On reading her memoir, Jon Stewart, host of The Daily Show remarked to Ellen Johnson Sirleaf “The things you have gone through … I thought I was going to meet a woman who is 200 years old.” Sirleaf, a graduate of Harvard where she earned a degree in Public Administration, returned to her native Liberia emboldened to speak truth to power. For several periods she was involved in the Liberian government, those periods punctuated by principled withdrawal from what she considered corrupt politics. Sirleaf’s resolute support of fairness and transparency in the government did not go unnoticed.

On this day, November 23, in 2005, in a culmination of an illustrious career that spanned continents and governments Ellen Johnson Sirleaf became president of Liberia, the first woman to lead an African nation.

Sirleaf won with close to 91% of the vote, a result skewed by an opposition boycott. But international observers concluded the election was free and fair, and Sirleaf promised to pursue a policy of reconciliation. Her country’s history has been pockmarked by strongmen in power waging war. “We are determined to make Liberia a post-conflict success story,” she said in an interview to the New York Times.