Ellen Johnson Sirleaf

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the president of Liberia, began her groundbreaking career in the 1970s, when she became Liberia's first woman minister of finance. After the military coup of 1980, she served as president of the Liberian Bank for Development and Investment, vice president of Citibank's African regional office in Nairobi, senior loan officer at the World Bank, vice president of Equator Bank, and assistant administrator and director of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Regional Bureau for Africa, with the rank of assistant secretary-general of the United Nations. She was one of the seven internationally eminent persons designated in 1999 by the Organization of African Unity (OAU) to investigate the Rwandan genocide, one of the five commission chairs for the Inter-Congolese Dialogue, and one of two international experts selected by the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) to investigate and report on the effects of conflict on women and women's roles in peace building. She has received several awards, including the United States Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor bestowed by an American president; the Ralph Bunche International Leadership Award; and the Franklin D. Roosevelt Freedom of Speech Award. She holds a master's in public administration from Harvard University, a B.A. in accounting from Madison Business College, and a certificate in economics from the University of Colorado, in addition to honorary doctorates from nine universities in the United States and Africa. President Sirleaf lives in Monrovia, Liberia.