Advocate for Civil and Workers' Rights. A public policy consultant with decades of experience fighting for LGBTQ+ and workers' rights, Mary Beth Maxwell is a special advisor on worker power to the Open Society Foundations. She previously provided consultancy services to the Ford Foundation, The Impact Project, Georgetown Business for Impact, and Omidyar Network on the Future of Work, labor policy, and civil rights. From 2015 to 2018, Mary Beth Maxwell served as a senior executive at the Human Rights Campaign, where she oversaw its public education and programmatic initiatives focused on global LGBTQ+ justice and equality at work, school, and healthcare facilities. In addition, Maxwell is a former senior advisor with the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL). She was appointed by President Barack Obama to serve under Secretary Hilda Solis in 2009 and managed diverse cross-agency teams through her six-year DOL tenure. She also contributed to multiple policy victories for workers and functioned as a liaison to the White House and stakeholders such as think tanks and employers. Before working in government, Maxwell founded and served as executive director of American Rights at Work. She secured millions of dollars in funding from various partners for this workers' rights advocacy organization and carried out several initiatives to promote the restoration of workers' rights to collective bargaining. She previously spent seven years as a national field director at Jobs with Justice, where she co-founded its Workers Rights Board and Student Labor Action Project. Earlier in her career, Maxwell was deputy field director for NARAL Pro-Choice America and a field director for the United States Student Association. She serves on the advisory committee for the Workers Defense Project and on the New World Foundation Board. She holds a B.A. in political science, English literature, and philosophy from Marquette University and completed a fellowship for social change leaders at the Rockwood Leadership Institute.