fora and advisory panels. She currently serves on the Global Board for Generation Unlimited and the Education Outcomes Fund. Liesbet was educated at the Universities of Antwerp and East Anglia, and the London School of Economics. She holds a M.Sc. in Quantitative Economics, and Ph.D. in Development Economics.