Celebrating Women: A Note from Kathleen Kennedy Townsend

This entry is part of a series in celebration of Women's History Month.

When Hillary announced last January that she was running for president, everyone had an opinion. Most Americans knew her from her time as First Lady, from her trips around the country, and her unyielding advocacy for American families on the nightly news. I was lucky enough to meet her 28 years ago when my husband David and I had dinner with Hillary, Bill Clinton, and our mutual friend Tommy Caplan.

That evening she described her work in at the Children's Defense Fund and in Arkansas. She told us how many families could not send their children to school because they were handicapped and how many schools were not providing the education that all the children needed. I knew her heart went out to those families -- and she took action. She was passionate as she told how she visited schools throughout the state, talking with parents, teachers, and business and community leaders. That evening I saw a woman of enormous dedication and compassion. She was a person on a mission. It was thrilling to be with her.

I cheered when she went to China and ignored the Chinese government's request to refrain from noncontroversial remarks. They wanted her to be quiet and demur. She wasn't. She announced with strength and verve that women's rights are human rights. That declaration sent a ripple that is still resounding across the globe. She made sure that women would not be ignored, diminished, or shamed. She wanted to lift women up. She started Vital Voices in her effort to make sure that women could talk, tell their stories, and make an impact.

Women's History Month is a celebration of those who have seized upon lofty ideals like the notion of rights, and have sought to build of them a better world. Hillary joins a long line of women in this goal. Eleanor Roosevelt, a prominent member of that line, and a hero of both mine and Hillary's, once asked, "Where, after all, do universal human rights begin?" She answered her own question, saying that they found their roots, "In small places, close to home…unless these rights have meaning there, they have little meaning anywhere."

Hillary's great success has been her ability to work upward from those small places, to work upward from a foundation of basic rights to allow families the chance to seize a better life. Over and over, with programs from the State Children's Health Insurance Program to her advocacy for affordable and accessible education, she has proved her leadership to be invaluable. That's the sort of leadership I want in the White House.