About

In the summer of 2011, while packing up my flat in London after a year of grad school, I decided that I was done moving around for a while as I found the inability to set down roots exhausting. Flash forward to a little over a year later: I was living in a city with my closest friends, managed to find an incredible apartment, and had a job that had given me a lot of leadership opportunities. Yet, I felt like I needed something more. I wanted to help people, not from afar, but in person. I yearned to escape my desk. I wanted to visit amazing places. I tried volunteering and traveling, but the feeling only subsided for a time and then returned in full force. So at the start of 2013 I applied for the JDC’s Jewish Service Corps, a one-year fellowship with one of the world’s leading humanitarian organizations. Seven months later, I was packing up my life once again to move to Gonder, Ethiopia.

Over this next year, I will be working on JDC projects in the region focused on providing access to education, water and public health initiatives, with an emphasis on teaching English and leading programs at JDC-supported schools. In addition to my work, I plan to travel a lot throughout Ethiopia and Africa (I’ve never been before) and will blog about my experiences.

I hope this blog will serve many purposes: to educate people about the JDC’s work, to help others understand life in Gonder and Ethiopia, to provide friends, family, and curious others insight into what I am doing, and to help me digest the many, many new experiences that I know I will have on a daily basis. I’ll try to provide a little entertainment as well.

I hope you enjoy!

If you are itching to know more about me, here is a short bio:

Maggie graduated from the London School of Economics and Political Science in 2011 with a Master’s in Global Politics and Civil Society. In addition to her studies, Maggie was the editor of LSE Amnesty International Society’s first human rights journal. Maggie received her B.A. from Colgate University, where she double majored in History and Peace and Conflict Studies. While at Colgate, Maggie spent a semester interning and studying international law in Geneva, Switzerland, and three weeks the previous summer studying throughout Japan.

Maggie moved from London to New York in 2011 to work at AJC as the Director of Thanks To Scandinavia (TTS), and the Assistant Director of ACCESS NY, AJC’s young leadership program. Outside of work, Maggie volunteered as the Director of Programming at Young Professionals in Foreign Policy NY, where she worked with her programming team to create bi-monthly programs that provided young professionals with the knowledge and skills to face critical global challenges in their current and future careers.

When she needed an escape from New York City, Maggie headed back to her hometown of Kansas City. She also tries to travel outside the U.S. as much as possible, and has been to over 40 countries in the past 7 years.

Jason, the other JSC fellow, and I in front of a field of meskel flowers

The postings on this site are my own and do not necessarily represent the positions, strategies, or opinions of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee.