Lucy Telfar Barnard is an alumna of Pearson College UWC (1988-1990). She has been volunteering with the New Zealand National Committee since 1991. After assisting with selections for some years, she took on the role of Selections Coordinator in 1998, before becoming Chair in 2008. 

In her professional life, Lucy Telfar Barnard is an environmental epidemiologist at the University of Otago, Wellington, where she gained her PhD in Public Health. She is a member of the He Kainga Oranga/Housing and Health Research programme, which won the New Zealand Prime Minister's Science Prize in 2015. She leads research on housing quality, cold-climate illness, and respiratory disease, and has also published on the health effects of climate change. She has recently contributed to the development of the World Health Organisation Healthy Housing Guidelines.

Previously, Lucy worked at the New Zealand Human Rights Commission, and was a member of the 2002 UNESCO Year for the Culture of Peace Steering Group.