Margaret Eastman Smith, the daughter of a Scottish father and American mother who devoted their lives to the work of the Oxford Group and Moral Re-Armament, grew up on three continents in a series of communal living arrangements with other families in the movement. She then worked for the movement herself in the UK, India, Australia, Papua New Guinea, Richmond, Virginia and Washington, DC, before going to university in her mid-thirties. She earned her doctorate in International Relations in 1999, taught in the School of International Service, American University, Washington, DC for eighteen years. She now lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.