On our way, she stops to show me her office. “I write between 11 and 4,” Straub, 76, says with a smile. “And my friends know if they want to see me, it can’t be between 11 and 4.” We go backwards down a ladder to David’s office, where he is preparing for a Zoom call to discuss an initiative he is spearheading called Peace on Earth by 2030. Straub wears a denim shirt and trousers, a slim wristwatch, and elegant dewdrop earrings. She pauses, watching him with quiet affection as he waits for the call. The couple founded the Empowerment Institute in 1981, a pioneering organization that has helped cities, nonprofits, and global institutions apply behavior change and community empowerment strategies to work on some of humanity’s most urgent challenges.

Back upstairs, the worn wood kitchen table anchors the home. “We got married in this little room. We wrote our life work and planned our wedding. All right here. Same little table.”

For more than four decades, Straub has lived here on this land, rooted in place even as her life’s work carried her to the farthest corners of the world. She’s trekked across the Sahara with Tuareg nomads, through Himalayan trails, inside Soviet-era Russia, into refugee camps in Jordan and empowerment centers in India. In her forthcoming memoir, “Home Inside the Globe: Embracing Our Human Family,” out on June 10, Straub knits those journeys into a lyrical meditation on identity, justice, and belonging that is at once political and profoundly spiritual. To be in conversation with Straub is like a spiritual experience, or the closest you can get. She asks deep questions, looks for the meaning behind words and situations, and makes you feel important. It must have something to do with her lived experiences, but also a grace and attitude that embraces the vastness of life.

“That which is different allows us to be whole,” she says. “Diversity completes us, rather than threatens us—that’s what my life has been about.”

Born in Wilmington, Delaware, Straub’s early life unfolded in the margins of elite society. Her father taught at the Tower Hill School, a prestigious private school, while her devout Irish Catholic mother raised the family on tight means. “We were clearly outsiders,” she recalled. “But I was also a leader almost from the beginning.” That tension between belonging and alienation shaped her worldview—and later, her life’s work. “I was inside and outside,” she recalls. “That insider-outsider blueprint was something core for me.”

Straub’s career was set in motion by a deep yearning to engage with the unfamiliar. She joined the American Field Service, studied in France, and served in the Peace Corps in Africa, where she planned a trip across the Sahara at 23-years-old just months after her mother’s unexpected death at 55. “I think we all have that point in our 20s where we’re a lost soul,” she said. “That was mine.”

After months wandering through the Sahara, Straub landed in a commune on the North Shore of Massachusetts, part of a street theater group and an education collective—and, for a time, a member of a Grateful Dead-inspired band called “Flavored Air.”

“We had a food wagon, a free school, and a band. We really were living the ideals,” she says. The commune eventually dissolved, and Straub soon met Gershon, launching what she calls her “real life.”

In the years that followed, she co-founded the Empowerment Institute with Gershon and worked in Gorbachev-era Russia, Deng Xiaoping’s China, and in communities across the Global South. But her story is just as rooted in the Catskills, where she and Gershon have lived for more than four decades.

“We bought it on a wing and a prayer,” she says of their home. “And we never left.”

Writer Beth Lisick, who lives just a few driveways away, describes Straub as “so thoughtful and disarming in how quickly she gets to the heart of things.” On neighborhood walks, the two often exchange ideas about writing and life. “She really changed the way I think about writing,” Lisick says.

Lisick was so moved by the book that she invited Straub to perform a live version of one of its stories at Porchlight, her long-running storytelling series. The event, held in Paris, France, became a kind of homecoming for Straub, who once lived in the city.

“She was absolutely phenomenal,” Lisick says. “Lyrical and spontaneous. A highlight of the entire show.”

Straub originally conceived “Home Inside the Globe” as a series of travel essays. But after early feedback from her editor, she embraced the more intimate form of memoir—reluctantly at first. “I don’t come to memoir easily,” she says. “But this book became a life review.”

Writer Nina Shengold, a collaborator and friend, first met Straub while writing her own book about the Ashokan Reservoir. In 2018, Straub wrote “The Ashokan Way,” a series of essays and diary entries about the Ashokan Reservoir. “Gail’s writing is very graceful and eloquent,” she says. “She brings the reverence, and I bring the irreverence.” The two have since performed together in a literary trio they jokingly call “the Reservoiristas.”

“She has one of the purest smiles I’ve ever seen,” Shengold adds. “She has an energy that draws people to her.”

Though Straub has stepped back from the day-to-day work of the Empowerment Institute, she remains on the board and continues to mentor. She’s now focused on sharing the lessons of a life spent seeking connection—not just across cultures, but across inner landscapes, too.

“There’s a reason this book is coming out now,” she says. “We need to remember our shared humanity. It’s not just my story—it’s an invitation.”

This June, Straub will bring “Home Inside the Globe” to local audiences with a series of in-depth conversations across the Hudson Valley. She’ll appear at Oblong Books in Rhinebeck on June 10 at 6 p.m. with Carla Goldstein; at Golden Notebook’s event at St. Gregory’s Church in Woodstock on June 15 at 2 p.m. with Nina Shengold (The Golden Notebook is a founding supporter of The Overlook); and at ShoutOut Saugerties’ Writers Out Loud series on June 26 at 6 p.m., where she’ll be interviewed by Beverly Donofrio.

Noah Eckstein is the editor-in-chief of The Overlook. Send correspondence to noah@theoverlooknews.com.