BuildUS Announces Justin Maxson Will Join Fund as Executive Director

BuildUS announced today that Justin Maxson will join the pooled fund as its first permanent executive director, leading its efforts to accelerate America’s transition toward a worker-centered, cleaner, and more equitable economy. He starts with BuildUS on December 11, 2023.

“Recent federal legislation has created an unprecedented opportunity to establish high quality jobs in communities that have historically been excluded and to reshape both regional economies and emergent industries,” noted Gretchen Philips from Omidyar Network, who co-chaired the search on behalf of the BuildUS Steering Committee. “Justin’s deep philanthropic and senior government experience, coupled with his own lived experience make him an ideal choice for executive director of BuildUS,” said co-chair Micaela Fernandez Allen of Open Society Foundations.

As executive director, Maxson will have overall responsibility for investing and managing the initial $50 million commitment from the fund’s supporters, making grants to help ensure that the broadest swath of Americans benefit from the investments made possible by four landmark federal legislation - the American Rescue Plan, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the CHIPS and Science Act, and the Inflation Reduction Act. He succeeds Jennifer Harris, who helped launch BuildUS earlier this year as acting executive director, and who is now returning to the Hewlett Foundation as director of the foundation’s Economy and Society Initiative.

Previously, Maxson was a senior advisor at the Amalgamated Foundation, where he worked helping disadvantaged communities access federal resources. Before that, he served in the Biden administration as Deputy Under Secretary for Rural Development at USDA, where he helped manage the only federal agency with the explicit responsibility for rural development. As Deputy Under Secretary for Rural Development, he managed the launch of the Rural Partners Network, contributed to federal rural development policy to address climate change, and worked to make it easier for small towns and rural communities to access federal resources.

Formerly, he served as the chief executive officer of the Mary Reynolds Babcock Foundation supporting economic and racial justice in the South. Before that, he spent more than a decade as the president of the Mountain Association, a community development financial institution advancing economic and sustainable development opportunities in eastern Kentucky and Central Appalachia.

Maxson holds a bachelor’s degree in anthropology from the University of Kentucky, and a master’s in anthropology from Boston University. He lives in Winston-Salem, NC and has two young adult children.