Mary Sugrue is a foundational education expert, experienced program leader, and EDC Senior Technical Advisor. For over 25 years, she has designed and led successful evidence-based literacy and numeracy programs. She specializes in supporting international foundational education in low-resources contexts, including in Sub-Saharan Africa. She brings extensive expertise in interactive audio instruction (IAI); teacher professional development; multimodal learning solutions; strategic program design; curriculum development; learner-centered pedagogy; Teaching Learning Materials design and production; universal design for learning; and applied research.

Mary’s work focuses on effective learning design and digital learning. Around the world, she integrates environmental learning and emerging technologies, including AI-enabled tools, to produce engaging educational experiences. Currently, she is developing early learning content for EDC’s Start Right Now initiative, which uses structured, joyful, and play-based approaches to strengthen children’s literacy, numeracy, and science learning and promote healthy development. She co-leads EDC’s AI Community of Practice, which examines AI-related issues and fosters continuous learning.

Mary is the co-author of Towards the Design and Implementation of Comprehensive Primary and Grade Literacy and Numeracy Programs. She frequently presents her work at the annual convenings of leading organizations such as the Comparative and International Education Society. For EDC, she has blogged about literacy as a foundational human right and the important role that teachers play in communities.

Mary holds a Master of Education in ICT in Primary Education. She began her career as a primary school teacher.