Lucy Recio

For more than 15 years, Lucy Recio has built campaigns, programs, and systems to inform education policy and shape public understanding and discourse around the need to transform the education system within the United States. A community organizer and resource mobilizer, Lucy’s steadfast passion is fueled by creating safe, affirming spaces where the voices, expertise, and experiences of directly impacted individuals drive equity and power building conversations in the education sector. She has played instrumental roles in shaping public narratives around prenatal to career education, helped secure more than $54 billion in COVID-19 relief dollars for the child care sector in the United States, and has grown a national movement of early childhood educators invested in shaping the policies and systems impacting their profession.

Lucy has held leadership roles at the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC), the National Black Child Development Institute (NBCDI), and the Office of the Bronx Borough President in New York City, as well as supported numerous state and local organizations advance their policy, advocacy, communications, and movement building strategies as a consultant. Invested in nurturing multiple vehicles for growing advocate capacity and skill, she also serves as an Adjunct at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater for their online Early Childhood Education Policy Masters Program and has previously taught at Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy.  She holds a master’s in public administration, a distinction she received as a National Urban Fellow, as well as a bachelor’s degree in international culture and politics with a certificate in justice and peace studies from Georgetown University’s Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service. Born on the beautiful island of the Dominican Republic, raised in the heart of the South Bronx in New York City, and nurtured in her adulthood by the bold and tenacious spirit of Washington, DC, Lucy is grateful to call each of these places home.