Location Washington, District of Columbia, United States Regions Washington DC Metro Area, Southern US Gender Female Also Known As Mary Beth Maxwell
Website newwf.org/people/mary-beth-maxwell/ LinkedIn View on LinkedIn X (Twitter) View on X
Mary Beth Maxwell has more than 25 years of policy and social change leadership experience at the national level. During her career in government and the nonprofit sector, she has championed justice for workers, economic and racial justice, and equality for the full diversity of the LGBTQ+ community.
Early in her career, Maxwell worked as a
national field director at Jobs with Justice, where she co-founded the Student Labor Action Project and Workers Rights Board. The national workers' rights coalition tripled in staff and experienced a fourfold increase in local affiliates under her leadership.
Mary Beth Maxwell next served as founding executive director of American Rights at Work (ARAW) from 2003 to 2009. She launched the think tank that led the charge in modernizing U.S. labor laws and returning collective bargaining rights to American workers. By building consensus among stakeholders, her work positioned the long-neglected issue of labor law reform at the top of the national policy agenda.
Maxwell left the nonprofit sector to join the Obama administration as senior advisor to the Secretary of Labor and ultimately served as principal deputy assistant secretary for policy in the Department of Labor (DOL). She functioned as a liaison to the White House and helped achieve policy victories in areas such as minimum wage and overtime, labor standards for homecare workers, and equal treatment in the workplace for LGBTQ+ individuals.
Maxwell later spent three years as an SVP at the Human Rights Campaign advocating for LGBTQ equality. She returned to her work in labor with a Fellowship on the Future of Workers to document and distill lessons learned by workers' rights advocates and former Obama appointees, to inform future policy making and served as a strategic consultant on labor policy and workers’ rights.
More recently, Maxwell was also a member of the DOL Personnel Team for the Biden-Harris Transition. She currently serves as special advisor to the Open Society Foundations, where she provides guidance in grantmaking strategies, including investments in the intersection of racial and worker justice, and labor policy and advocacy.
