For Lydiah, 8B’s mission is personal. 8B Education Investments was born from Lydiah’s time developing strategy and innovation with global implications. A scalable market-based solution investing in African human capital is necessary in a set of tools aiming to accelerate African prosperity and sustainable development. Lydiah and her team are determined to meet African problems with a critical mass of world-class African solvers and ecosystem builders.

In the two decades since she first applied to her undergraduate studies, Lydiah has watched colleagues, friends, and family and African students admitted to and attending prestigious colleges cut short their studies and their ambitions, as necessary funding failed to materialize. Over the past 15 years, Lydiah has worked on a wide range of global policy agendas at organizations such as the World Bank, the Executive Office of the UN Secretary-General, the World Health Organization, and the International Center for Transitional Justice. Lydiah led the UN’s collaboration with the World Bank on the Global Concessional Finance Facility, an innovative financing window for refugee-hosting communities.

Lydiah holds a doctorate in politics from the University of Oxford, and additional degrees from Oxford and Cornell University. She splits her time between NYC and New York’s Finger Lakes. She has run the New York and Paris marathons and sometimes helps her husband’s efforts to share with the world the virtues of biodynamic viticulture and cool-climate wines.