UMBrella Speaker Series

Jody Olsen, PhD, MSW ’72, a former visiting professor at the University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMB) who was director of its Center for Global Education Initiatives for eight years, served as Peace Corps director from 2018 to 2021.

In March 2020, because of the COVID-19 outbreak, she led the nine-day evacuation of all 7,000 Peace Corps volunteers from 61 countries. 

Olsen was a Peace Corps volunteer in Tunisia from 1966 to 1968 and has served the agency in five other senior positions, including deputy director. Her memoir about her decades of Peace Corps service, “A Million Miles: My Peace Corps Journey,” will be available in October 2024.

In the 1990s, Olsen was director of the organization that manages the Fulbright Senior Scholar Program. Today, she is a senior fellow with UMB’s Center for Global Education, co-chair of Women of Peace Corps Legacy, and chair of the Peace Corps Commemorative Foundation Park Advisory Committee and the University of Maryland College of Education Board of Visitors.

Olsen received her BS from the University of Utah, Master of Social Work from UMB, and PhD from the University of Maryland, College Park. Her many awards include the University of Maryland Alumni Association’s President’s Award, University of Utah’s Alumni of the Year Award, and two honorary doctorates. She has also been a resident fellow at the Institute of Politics at the Harvard Kennedy School.