She’s Doing It: Thank You Hillary Clinton

by Gloria Feldt on February 1st, 2013
in Inspiration, Leadership, Politics, Power, She's Doing It and tagged

Hillary Clinton’s star turn as Secretary of State exemplifies an important leadership lesson.

Sometimes, you win when you lose. And by putting yourself forward toward a big goal, even if you don’t reach it, you usually accomplish much more than if you had aimed toward a lower goal and achieved it instead. And what a legacy!

Ambassador Swanee Hunt wrote this marvelous analysis. But Clinton summed it up well herself, in this memo sent by the White House shortly after the baton was passed to now former Senator John Kerry.

 

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE

Office of the Spokesperson

For Immediate Release

January 31, 2013

2013/0102

STATEMENT BY SECRETARY CLINTON

Presidential Memorandum on Promoting Gender Equality and

Empowering Women and Girls Globally

The Obama Administration has made it clear that advancing the rights of women and girls is critical to the foreign policy of the United States.  This is a matter of national security as much as it is an issue of morality or fairness.  President Obama’s National Security Strategy explicitly recognizes that “countries are more peaceful and prosperous when women are accorded full and equal rights and opportunity.  When those rights and opportunities are denied, countries lag behind.”

That’s why I’m so pleased about the Presidential Memorandum that President Obama signed yesterday, which institutionalizes an elevated focus on global women’s issues at the State Department and USAID and ensures coordination on these issues across the federal government.  And it is so important that incoming Secretary of State John Kerry has expressed his support for the continued elevation of these issues in our foreign policy.

As I have said many times, protecting and advancing the rights of women are critical to solving virtually every challenge we face as individual nations and as a community of nations.  We have made great progress, but there is more to do.  This is the unfinished business of the 21st Century, and it is essential that it remains central to our foreign policy for years to come.

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Gloria Feldt

Gloria Feldt is the author of No Excuses: 9 Ways Women Can Change How We Think About Power. Buy the book here. Engage Gloria for a Speech or Workshop. Tweet @GloriaFeldt and connect on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Google+ Gloria is the co-founder (with Amy Litzenberger) of Take the Lead, a new initiative to prepare and propel women to leadership parity by 2025. Find them @takeleadwomen and on Facebook.

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