Abby Maxman was a long-time admirer of Oxfam America before she became its president and CEO in June 2017. Throughout her 30-year career in international aid and development, she has always been drawn to Oxfam’s underlying philosophy, “that systemic injustices keep people poor, and it’s not an accident,” says Maxman.

Maxman has dedicated her life’s work to fighting the injustice of poverty, but she didn’t always know this is how her career would unfold.

Maxman credits the Quaker school she attended as a child for exposing her to issues of social justice around the world. There, she was first confronted with shocking images from the 1984 famine in Ethiopia and institutionalized racism in apartheid South Africa. At the time, Nelson Mandela was still in prison and the HIV/AIDS epidemic was just beginning to hit the public consciousness.

Looking back, Maxman believes these events were seminal moments in her own awareness and connection with international issues. But even as she studied for a degree in political science and history, she wasn’t sure what she wanted to do.

“But I knew I had this vague, probably uninformed, interest of wanting to make a difference in the world,” she says.

Then, one rejection changed the course of her life. Maxman’s heart was set on a research fellowship in Latin America after college. But when someone advised her not to count on only one thing, she half-heartedly applied for the Peace Corps, as well. She was devastated when she didn’t get the fellowship. However, the Peace Corps wanted her, and she was soon on her way to Lesotho as an agriculture and community development worker.

Read the full story about Abby Maxman, Oxfam America President and CEO by Joanne Lu at Global Washington.