In 1981, 25 year-old Peace Corps volunteer, Carolyn Hessler-Radelet, taught at a girls’ Catholic school in Western Samoa and lived in a thatched hut with her host parents and their eight children.
Last month, President Obama nominated Hessler-Radelet to be permanent director of the Peace Corps.
Since arriving at the agency three years ago, she has helped radically remake the Peace Corps as its deputy director.
Hessler-Radelet says that accompanying her host mother, who was pregnant at the time, to monthly appointments at a nearby clinic was a transformative experience.
Hessler-Radelet signed up for the Peace Corps and persuaded her then-boyfriend to do the same.
Two weeks after getting married, she and her husband, Steve Radelet, were shipped off to a Polynesian island thousands of miles from the mainland. He had never been on a plane before.
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