After Yale University and Harvard Law School, Maxwell joined his father's Philadelphia law firm. Not satisfied with practicing law, he soon became involved in politics, serving in Pennsylvania governor Raymond Schaffer's administration as insurance commissioner and running Nixon's Pennsylvania campaign for president in 1968. He moved to Washington as general counsel at HUD, leaving in 1973 to start Ticor, an entrepreneurial mortgage-financing company in Los Angeles.

In 1981 Maxwell became president of the Federal National Mortgage Association. When he arrived, Fannie Mae was losing $1 million a day buying mortgages it was guaranteed to lose money on. Maxwell changed the way the company acquired mortgages so it would not be buffeted by interest rates and created mortgage-backed securities to sell to investors. By the time he retired as chairman and CEO in 1991, Fannie Mae had reported record profits for four years straight - and its stock was one of the top performers of the 1980s.

As Fannie Mae grew profitable, Maxwell began to channel resources back to the community. He initiated Fannie Mae's work with the Enterprise Foundation to finance low-income housing and started a partnership with H. D. Woodson High School in Northeast to provide students with scholarships and mentors.

Maxwell believes that his legacy at Fannie Mae is the people who work there. "When other companies, like Chrysler, got into trouble, they went public. We didn't want to panic the markets. But we really did take an institution that was headed down the drain, that was vitally important to American life, and our team brought it back to life."