Dr Barrel Gueye is passionate about the empowerment of youth, especially girls. She has many years of experience in teaching and research, mainly in equity and equality, social foundations of education, gender issues, project management and research appraisal. She has taught pedagogy, child and adolescent psychology, gender issues and qualitative research methods at Binghamton University, D’Youville College (Buffalo, NY) and East Stroudsburg University of Pennsylvania. Dr Gueye’s experience also includes important field research on gender and education in sub-Saharan Africa. She has coordinated the Forum of African Women Educationalists’ research programme on gender and education in Africa, based in Nairobi. She is a co-founder of the Dakar Institute.