Board Member
Pearl Pillay is a youth development specialist based in Johannesburg, South Africa. She is the Managing Director of Youth Lab, a national youth development organisation that aims to mainstream youth participation in community development and policy making.  

She holds a Masters Degree in Political Studies from Wits University with a focus on youth participation in policy making and is currently a PhD candidate, focusing on youth and elections.  

Pearl has worked in different countries around Africa, training public officials on how to make their policies more beneficial for young people. In 2015, she was selected as one of the recipients of the 2015 Mandela Washington Fellowship. She has also been featured on the Mail and Guardian’s list of Top 200 young South Africans. Through her work in youth engagement, Pillay has been included on Fast Company SA’s Top 20 Under 25 List. She has also worked with the National Democratic Institute (US), being deployed to election observation missions in Liberia and Tunisia.  

Pearl has been featured in publications such as The Daily Maverick and The Mail and Guardian, particularly writing about politics, race, social movements and Feminism and has published academic work on entrepreneurship and Black Economic Empowerment. Through her extensive work in youth development and policy, she was most recently published in the Oxford Handbook of Governance and Public Management for Social Policy, with a chapter on Youth Participation in African Social Policy and Governance. In recognition of her work, Pearl was featured in Forbes Africa’s women to watch 2021.  

In 2021, Pearl was appointed as a board member of the National Youth Development Agency by President Cyril Ramaphosa. In the same year, she was also appointed by the President to serve on the National Planning Commission as the National Planning Commissioner responsible for youth development. Most recently, in 2023, Pearl was appointed to serve on the board of WESSA, the Wildlife and Environmental Society of South Africa.