By: Joan van den Brink

Eleanor Roosevelt was the wife of President, Franklin Delano Roosevelt and a stateswoman in her own right. She was a strong-minded and courageous leader who followed her ‘True North’ to campaign for and champion causes that transformed the lives of many disadvantaged Americans.  Once her husband’s political career took off she blossomed as an independent thinker and became a strong advocate for social reform to better the lives of the underprivileged.  She revolutionized the role of First Lady by constantly acting in ways that were new to the position: holding regular press conferences, writing a daily newspaper column, publishing books and articles, travelling the nation on speaking tours, chairing national conferences in the White House, addressing national conventions of social reform organizations, giving a keynote address at her party’s presidential convention, representing her nation abroad, travelling battlefields, and directing a government agency.  She played a critical role in the creation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by skillfully creating an atmosphere that permitted the blending of ideas and norms of different cultures together into a document that nations around the globe could assent to while marshaling U.S. support for swift passage of the declaration.   In short, she was an authentic leader.

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