Mary-Jane Wagle is a retired volunteer and women’s rights activist who began visiting Ethiopia and learning about its amazing women in March 2011. Trained as an urban planner, she worked in the fields of economic and social development, senior housing development, low-income housing development, and women’s reproductive health care services and advocacy in the United States before moving to Ethiopia.

Mary-Jane compiled and edited the biographies in Temsalet: Phenomenal Ethiopian Women. The subjects of this book were photographed by Aïda Muluneh.