Anne Lynam Goddard

Anne Lynam Goddard has been a passionate voice for protecting the world’s most vulnerable individuals and communities for the past 40 years.

Goddard began her career in the Peace Corps, living in a mud house in Kenya and traveling among remote villages by motorbike. After earning a master’s degree in public health from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, she joined the international humanitarian organization CARE and lived and worked overseas for almost 20 years, serving in a variety of roles focused on maternal and child well-being in Somalia, Bangladesh, Indonesia, and Egypt.

In May 2022, Goddard retired from ChildFund International, a child-focused development organization, after serving as its president and CEO for 15 years, the second longest serving president after the organization’s founder. At ChildFund, Goddard drew on her personal experiences overseas and deep industry knowledge to direct the organization’s efforts to help children find and create greater opportunity, hope, and self-sufficiency. Building on the organization’s 80+ year history, Goddard implemented strategies that expanded and deepened ChildFund’s global efforts to advance child protection and improve children’s health, education, and economic conditions reaching more than 16 million children and family members annually. Strategies increased organizational technical capabilities, strengthened local partnerships, diversified private and institutional fundraising, expanded advocacy efforts globally, and rebranded ChildFund.

Goddard is active in her own community and in other nonprofit organizations. She has served on numerous boards of directors including InterAction, the Basic Education Coalition, the Richmond Forum, and the U.S. Global Leadership Coalition. Goddard also was appointed to the federal Advisory Committee on Voluntary Foreign Aid, served on the executive advisory committee for the University of Richmond’s Robins School of Business, and was the first female chair of the Forum Club of Richmond in its nearly 100-year history. In 2009, Goddard received an honorary Ph.D. from Assumption College (MA). She was voted “Influential Woman of the Year” in 2011 by Virginia’s Lawyers Media and was a 2013 honoree of the YWCA’s Outstanding Women’s Awards for nonprofit management.

Goddard resides in Richmond, VA. She is married with two children and four granddaughters.