The last time Lencia Kebede lived in New York, in 2015, she was a 21-year-old college intern at the United Nations, taking and translating notes for the ambassador from Guatemala, who was working on an anti-poverty initiative.

What a difference a decade can make. Instead of pursuing a career as a human rights lawyer, Kebede is now a working actress in New York defying gravity eight times as week as the first Black actress to play Elphaba full time in “Wicked” on Broadway.

It’s a dream role that is also allowing her to tend to her two passions. “The place where Elphaba and I meet,” she said, “is empathy and advocacy for justice.”

After her internship, she returned to college and graduated from Occidental with a bachelor’s degree in diplomacy and world affairs. But she knew that she had to follow her musical theater ambitions instead of going to law school.

In “Wicked,” a prequel to “The Wizard of Oz,” Elphaba, born with green skin and preternatural sorcery skills, is the young adult version of the Wicked Witch of the West. But the story reveals that she is neither evil nor envious, and instead is a consummate outsider who uses her powers to protect herself and others from the authoritarian rule in Oz.

Kebede, whose parents immigrated to the United States in the early 1970s to escape a military coup in Ethiopia, said her own back story is helping her bring a fresh global and political perspective to Elphaba’s heroism.