POLITICIAN AND SECRETARY OF STATE UNITED STATESAs long as discrimination and inequities remain so commonplace everywhere in the world; as long as girls and women are valued less, fed less, fed last, overworked, underpaid, not schooled, subjected to violence in and outside their homes, the potential of the human family to create a peaceful, prosperous world will not be realized.
—HILLARY CLINTON
Hillary sprinted to the mailbox and rifled through the bills and letters. It’s here! she marveled, snatching out the letter with the NASA logo on it.
Weeks earlier, she had written to NASA asking what she could do to become an astronaut. The “space race” between the United States and Russia was in full swing, and it seemed Russia was winning. Everyone knew NASA was recruiting the best and the brightest for its astronaut training program. Thirteen-year-old Hillary was an excellent student, was physically fit, and wanted to serve her country. Becoming an astronaut seemed like a great way to do that.
She tore open the envelope. Maybe they want me to come to a training program . . .
As she read the short letter, her hopes crashed back down to Earth.
“There will not be any women astronauts,”1 was NASA’s response.
Hillary was devastated. But she was also angry.
It isn’t fair! she thought. Why do boys get to do everything and girls’ choices are so limited?
That’s right—before she wanted to be president of the United States, young Hillary Clinton wanted to be an astronaut. But back in the 1950s, that wasn’t possible; in fact, an American woman didn’t go into space for thirty more years (Sally Ride in 1983)! This was a turning point for young Hillary. It was her first real experience with discrimination, and she didn’t like it. She has spent the rest of her life showing the world what girls and women are capable of.
Hillary grew up in Park Ridge, Illinois, a conservative suburb of Chicago. Her father owned a business that made and sold curtains, and her mother was a homemaker. Her father had grown up poor, worked in coal mines, and lived as a hobo for a time. He attributed his success to his own hard work and believed that anyone who couldn’t do the same wasn’t trying hard enough. He once drove the family through the slums of Chicago to show his children what happened to people who didn’t work hard.
Hillary’s mother was abandoned by her parents when she was very young. She had to fend for herself her entire life, which gave her great empathy for poor, struggling families. She told her daughter, “Things happen to people that they have no control over.”2 She was secretly a Democrat—one of the very few in Park Ridge.
As a child, Hillary was a tomboy who played sports and excelled in school. She ran for school office from elementary school on, and she did things like organize a mock Olympics to raise money for United Way. Her father didn’t pay allowances, so at thirteen, Hillary got a job cleaning a local park to earn spending money.
When a neighbor girl bullied four-year-old Hillary, she tried to hide inside the house, but her mother blocked the door. She told Hillary, “There’s no room in this house for cowards. You’re going to have to stand up to her. The next time she hits you, I want you to hit her back.”7 Hillary did what her mother asked—she hit back and was never bullied again.
Soon after getting the rejection letter from NASA, she joined the University of Life group at her church. Her pastor, Don Jones, taught the group about life outside of Park Ridge and told them they needed to “put their faith into action.”3 Hillary already had firsthand experience with discrimination against women and girls, but she soon learned about other kinds of discrimination. Don took the kids to Chicago’s rough South Side, where they met with an all-black youth group and discussed the civil rights movement, which was fighting discrimination of African Americans. “It just kind of opened my mind,”4 Hillary said of Pastor Don’s teachings.
When Hillary was fifteen, Pastor Don took the University of Life group to hear a speech by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the leader of the civil rights movement. He urged his audience to “participate in the cause of justice, not to slumber while the world changed . . .” Afterward, Hillary was invited to shake his hand and speak with him briefly. She called the experience one of the greatest privileges of her life.5
During her junior year of high school, Hillary was elected class vice president. When she ran for class president her senior year, the boy who beat her said, “You are really stupid if you think a girl can be elected president.”6 In spite of her mother and Pastor Don’s Democratic leanings, Hillary followed her father’s politics during high school. She was part of an anti-Communist club, she joined a Republican group called the Goldwater Girls, and she campaigned door-to-door for presidential candidate Barry Goldwater.
After two years, Pastor Don was forced out of Park Ridge by the conservative parents who didn’t like him exposing their children to his radical ideas. He remained a mentor for Hillary, however. She wrote to him for guidance after he left and throughout her college years, as her political beliefs changed.
Hillary graduated in the top 5 percent of her class, was a National Merit finalist, and was voted “Most Likely to Succeed” by her classmates. She should have had her pick of colleges, but the most prestigious schools still only accepted men. Hillary chose Wellesley, a top all-women’s college, and majored in political science. Her political views shifted—she became opposed to the Vietnam War and supported the civil rights movement—so she decided to switch to the Democrats.
Then she ran for president of student government and won! Thanks to Hillary, the college made many improvements. She helped change outdated school rules and curriculum requirements that seemed intended to turn the Wellesley students into educated housewives. She also helped convince the administration to get rid of restrictions on black student admissions and to hire more diverse faculty.
In her Wellesley graduation speech, Hillary inspired her audience with her unifying words: “We are, all of us, exploring a world that none of us even understands and attempting to create within that uncertainty. . . . Fear is always with us, but we just don’t have time for it. Not now.”8
At her graduation, she became the first Wellesley student in history to be invited to speak at the ceremony. In her speech, she criticized the school’s guest speaker, Republican Senator Edward Brooke, and spoke out against the war. The audience gave her a seven-minute standing ovation! During her college years, Hillary had learned to speak her mind, even when it was controversial and could get her into trouble. Her speech drew national attention, and she was interviewed on national TV and in newspapers, and was even profiled in Life magazine!
