Lucy Montgomery

Lucy Montgomery joins the Ford Dorsey Master’s in International Policy program after five years in Washington, D.C., working on foreign policy and international development across the government and nonprofit sectors. Most recently, she served as an Africa analyst for the U.S. government, where she advised senior officials on political, economic, and security developments across sub-Saharan Africa. Previously, she managed programs at the National Democratic Institute that advanced women’s political participation and legislative accountability in Albania and North Macedonia as both countries pursued European Union accession, and she helped secure more than $20 million in donor funding.

 At Stanford, Lucy intends to focus on economic development in emerging economies, examining how external aid and private capital can work with local institutions to deliver growth that reaches women and the poorest communities. Her passion for development policy stems from the fall of Kabul in 2021, which led her to ask why so much well-intentioned engagement fails the people it is meant to serve. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from Whitman College, where she earned a minor in Rhetoric, Writing, and Public Discourse and focused on mass atrocity prevention and human rights, and a certificate in Business, International Relations, and the Political Economy from the London School of Economics and Political Science.