International Women’s Day in March recalls that many girls and women in developing countries still face huge barriers to an education, are denied rights to ownership of the land they labor on, have no access to health care, suffer regular beatings from their husbands, and are placed in early child marriages resulting in horrendous feminine problems when they give birth.

Hello. I feel like I should re-introduce myself to you as I have just finished my five-year term of service at Catholic Relief Services and now write to you in my status as “me” and not president and CEO, or dean, or professor or whatever titles I have held since starting my professional career in 1979. Yes, this is the big step: retirement.