Rochelle Prasad, Hon. LL.D
Rochelle Prasad works across education, policy, strategy, and the future of work, focused on a deceptively simple question: what do people actually need to succeed and what gets in the way?
She founded SPARK Foundation as a teenager after seeing how many young people were leaving school without the mentorship, leadership experiences, life skills, or access to opportunities they needed to figure out what came next. What began as a grassroots initiative grew into an international education and social impact organization reaching more than 500,000 young people, 4,000 educators, and 1,500 schools across six countries.
Her work sits between strategy and implementation. Rochelle has built and scaled programs, led teams, advised governments, and developed partnerships spanning education, business, government, nonprofits, and international institutions. Through SPARK and other initiatives, she has helped generate more than $20 million in funding and partnerships.
Today, Rochelle works across education policy and strategic initiatives, including within the United Nations system and with governments including Canada and Fiji. Her work focuses on education, youth representation, workforce development, and how institutions can better respond to the people they serve.
A teacher by training, Rochelle has taught at UC Berkeley and University Canada West, developed university curriculum, and trained more than 300 educators. Increasingly, her work explores how AI and emerging technology are reshaping education, work, institutions, and society and how people can retain meaningful agency as technology moves faster than the systems around it.
As an author and public speaker, Rochelle brings these worlds together through conversations about education, technology, leadership, policy, and the systems shaping young people's futures.
She believes education shouldn't simply prepare people for the future. It should give them the power to shape it.
Rochelle is an Honorary Doctor of Laws (LL.D.) recipient and Forbes 30 Under 30 honouree, and has been recognized with the Governor General's Award in Commemoration of the Persons Case, RBC's Top 100 Most Powerful Women in Canada, the UN Young Leader of the Year Award, and The Diana Award.
Rochelle's Story!
Rochelle has spent her career designing learning experiences that unlock potential - from classrooms across Fiji, Ecuador, Kenya, and Canada to global stages at the United Nations. Her work bridges education, policy, and real-world impact, with a growing focus on how technology is reshaping how people learn, work, and participate in society.
Grounded in the belief that learning should open doors to opportunity, not just access, she builds systems that connect classrooms to careers, and young people to real pathways in leadership, policy, and the future of work.
Whether she is teaching students, advising governments, or building youth-led initiatives, Rochelle is guided by a simple question: how can learning be made more meaningful, more equitable, and more connected to the realities young people are stepping into?
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