Bogaletch Gebre

[3][5][7] Herself a victim of female genital mutilation at the age of 12, Gebre was forbidden a formal education by her father but sneaked out of her home to attend a missionary school.

[3][8] Ultimately, she studied microbiology in Jerusalem before attending the University of Massachusetts Amherst on a Fulbright scholarship.

[2] While in the United States, she launched her first charitable organization, Development through Education, through which students in Ethiopian high schools and universities received $26,000 worth of technical books.

[9] After earning her PhD in epidemiology, Gebre returned to Ethiopia to help protect the rights of women in the 1990s.

Following an initial public speech on the taboo topic of HIV/AIDS, Gebre realized that she would need to establish credibility with the community before she could effect change and so set herself to correcting problems that were pointed out to her, providing necessary supplies to build a bridge that would allow regional children to reach the nearest school and traders to reach the local market.