Shelly Galvin

The daughter of a reinsurance company CFO, Shelly Galvin was raised in Freeport and Wheaton, Illinois, until age nine, then spent her middle and high school years in historic Basking Ridge, New Jersey. "I did a lot of theater," says Galvin, who aspired to be an actress, but decided to study poly sci and international relations at the University of Maryland. "I fell in love with Washington, D.C., and seeing young people doing that kind of work." She also fell in love with Matt Schuth, a "Grateful Dead type" who was moving to Eugene, so she transferred to the University of Oregon in 1997. "I studied political science and also law and religion," she says. "When I finished school in 2000, I got a job at the Oregon Research Institute, doing social research in schools all over Oregon." She and Schuth were married in 2003 and had a son, Maddox, in 2007. She worked online for a company that was training small firms in Africa to write development grants. When Maddox started kindergarten at Oak Hill School, his mom took a job as fundraiser for the school. She was invited to take part in a development project at the UN-mandated University for Peace (UPEACE) in Costa Rica, where she also took a course called Positive Leadership. "It changed my life," says Galvin, who went on to earn an online diploma in social innovation from UPEACE. She now works as Director of Corporate Responsibility for Eugene-based online IT training company CBT Nuggets, where she oversaw its recent donation of two million dollars to St. Vincent de Paul of Lane County to build a shelter for homeless teen boys.