Roxanne Joyal

Roxanne Joyal is a founding member of Free The Children and Me to We. A former parliamentary page in the Canadian House of Commons, her involvement with development work began at a young age, spending six months in the Klong Toey slum of Bangkok, Thailand, where she cared for mothers and children afflicted with AIDS.

Roxanne graduated with distinction from Stanford after completing a degree in international relations. Upon winning a coveted Rhodes Scholarship, she went on to complete a law degree at Oxford University with an emphasis on family and labour law. Roxanne completed her legal training by clerking for the Supreme Court of Canada in 2005.

Roxanne leads Free The Children's social and economic empowerment initiatives in Kenya, Tanzania, Ghana, Sierra Leone and South Africa. She also heads Free The Children's micro-lending initiative in Kenya, which seeks to empower women through micro-enterprise.

In her work with Me to We, Roxanne established the Kenya School of the Savannah, a first-of-its-kind facility, designed to educate and engage youth and adults through international volunteer adventures.

Roxanne, a French-Canadian, has been featured as "Faces of the Future: 100 Young Canadians to Watch" in Maclean's magazine, and she is an Action Canada Fellow. In 2005, Roxanne was selected by the Women's Executive Network?s Top 100: Canada's Most Powerful Women. Her work has been extensively covered by the CBC, the Globe and Mail, the Ottawa Citizen and the Winnipeg Free Press.