Hillary decided that the best way to serve her country (if she couldn’t be an astronaut) was to become a lawyer. She went to Yale Law School. While getting her law degree, she volunteered her time working on cases of child abuse at a local hospital and gave free legal services for the poor. She also worked with Marian Wright Edelman, an activist for children’s rights, researching problems migrant workers faced with housing, health, and education.
During her second year of law school, she met fellow law student Bill Clinton, and they fell in love. Bill asked her repeatedly to marry him, but Hillary wasn’t sure. He wanted to go into politics, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to follow his path. Hillary had her own dreams to pursue.
After graduating from law school, she went to work for Edelman’s newly founded Children’s Defense Fund, fighting for the legal rights of children and families. She was on the impeachment inquiry staff during Nixon’s Watergate scandal. Everyone around her felt she had a bright political future: she could be a US senator, or even the president!
“I chose to follow my heart instead of my head,” she explained of her decision to follow Bill to his home state of Arkansas instead of staying in Washington to pursue her own political career.9 She got a job teaching law at the University of Arkansas and was one of two women on the faculty. In 1975, four years after they met, Hillary finally agreed to marry Bill. But she kept her maiden name—Rodham—a move that was controversial at the time. Five years later, she had baby Chelsea.
In Arkansas, Bill’s political career took off. First he was elected the state’s attorney general and then, in 1978, governor. Hillary became First Lady of Arkansas, a title she would hold for twelve years, but she didn’t choose the traditional path of the supportive, nonworking wife of a politician. Even though she knew it was controversial and might get her into trouble, she continued to pursue her law career. She was the first female lawyer at her law firm, and later, their first female partner. From 1978 until they entered the White House in 1992, Hillary earned more money than Bill.10 In fact, when he lost his 1980 run for governor, she was the only breadwinner in the family.
But Hillary didn’t just want to be a good lawyer and provide for her family; she wanted to change the world. In 1977, she cofounded the Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families, and in 1979, Bill appointed her the chair of the Rural Health Advisory Committee, to help bring healthcare to Arkansas’s poorest areas—two moves in the right direction.
When her husband was elected president of the United States, Hillary became a different kind of First Lady as well. She was the first First Lady to have her own office in the West Wing (just like the president). She was also the first First Lady to head up a task force on affordable healthcare for all (with a staff of over five hundred), the findings of which she then presented to Congress.11 She helped create the Office on Violence Against Women at the Department of Justice, and she helped pass the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, which provided services to poor families. In addition, she drafted and helped pass the Adoption and Safe Families Act. Hillary continued making her own difference in the world, following her own dreams as Bill pursued his.
With trips to seventy-nine countries, she added the most-traveled First Lady to her list of achievements too. She wasn’t just sightseeing either; she was helping with US diplomacy. In China, she spoke about women’s rights around the world. “Women’s rights are human rights,”12 she told the crowd. Her remarks were controversial and could have gotten her into trouble, but she made them anyway.
Hillary was an excellent lawyer. Two times, the National Law Journal named her one of “The 100 Most Influential Lawyers in America.”
When her husband’s two terms were up, Hillary decided not to go back to Arkansas and her law practice. Instead, she ran for US Senate in 2000, representing the state of New York (the first First Lady to do that), and won. Out of one hundred senators, she was one of only thirteen women.
She served in the Senate for eight years, earning a reputation for working across party lines to get things done. One journalist wrote, “Clinton has emerged within the Senate as the unlikeliest of figures: she . . . has turned out to be a uniter, not a divider.”13 A childhood spent navigating between her Republican father and Democrat mother served Hillary well in this work.
In 2008, Hillary ran for president, but she lost in the primaries to exciting newcomer Barack Obama. Obama was so impressed with Hillary’s experience and talents, however, that he made her his secretary of state, in charge of America’s foreign relations. All the relationships she made during her travels as First Lady and her time in the Senate were put to great use.
As always, Hillary worked her butt off. During her time in the office, Hillary visited 112 countries—more than any US secretary of state in history.14 She also pushed for women’s rights and for equality of the sexes around the world—even when it was controversial. In Egypt, where women have fewer rights than men, she urged equality. In Cambodia, where very few girls are allowed to go to school, she argued for more opportunities. She founded the global group No Ceilings, which works to improve the lives of girls and women. Hillary has become an inspiration around the world. Mu Sochua, Cambodian politician and Nobel Prize nominee, said Hillary gave her the courage to become a politician and change things in her country: “Watching her, I had the sense that I could do it, that other women could do it.”15
In 2016, Hillary tried for the White House one more time. She beat Bernie Sanders in the primary and became the Democratic Party’s nomination for president of the United States—the first woman to ever be nominated by a major US political party. Hillary ran a strong campaign against Republican nominee Donald Trump, business tycoon and reality-TV star. She fought hard and stood up for her beliefs in an extremely unusual and polarizing race. On election night, though she won the popular vote by nearly three million votes, she lost the Electoral College 232 to Trump’s 306 votes.16 Donald Trump became America’s forty-fifth president.
Hillary Clinton has spent her life making the world a better place, fighting discrimination and injustice. As a girl, she spoke her mind, even when it went against the grain of popular opinion. And she’s continued speaking her mind and rocking the world ever since.
Now, I know we have still not shattered that highest and hardest glass ceiling, but some day, someone will, and hopefully sooner than we might think right now. And to all the little girls who are watching this, never doubt that you are valuable and powerful and deserving of every chance and opportunity in the world to pursue and achieve your own dreams.
—HILLARY CLINTON
HOW WILL YOU ROCK THE WORLD?
I will rock the world by becoming the first female president of the United States. I will give the Mexican people a chance to live here. I would help poor people follow their dreams.
ANGELINA HERNANDEZ 
AGE 15