Azlina Kamal is the Education Specialist for UNICEF in Malaysia. She leads the education section and provides technical guidance for the strategic development, implementation and evaluation of education programmes within the country programme. She seeks opportunities to accelerate innovation for learning and to leverage on government and private sector partnerships for system strengthening, for capacity building, and for greater engagement and advocacy. Besides focusing on improving learning outcomes, Azlina’s work revolves around ensuring equity and inclusion especially for children who are marginalised, disadvantaged, excluded.

Inspired by Foucault’s idea that not everything is bad but that everything is dangerous and we therefore always have something to do, Azlina is interested in the development of politically and socially contextualised approaches to educational leadership, social justice and policy development and engagement. She graduated with distinction from the University of Kent, and (UCL) Institute of Education London specialising in Education Leadership and Management, and was a recipient of the British Chevening Scholarship.

Before joining UNICEF, Azlina worked in various capacities at the Ministry of Education in Malaysia, first as a teacher, then lecturer, moving on to teacher education, leadership training and policy/curriculum development.

At a personal level, Azlina is deeply drawn to existentialism, post-Impressionism and the Japanese philosophy of ‘wabi-sabi’.