Delighted to see Ertharin Cousin, since 2012 the Executive Director of the U.N. World Food Programme, on the annual list of Time‘s Top 100 Most Influential People.

The magazine chose Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel to write about Cousin, so it’s no surprise his profile focused on her childhood “in a lower-income neighborhood on the West Side of Chicago.” But here in Athens, we celebrate her as a 1982 graduate of the University of Georgia School of Law.

Just last year, Cousin returned to her alma mater to keynote “International Law in a Time of Scarcity,” a symposium sponsored by our law school and its Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law and Dean Rusk Center for International Law & Policy. ((c) Georgia Law photo by Cindy H. Rice) This week’s Time honor will not surprise anyone who heard Cousin’s inspiring talk, summed up in this quote:

‘Just because it’s always been that way doesn’t mean it has to stay that way.’