Maggi Alexander has more than 20 years of experience focused on improving access to quality education, health, and economic opportunities for low-income children and their families in more than 30 countries. She has extensive experience building partnerships and alliances that cut across traditional divides and has worked in the philanthropic, nonprofit, corporate and public sectors. Alexander’s experience in organizational development spans from the early start-up process to achieving scale and sustainability. She is passionate about turning great ideas into reality.
Prior to joining ImagineNations Group, Alexander served as program director for Education and Learning with the W.K. Kellogg Foundation in Battle Creek, Mich. In this role, she provided leadership and vision in program conceptualization, design, planning, management, coordination, communication, evaluation, policy, and learning from programming efforts to help vulnerable children and their families thrive. She co-led the New Options for Youth initiative focused on alternative pathways to employment for high school dropouts. In addition, she contributed to the overall strategic direction for the Foundation during a time of significant organizational change.
Prior to joining the Kellogg Foundation, Alexander founded New Generations Consulting to assist foundations, nonprofits, and government agencies in their work affecting children and youth. Previously, she completed two terms of employment with the International Youth Foundation (IYF) of Baltimore, Md., serving as manager of new country partnerships where she helped to establish or to partner with independent, national, grantmaking foundations in southern Africa, Latin America, Middle East, Asia-Pacific Rim and East Central Europe. After working two years as a program officer in early childhood development with the Fetzer Institute of Kalamazoo, Mich., she returned to IYF to become the director of international programs for the global alliance of workers and communities. In this position she was responsible for developing the overall program strategy aimed at improving the conditions and future opportunities for young assembly line workers in China, India, Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam.
Alexander obtained her master’s degree in international economics and Latin American studies from Johns Hopkins University, School of Advanced International Studies, in Washington, D.C., and Bologna, Italy. She received a bachelor’s degree in Third World studies from Tulane University, New Orleans. Earlier, she studied Third World demography and social/economic issues at the London School of Economics and Political Science. During her academic studies, Alexander was awarded the Charles E. Dunbar Fellowship in Political Science, Thomas J. Watson Fellowship, Olmstead Fellowship and Hewlett Mexican Fellowship. She is the mother of two children, Matthew, age 8, and Madeleine, age 10.