Speaker Bio

Chloe Maxmin

Co-Director of Dirtroad Organizing

Keynote Speaker

Chloe Maxmin is the co-director of Dirt Road Organizing, a nonprofit organization that empowers rural people to build power for a resilient, equitable, and democratic future by providing training, supporting grassroots leadership, and offering resources for community change. She also works for JustME doing targeted youth civic engagement work.

Chloe grew up on a venison farm in Nobleboro, ME.  Her work with civic engagement started at a young age, when she founded the Lincoln Academy Climate Action Club as a ninth grader.  Later, she received an honors degree from Harvard College, where she co-founded Divest Harvard, a climate activist coalition of students, alumni, and faculty. She currently lives and works on a farm participating in the program, “Mainers Feeding Mainers”.  

She is passionate about uniting rural communities on values and common ground, a drive which allowed her to serve in the Maine House of Representatives after becoming the first democrat to win Maine House District 88. Two years later, Maxmin became the youngest woman ever to serve in the Maine State Senate. At 28 years old, she unseated a two-term incumbent and Senate Minority Leader, making her the first candidate to unseat a party leader in Maine since 1992. 

With her campaign manager and best friend, Canyon Woodward, she co-authored a book about their personal approach to campaigning, Dirt Road Revival: How to Rebuild Rural Politics and Why Our Future Depends on it. Maxmin and Woodward are also featured in a short documentary about finding purpose and common ground in rural America called Rural Runners. The film premiered earlier this year at Mountainfilm in Telluride and will be screened again in September at the Monadnock International Film Festival.

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