Vicky Colbert

Vicky Colbert (born Clara Victoria Colbert de Arboleda; 1948/1949) is a Colombian social entrepreneur.

She has served as Colombia's Vice-Minister of Education, She has won numerous awards for her work. In 2013 she received the Wise Prize for Education from the Qatar Foundation and in September 2017 she won the Yidan Prize for Education Development from the Yidan Prize Foundation.

Life Colbert came from a family with a strong interest in education reform. Her godfather had been Colombia’s minister of education, and her mother was a teacher who also founded teacher training colleges. Her father was an officer in the U.S. Navy.

A Ford Foundation scholarship allowed her to study comparative education as a graduate student at Stanford University. She then returned to Colombia where “I wanted to tackle basic education and work with the poorest of the poor schools, the isolated schools.”