Ilhan Omar is a Somali-born American lawmaker who currently serves as a member of the United States’ House of Representative for Minnesota’s District 5, having been elected in 2018. In 2016, she served as a member of the Minnesota House of Representatives from 60B district, where she became the first naturalized African, and one of the first two Muslim women to occupy the position.

She started her career in 2006 as a Community Nutrition Educator with the University of Minnesota for three years before moving on to the Minnesota Department of Education as the Coordinator for child nutrition campaign. At about the same time, she made a bold dabble into politics, working with Kari Dziedzic as Campaign Manager for his senatorial re-election. In 2015, she fully launched into advocacy, working as the Director of Policy Initiatives of the Women Organizing Women Network, through which she advocated the inclusion of East African women in political leadership.

She went into elective politics in 2016, when she contested and won the Minnesota House of Representatives election under the platform of Democratic-Farmer-Labor (DFL). Her tenure in the state legislature was defined by the spearheading and enactment of different bills, particularly for advancing the standard of living in the state. Her achievements delivered her political victory when she went a step further to contest a seat in the US House of Representatives in 2018. Since then, she has continued to promote people-friendly laws including the free tuition for indigent college students, access sound health care for all, and cancelation of students’ meal debts incurred by low low-income earning families in the US.

She also advocates the promotion of human rights in the crisis-torn Yemen through her public criticisms of Saudi-Arabia’s intervention in the state. She is a world-class advocate with leadership that demonstrates clear concerns for better welfare for humanity; Ilhan Omar is our woman of the week.

Sources

1. O’Grady, Siobhán (2018). Trump demonized Somali refugees in Minnesota. One of them just won a seat in Congress. The Washington Post. https://web.archive.org/web/20190313005712/https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2018/11/07/trump-demonized-somali-refugees-minnesota-one-them-just-won-seat-congress/?utm_term=.9bb3be948c54
2. Armin Rosen. (2018). https://www.tabletmag.com/scroll/263826/as-keith-ellison-leaves-congress-one-likely-replacement-faces-criticism-for-anti-israel-views
3. Ilhan’s Story (n.d.). https://web.archive.org/web/20161106032533/https://www.ilhanomar.com/bio
4. Ryan Faircloth. (2016). Debate spotlights veteran, newcomers. Minnesota Day. https://www.mndaily.cOm/article/2016/08/debate-spotlights-veteran-newcomers
5. Ola Salem (2018). Saudi Arabia Declares War on America’s Muslim Congresswomen. Foreign Policy. https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/12/11/saudi-arabia-declares-war-on-americas-muslim-congresswomen/

Amina Mohamed is a Kenyan lawyer, diplomat and politician. Former Cabinet Secretary (Minister) for Education, Mohamed has been in public service since 1985. She is the current Cabinet Secretary for Sports in Kenya, having formerly served as the Cabinet Secretary (Minister) for Foreign Affairs and International Trade, the first woman to hold this position in Kenya. Her work as the Minister for Foreign Affairs which raised Kenya’s international profile spiked Foreign Direct Investment in the country by 400%.

Mohamed achieved many other firsts in her illustrious career. She was the first African to chair the World Trade Organization’s General Council’s global trade round at the 10th World Trade Organization Ministerial Conference held in Nairobi. She was also the first woman to chair the governing General Council of the World Trade Organization, the Dispute Settlement Body, the International Organization for Migration, and the United Nations Office for Drugs and Crime.

Mohamed graduated with an LLM in International Law from Kiev State University, Ukraine. She also has a postgraduate diploma (PGDip) in International Relations from the University of Oxford. She was the Assistant Secretary-General of the United Nations and Deputy Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme at Nairobi. She was also the Permanent Secretary of the Kenyan Ministry of Justice, National Cohesion and Constitutional Affairs and former Ambassador of Kenya to the United Nations at Geneva.

We celebrate Amina Mohamed today as our Woman of the Week for her audacity in public service at both local and international levels, and for doing so quite admirably.

Sources:

“Ambassador Amina Mohamed.” HuffPost, Mon. 08 July 2019, https://www.huffpost.com/author/ambassador-amina-mohamed

“Ambassador (Dr.) Amina Mohamed.” International Growth Centre, Mon. 08 July 2019, https://www.theigc.org/person/ambassador-dr-amina-mohamed/

“Amina Mohamed.”Wikipedia, Mon. 08 July 2019, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amina_Mohamed

Angie Brooks was a Liberian diplomat and jurist who served as the president of the 24th session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), the first African female president of that body.

Brooks started as a lawyer and worked as a counselor-at-law to the Supreme Court in Liberia after returning from her educational pursuits abroad in 1953. She later worked in the Justice Department and became an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of Liberia, the first woman to serve on the Supreme Court. She influenced the establishment of a law department at the Liberia University as part of her efforts to encourage women to study law and taught part-time as a Professor of Law at the same university from 1954-1958. From August 1953 to March 1958, she served as Assistant Attorney-General of Liberia and went on to become Assistant Secretary of State.

In 1954, she became Liberia’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations and was the first woman and African to serve as president of the UN Trusteeship Council. Identified with a leadership style that was seen as a combination of charm and shrewd diplomacy, she was in 1969 selected as the President of the 24th session of the United Nations General Assembly.

For her pioneering roles in a global community dominated by men; and for her exemplary representation of the ability of the African woman to mix it up with the rest of the best of women across the world, Angie Brooks is our Woman of the Week.

Sources:

Encyclopaedia Britannica. “Brooks, Angie”, Fri. 21 June 2019, https://www.encyclopedia.com/women/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/brooks-angie-1928

Wikipedia. “Angie Brooks”, Fri. 21 June 2019, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angie_Brooks