HIDDEN IN PLAIN SIGHT
JUNE 17, 2014, FOUND KATIE MEYLER IN New York City, talking to the world’s richest men about her work with some of its poorest girls. On little more than a sense of purpose and fit of inspiration, the New Jersey native founded More Than Me, a nonprofit to help girls off the streets of Monrovia, Liberia, by paying for their school. Eventually, it would open its own academy and earn a contract from the Liberian government to operate 19 schools across the country.
Meyler had corralled $1 million in funding through her expert use of social media, but she was no less impressive in person. After her presentation at the Forbes 400 Summit on Philanthropy that June day, Berkshire Hathaway chairman Warren Buffett, the most admired investor in America, found her backstage, fell on bended knee and proposed marriage.
“He said no prenup too, lol,” Meyler later wrote on Twitter, linking to an Instagram post where the message was not entirely light: “Honestly need to slap myself sometimes bc this More Than Me journey feels like a dream and sometimes a nightmare but it’s not, and I’ll use every single thing that I can to make sure to do the most amount of good.”
There was indeed a nightmare, though. One day earlier and 4,500 miles away, the man Meyler had described as the charity’s co-founder had been arrested. The charge was raping the girls in their care. Ten students would testify against Macintosh Johnson, though the number of suspected victims approached 30.
They were
