Interviews with Ellen Johnson Sirleaf

For me, I think we start with the children, that’s where I start. I say at some point, let the children grow up knowing that there’s nothing that can stop them from what they want to be. So I’ve concentrated a lot on that and I see a lot big differences.

They will grow up in a society—we’ve had seven years of peace. Those are the kids who’ve never heard gunfire, you know? They’ve never had to run or see their parents—their parents can sleep in the night. That in itself sends a big message from them to their parents, and that’s a healing feeling I think.

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf is the president of Liberia. She was awarded the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize.

Sirleaf served as minister of finance in Liberia until the 1980 coup d’état by Samuel Doe. She left the country and served in senior positions with the World Bank and later Citibank.

Sirleaf returned to Liberia in 1985 and was arrested and imprisoned by the Doe government. After her release, she went into exile in the United States where she remained throughout a brutal Liberian civil war between the Doe government and a rebel group headed by warlord Charles Taylor. Following a peace agreement ending the war, Sirleaf returned home to run unsuccessfully against Taylor for the presidency. Taylor’s election has been attributed in part to a fear by the Liberian public that he would restart the war if he lost.

Following a second Liberian civil war, Taylor was exiled in 2003. Sirleaf again sought the presidency and was elected in 2005, the first woman democratically elected to serve as a head of state in Africa.

In 2008, Sirleaf published her memoir, “This Child Will Be Great.”