Ellen Chigwanda holds a PhD in Development Studies and has over two decades of experience as a development practitioner working at the intersection of climate change, girls’ education, gender and resilience. She is Senior Technical Advisor for Education and Climate Change at CARE Zimbabwe and Project Director of the CARE Zimbabwe–Brookings Center for Universal Education collaborative research partnership on education and climate change.
Ellen was a 2016 Echidna Global Scholar at the Brookings Institution, where she developed a framework for building resilience to climate change through girls’ education, and was selected as a 2019 Obama Foundation Africa Leader.
She has designed and supported girls’ education and adolescent empowerment initiatives across several African and Asian countries and has worked as a gender and social development advisor for organisations including UN Women and the SADC Parliamentary Forum.
Her current research focuses on climate-resilient education systems and the agency of young people, particularly adolescent girls, in responding to climate change. Her current CARE–Brookings work spans five countries in Eastern and Southern Africa and is intended to inform regional and global approaches to climate-resilient education systems.