Lyric Thompson

From attending her first environmental justice rally with her parents at just 10-years to becoming one of the Gender Equality Top 100 by the public policy platform Apolitical, Lyric Thompson is working toward a world where women and girls can live happy and healthy lives, free of abuse and violence. 

Thompson leads the ICRW’s formulation of evidence-based policy recommendations and manages the institution’s advocacy efforts with members of congress, state agencies, the White House, and internationally. In 2019, she was nominated by Governor Roy Cooper to the North Carolina Council for Women, where she works alongside other women across the state to advise the Governor, the principal State departments, and the State legislature on issues impacting women in North Carolina. 

A fearless advocate for women and girls around the world, Thompson brings more than ten years of experience in global gender and development issues. Asked what has been the most significant impact of her advocacy efforts, she points to the global and U.S. campaigns she leads to end child marriages— including coalition work with Girls Not Brides USA and the Coalition to End Gender-Based Violence Globally. Thompson defines child marriage as a marriage where the bride, groom, or both are below the age of 18. She emphasizes that the vast majority of these child marriages occur with girls under age 18, and they are most often married to much older men. 

Thompson says, “child marriage is an excellent example of how the power of data has helped us identify and map one of the leading development challenges and human rights abuses, even right here in the U.S.” Unpacking some of the challenges women and girls face in North Carolina, she points to the state’s law that allows children as young as 14 to marry with parental and judicial consent. Thompson emphasizes the need for governments, including state legislatures across the U.S., to have clear and consistent legislation that establishes 18 as the minimum age of marriage, and ensures that parental consent or other exceptions such as pregnancy are not used to force girls into marriage. She says, “child marriage is a harmful practice that deprives girls of their right to choose if, whom, and when to marry and whether and what type of family to create.” 

Occurring across regions, religions, and cultures, child marriages affects every aspect of a girl’s life and poses tremendous barriers to global social and economic development. As Thompson puts it, girls who marry early have little access to education and economic opportunities, face a higher risk of experiencing dangerous, life-threatening complications in pregnancy, suffering domestic and sexual violence, and contracting sexually-transmitted infections. Thompson is committed to providing policy and program solutions that will begin to chart a path of action that honors women and girl’s rights and achieves gender equality, beginning by ending child marriages. In 2016, she was a principal architect of a successful campaign to get the United States to launch the world’s first Strategy to Empower Adolescent Girls, launched by Secretary of State John Kerry, for which she was asked to represent the United States on the U.S. Delegation to the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women and honored by the Professional Women in Advocacy Association for excellence in a campaign of women serving women.