Samantha Power takes on the worst the world has to offer.
Last summer, hundreds of college students descended on a youth politics conference in Washington, D.C. They came to hear from speakers like rapper Fat Joe and the Illinois Senator Barack Obama, but a 36-year-old human rights star named Samantha Power stole the show.Power, who graduated from Yale, covered war in the Balkans, and then attended law school at Harvard, gained renown after writing A Problem From Hell, the Pulitzer Prize-winning book about America's failures to stop genocide. The book launched her into the national spotlight-a good place to be if your mission, like hers, is to change American foreign policy.Power, who moved from Ireland to Pittsburgh at age 9, did not set out to be the guardian of America's moral conscience. Instead, she planned to write about sports. But during a 1989 internship covering the Atlanta Braves, she happened to see live footage of the Tiananmen Square protests. "People were getting crushed on television. It was a ‘what am I doing with my life?' moment." Her plans changed.Quote: |
People were getting crushed on television. It was a ‘what am I doing with my life?' moment. |