Life and Achievements of Hillary Clinton

People always are eager to share their development expertise, to participate in and contribute to continual improvement, to work intensely towards the attainment of their common objectives. Some of them follow those they can trust and believe in that they will be led towards a timely fruition. Others try to promote a trusting relationship, to take into account changes needed for the future, to have the ability to reach higher success. Such people who lead towards impacting everyone at their surroundings in a positive manner are leaders.

In my humble opinion, Hillary Clinton can be introduced as a person who could become a successful leader. Her words “ I wanted people, particularly young women and men, to have some sense of what it is like to break through barriers” inspired me to improve the skills I need to become as strong leader as she is ( time.com). To inspire and influence others, a leader must have many skills and abilities.

My reason for writing is to show confidence/sense of purpose, sociability, resilience (understand yourself, control immediate response and make a plan, embrace change, be courageous) and accountability as leadership skills. In my estimation, the best leader to have accomplished this is Hillary Clinton.

Biography

Hillary Rodham was born in Chicago, Illinois, on October 26, 1947 to her father, Hugh Rodham and her mother, Dorothy Rodham. She was grown up in Park Ridge. Hugh Podham was a Firefighter and a retired Navy officer. Dorothy taught Sunday school at the Methodist Church.
Hillary attended Wellesley College, where she was active in student politics and elected senior class president. She graduated from Yale University, law degree, where she met Bill Clinton. After University she went on to enroll at Yale Child Study Center. Hillary completed one post graduate year of study taken courses on children and medicine.

Hillary worked at various jobs: in 1971 on U.S. Senator Walter Mondale’s sub- committee on migrant workers, in 1972 in the western states for the campaign of Democratic presidential nominee George McGovern. After she became a member of the presidential impeachment inquiry staff.
She married to Bill Clinton in 1975. Their daughter, Chelsea Victoria, was born on February 27, 1980. During Bill Clinton’s presidential campaign (1992), she emerged into notice as a dynamic partner of her husband and the first lady when her husband was selected by vote as president from 1993 to 2001.

From 2001 to 2009 Hillary was a U.S. senator. During that period, in November 2006, Hillary was the first woman selected to the U.S. Senate from New York. Later she accepted the nomination of secretary of State. During her term ( 2009-2013) she tried to keep women’s rights as a main point of the U.S.A. In 2016 Hillary was a presidential candidate from the Democratic Party. She actively supported a programme which was focused on tax increase on the wealthy, an increase to the minimum emolument and immigration reform. However, she was defeated in her bid for the presidency, Hillary proved herself as a leader who sticks to her principles and carries on a stubborn fight for social justice. Regarding the point, I mentioned above, about leadership skills I’d like to focus on those that Hillary Clinton demonstrates.

Being confident and having sense of purpose, Hillary believes that she should always stand up for herself. “My mother, who had had to make her own in life, believed that she should do everything she could do give us,a good start in life and protect us and prepare us”.( bartleby.com/Hillary- Clinton) Nobody will follow if they cannot believe in. Hillary feels confident in her leader’s abilities. She is always ready to promote trusting relationship and take responsibility for any failures.
John C Maxwell (2011) stated,” A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way” It takes a big amount of courage to stand up what is right. Considering all her campaigns we can see that she never stops learning and fighting. She knows how to turn her ideas into real life.

As the wealthiest Americans paid a lower tax than middle class families, Hillary decided to cope with this issue through running a project. Hillary’s project “A fair tax system” means that economy works for everyone. She wants her government to enforce laws for all people, for all citizens are equal under the law. She suggests to stop millionaires to find a loophole in the law. Hillary believes that her success will reward her efforts.

Similar project “An economy for everyone” is based on building an economy that will work for everyone, to help working Americans. Hillary has a special plan to meet these challenges.

1. A 100-days jobs plan. To make a big investment in good paying jobs, technology, clean energy and small businesses.
2. Make debt free colleges; to give a chance to students to cope with their student loans, provided 
relief with debt.
3. Change the rules in order to companies share profits with workers; to raise workers’ salary, 
to stop paying taxes if employees work overseas.
4. Make corporations, Wall Street (reform of the financial industry and its regulation) pay their 
fair share; she requires excess fare on wealthiest Americans. Hillary supports the Buffett Rule. She believes it is wrong that rich people pay less in federal taxes than the middle class. Hence, Hillary voices her protest.
5. The challenges families face in the 21st century; Hillary tries to convince the government to rise costs of child care and housing.

According to her project “Autism spectrum disorder “(ASD), it is necessary to develop essential conditions for children and adults with autism in order to make their life worth living, for their families can’t afford the cost of treatment and services. In this case Hillary introduced “Expanding the Promise for Individuals with Autism Act (EPIAA). She also cosponsored legislation that gave a chance to get hundreds of millions of dollars that were spent on people with autism.

