Mar­jorie Mar­golies is a for­mer mem­ber of Con­gress from Penn­syl­va­nia, a jour­nal­ist, a wom­en’s rights advo­cate, and a serendip­i­tous moth­er many times over. She is per­haps best remem­bered for being the first unmar­ried Amer­i­can to adopt a for­eign child and for cast­ing the decid­ing vote in favor of Pres­i­dent Clin­ton’s 1993 bud­get, the Omnibus Rec­on­cil­i­a­tion Act. Born in Philadel­phia, Mar­golies grad­u­at­ed from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia. She worked as a jour­nal­ist with NBC and its owned and oper­at­ed sta­tions for 25 years, win­ning five Emmy Awards. Run­ning as a Demo­c­rat, she was elect­ed to rep­re­sent the tra­di­tion­al­ly Repub­li­can 13th Dis­trict of Penn­syl­va­nia in Con­gress. She was also the deputy chair of the Unit­ed States del­e­ga­tion to the Unit­ed Nations Fourth World Con­fer­ence for Women in Bei­jing in 1995. As a result of that expe­ri­ence, she found­ed Wom­en’s Cam­paign Inter­na­tion­al (WCI), an orga­ni­za­tion that pro­vides empow­er­ment train­ing for women around the world. She is cur­rent­ly a fac­ul­ty mem­ber at the Annen­berg School of Com­mu­ni­ca­tion at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia, and at last count, her fam­i­ly con­sist­ed of 11 chil­dren and 21 grandchildren.