ACADEMIA

TEACHING

Maya serves as an adjunct faculty member at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at Johns Hopkins University. There, she teaches a course on social innovations in international development for children and youth. Since 2012, she has served as an advisor and mentor to countless students.

From 2011 to 2014, Maya was a Visiting Scholar and Professorial Lecturer at SAIS. During this time, she researched, developed and wrote Invisible Children: Reimagining International Development at the Grassroots (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), which is used in international development courses. The book stems from her work and experiences at Global Fund for Children. There, she was exposed to quiet heroes who devoted their lives to changing the landscape for marginalized children at the grassroots. Currently, she is working on a second book focused on the challenges and struggles that are faced by boys and young men in contemporary society. 

From 2013 to 2014, Maya was the inaugural Social Entrepreneur in Residence at Duke University and a Visiting Professor for the Practice of Public Policy at the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke. During her time there, she was an integral member of the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Initiative, which supported a myriad of social innovation initiatives.

Invisible Children

Published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2016, Invisible Children explores the architecture of a new global web of relationships at the community level. Arguing that the existing global agenda for children has failed, this book reimagines how society should support the world’s most vulnerable children through innovative community-based organizations led by proximate leaders. In doing so, Invisible Children identifies and gives voice to the millions of children living on society’s margins, while showing a way forward for how we can best invest in children.