Another global problem that must be solved is Climate Change. Hillary fights for cutting carbon pollution and expand clean energy. She realizes difficulties of this project yet she is not going to stop to fight for it. People can be proud of her determination, how she does her best to help people and make their life good. Sometimes it is unbelievable to go against power that breaks your plans nevertheless you should hope against hope as Hillary does.
One more fact I’d like to mention about her sense of purpose is her battle against Barack Obama in 2008. Although, she lost that didn’t stop her. Moreover, she determined to join the new administration. Here is what she said: this loss hurts, but please never stop believing that fighting for what’s right is worth it. It is, it is worth it. ( January,2017, from her concession speech)

From my point of view, being confident and having sense of purpose can help people to be a good leader. Moreover, Hillary is a good communicator. To gain the character of a good communicator is not easy. The way people choose to communicate with audience should be clear, simple and effective. This is her another skill – sociability.
Hillary can demonstrate her vision and strategy to achieve the goal. Words have the power to motivate people. Hillary Clinton is a mother and good friend for her children, grandmother for her grandchildren, advocate for women, former First Lady (but she looked at everything hopefully), two term US Senator, Secretary of State, first female presidential candidate of a major political party.

In all these positions she has inspired millions of people. They still believe in her leadership power and support her positive vision for their country. Even, when she lost against Barack Obama, the day after her defeat for the presidency, she had a grace in her concession speech, filled with hope.

Therefore, she has so many followers. She doesn’t aspire after glory or to honours. Hillary created The Hillaryland community on a volunteer basis to connect this community who has worked with her. The goal of community is to make it the home for people who would like to come and share their not only difficulties but also their experience. Hillary is a good listener and communicator, she can bring together people of different age and level. People believe in her ability to pave the way for those who come behind her, for she doesn’t think how she may have been seen, she focuses more on her message, how she can apply that to the future. Being able to stand in front of the nation and the world demonstrates not only Hillary’s self- confidence but also her various interactions with public people and politicians. She meets with people on a daily basis to build relationships that can help to succeed in her goals. “ Sociability is a leader’s inclination to seek out pleasant social relationships.” ( Northouse, 2016, p.26) She is a real people person, a person who enjoys or is particularly good at interacting with others.

The next point of Hillary’s leadership skills is her resilience ( understand yourself, control immediate response and make a plan, embrace change, be courageous). Some people are not able to realize how people can not understand themselves. It is a great power to understand not what you said but your attitudes, strengths and weaknesses. This ability helped her to cope with major issues to gain her points. As Secretary of State Hillary faced with global problems. One of them is climate change. According to her campaign “Climate and energy policies” Hillary suggested to diminish greenhouse gas emissions up to 30 percent “ from 2005 levels by 2025. In this case there should be investments in green infrastructure. Another point was to develop coal communities, support low- income households and communities of colour. She visited Appalachian coal country planning to enliven coal communities.

She also helped families. Hillary said,” When I became Secretary of State, Mom was just about to turn 90. She had been living with us in Washington for the past few years, ever since being alone in her apartment overlooking the zoo on Connecticut Av. became too much. Like so many Americans of my generation, I felt both blessed to have these extra years with an aging parent and very responsible for making sure she was comfortable and well cared for. Mom gave me so much unconditional love and support when I was growing up in Park Ridge IL; now it was my turn to support her. Of course I never would have let her hear me describe it that way. Dorothy Rodham was a fiercely independent woman. She couldn't bear the thought of being a burden to anyone.” ( Hard Choices, by Hillary Clinton, Vogue Magazine, May 31, 2014) Hillary cofounded the Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families, which purpose was to improve the lives of Arkansas kids and families.

Making decision and control immediate response are crucial parts of her resilience ability. Hillary can embrace any changes happened around her career. Bringing all her campaigns to life she understood that not all of them can be completely implemented. She lost the industrial Midwest to D. Trump. Big industrial cities grew into small towns. For instance, the steel mills of Ohio to the auto parts factories of Michigan and Wisconsin. And Midwest accounted for 29 percent of the country’s manufacturing employment. The middle class of workers didn’t want to be brought under control of big cities from Midwest, they hoped to be supported against that globalization. However, the Clinton team campaigned there was too late. She lost but she could find out the reasons and tried to do her best to fix the situation at least for the next campaign of presidential nominee.

She said,”Why did I run for president? Because I thought I’d be good at the job. It was a chance to do the most good I would ever be able to do. I am not running, but I am going to keep on working and speaking and standing up for what I believe. I want to be sure that people understand I am going to keep speaking out. I am not going anywhere.”

Hillary never hesitates to admit errors were made. She maintained her self-control and self- discipline. She voted for the war in Iraq but then regreted for being one of them who were for resolution. Each family who had lost a son or daughter got a letter from her where she apologise for making mistake, she was entirely to blamed herself for sending their children to war that was cause of their death. She said, ““I think that the decision to go to war in Iraq was a mistake I thought I had acted in good faith and made the best decision I could with the information I had. And I wasn’t alone in getting it wrong. But I still got it wrong.. There was no guarantee that we were right,' Clinton said. 'We were making what we thought of as a very careful calculation of the odds... There was no clear line where, if you do what we say this is what will follow.' ( Scott Beauchamp, SEP 8, 2016 )