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Kathleen Sibelius

“Taking a risk is a tough lesson for a lot of girls to learn. I don’t mean ‘leaping off a building risk,’ but the willingness to get hurt, to take a tumble, to not succeed the first time, but to step up and tackle something when you can’t predict the outcome.”

After serving as a legislator, insurance commissioner, and governor of Kansas, Kathleen Sebelius became secretary of the US Department of Health and Human Services in 2009. Running one of the largest domestic agencies, she helped shaped the Affordable Care Act of 2010, widely regarded as the most significant healthcare legislation since Medicare and Medicaid.