Frances Ferreira joined the Commonwealth of Learning (COL) as Education Specialist, Basic Education and Open Schooling in January 2007, and in 2016 she was appointed as the Senior Adviser, Women and Girls. Some of her most significant achievements at COL has been her leadership of the multi-country OER4OS initiative and COL’s GIRLS Inspire Project. She has edited and authored various publications for open schooling and Girls Inspire during the past 13 years.
Prior to joining COL Ferreira had a long and successful career of more than 25 years in the Namibian education sector where she was a teacher, school principal and later the Director of the Namibian College of Open Learning (NAMCOL). As NAMCOL’s first Chief Executive Officer she facilitated its strategic positioning nationally and internationally and she held various leadership positions, including Chair of the Namibian Open Learning Network Trust, Chair of the Adult Learning Policy Committee and Chair of the Distance Education Association of Southern Africa (DEASA).
Outside the education sector, Ms. Ferreira has followed the political aspirations that emerged during her student years at the teacher’s training college in South Africa, where she was a student leader .In 1993, she was elected as the first female mayor of Grootfontein, Namibia and in 1995, she was elected as vice president of the Association of Local Authorities in Namibia during the same time she was asked to join the Namibian delegation who attended the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing.