Annie Ly

Title: China Development Coordinator
Interesting Fact: Annie grows her hair out 10 inches or more every two years to donate to Locks of Love.

Hailing from Olympia, Washington, Annie Ly joined the team at Free The Children in 2007. She works in the bustling city of Beijing, coordinating trips and engaging youth in volunteer and leadership work all over China. She is a graduate of New York University's Gallatin School of Individualized Study, with a bachelor's degree in international development and education.

Throughout high school, Annie devoted much of her time to service and leadership. She was chosen as a Washington State Scholar in 2003, for which she received a full scholarship to any in-state college or university. Instead, she chose to attend NYU and experience the pulsing energy of Manhattan. During her last semester there, Annie was happily immersed in an interdisciplinary course called Literacy in Action, in which she learned more about individuals' struggles with literacy and how to help foster reading and writing skills. This course also offered Annie the exciting opportunity to serve as a student teacher in the adult writing class at University Settlement Society, where she worked with literacy students from the immigrant and economically diverse community of Manhattan's Lower East Side. Annie considers her experience at USS to be one of the highlights of her university career. The students and teachers she met there remain inspirations for the work she does today.

Annie values spending time with her family and close friends whenever she’s back in North America. Outside of work, she enjoys reading, being active, experimenting with photography and trying anything new and exciting. Determined to retain her youthful idealism, Annie strives to replace hostility and isolation with peace and community, wherever she goes. When thinking about her goals, she keeps the words of the late Kurt Vonnegut in mind: “What you can become is the miracle you were born to be through the work that you do.”

Email: annie@leaderstoday.com