Ms. Margaret J. McKelvey
Margaret McKelvey hails from Rochester, New York where she grew up in Grace United Methodist Church. She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in French from Duke University, and a Master of Arts degree from Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies. She has made the Washington, DC area her home since 1975.
Margaret's over 42 years of service with the U.S. government began with the Peace Corps in Côte d'Ivoire, West Africa, and included seven years with USAID's Office of U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance and thirty-four years with the State Department's Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration where she was the Director for Refugee Assistance in Africa. Traveling to all parts of the African continent to monitor aid to refugees, Margaret saw the urgent needs for education and good governance.
Margaret is a member of Foundry United Methodist Church in Washington, DC, and visited Africa University in 2006 with Foundry's Volunteers in Mission team. Having heard in 2017 that Africa University was planning to start a refugee and migration studies program, she was inspired to endow a scholarship in the Institute of Peace, Leadership, and Governance for a graduate student who either is or has been a refugee. Margaret hopes that the youth of Africa will carry on enlightened humanitarian policies even as migration and refugee pressures grow. She further believes that Africa University can play a key role in this regard.