Lucy Y. Recio

For more than 15 years, Lucy Recio has built campaigns, programs, and systems to inform education policy and shape public understanding and discourse around the need to transform our nation’s education system.

A community organizer, strategist, and resource mobilizer, Lucy’s steadfast passion is fueled by creating safe, affirming spaces where the voices, expertise, and experiences of directly impacted individuals drive equity and power-building conversations in the education sector. She has played instrumental roles in shaping public narratives around prenatal to career education, helped secure more than $54 billion in COVID-19 relief dollars for the child care sector, and has helped grow a national movement of early childhood educators invested in shaping the policies and systems impacting their profession.

She has held leadership roles at the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC), the National Black Child Development Institute (NBCDI), and the Office of the Bronx Borough President in New York City, as well as supported numerous national, state and local organizations advance their policy, advocacy, communications, and movement building strategies through her consulting firm, Third Bloom Consulting, LLC.

Invested in nurturing multiple vehicles for strengthening advocate capacity and skill, Lucy serves as an Adjunct Lecturer at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater for their online Masters Program in Early Childhood EducationPolicy, on the advisory board for The Trust for Learning, on the Expert Advisory Committee for the Early Educator Investment Collaborative, and on the Innovation Committee for ACCA Child Development Center, a full-day, year-round, comprehensive early learning program in Northern Virginia. She has previously taught at Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy and lectured at New York University, the University of Maryland, Montgomery College, and other institutions of higher education.

Lucy holds a master’s in public administration, a distinction she received as a National Urban Fellow, as well as a bachelor’s degree in international culture and politics and a certificate in justice and peace studies from Georgetown University’s Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service. Passionate about the connection between our individual healing and our collective thriving, Lucy’s work is also informed by her certifications in somatic embodiment, nervous system regulation strategies, and healing-centered education, as well as her professional training in ecotherapy, mindfulness, and cultural wayfinding.

Born on the beautiful island of the Dominican Republic, raised in the heart of the South Bronx, and nurtured in her adulthood by the bold and tenacious spirit of Washington, DC, Lucy is grateful to still call each of these places home, a joy she shares alongside her partner and more than 40 plant babies.