Mission Board – Eddie Ndopu

Eddie Ndopu

Award-winning Activist and Humanitarian

Eddie Ndopu is an award-winning, internationally-acclaimed activist, humanitarian, thinker, writer, consultant, and speaker who wasn’t expected to live past the age of five — following a surprising diagnosis at age two with Spinal Muscular Atrophy. Currently 30 years old, Ndopu has gone on to become a force to be reckoned with and has been described by MTV as “one of the most powerful disabled people on the planet.”   

In 2019, he was handpicked by Antonio Guterres, Secretary-General of the United Nations, to serve as one of seventeen eminent Advocates for the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals alongside the likes of Prime Minister Erna Solberg of Norway, Her Majesty Queen Mathilde of the Belgians, Academy award-winning Actor and Humanitarian, Forest Whitaker, and Co-founder and Chair of IMAGINE, Paul Polman. 

Ndopu is campaigning to be the first person with a physical disability to travel into outer space and ambitiously pursuing a US $1billion Global Access Fund to benefit the billion people living with disabilities globally.  

In addition to his advocacy around disability justice, Ndopu is a compelling voice for intersectionality. Having received attention from the media with headlines such as “Black, queer, disabled, and brilliant” he is setting in motion the establishment of Beyond Zero, a global social justice organization that seeks to serve those who fall through the cracks of the humanitarian and international development sector.  

Ndopu is also an Oxford-educated public policy thought-leader and intellectual who has advised Nobel Peace Prize winning organization Humanity & Inclusion, Amnesty International and UN-Women. He currently advises the World Economic Forum, the Paralympic Games and New York based biotech investment firm, RTW. He has written for TIME Magazine and been featured in Forbes and The Guardian. 

Ndopu is signed with Aevitas Literary Agency and is currently writing his debut memoir. 

I'm interested in a future Oxford Experience