Kathy LeMay

Kathy LeMay has committed her life to global social change. She began at the age of 14 launching an anti-apartheid campaign in her small Massachusetts mill town. Several human rights campaigns later which resulted in a LOT of press in a conventional rural community, she recalls her mother’s nervous boss saying, “Will your daughter be appearing in the newspaper as a REGULAR thing?” Her mother’s reply: “With any luck, absolutely yes.”

Since then LeMay has traveled the United States and the world listening to, learning from, and raising money for those who’ve survived war, genocide, gender-based violence and climate-induced disasters. In the course of her work, LeMay has raised $175M, led international women’s human-rights organizations, become a sought-after public speaker, a published author, and served as a philanthropic adviser to some of the world’s most renowned philanthropists. It was while she was in these halls of power that she realized that she did not feel as though she had arrived. She felt lost and not found in philanthropy.

Now, after thirty years in global social change, LeMay is going back to roots, back to where it all began. She’s rediscovering what it means to teach someone to read, to feed families at soup kitchens, and to radically listen to each person’s life and experience, and to share her story. Today, LeMay is capturing people’s stories and words through photojournalism with the goal of hosting her first exhibit.