Narrator: On April 12, 1980, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf had just been appointed Liberia’s Minister of Finance, the first woman to ever hold the post. But before she could even begin, she was woken by the sound of gunfire. A group of non-commissioned officers, led by a 28-year-old Master Sergeant named Samuel Doe, had stormed the Executive Mansion, brutally murdered the president, and seized control of the country. A voice on the radio declared the end of corruption and ordered all government ministers to report immediately to the army barracks. For a light-skinned woman of the elite, in a city now chanting vengeful slogans against the old guard, this was not a request; it was a death sentence. How does one not only survive such a moment but go on to lead that very nation out of the ashes? The answer lies in the harrowing and triumphant journey chronicled in Helene Cooper’s biography, Madame President.

Narrator: Ellen Johnson Sirleaf’s life was framed by destiny from its very beginning. Days after her birth in 1938, a wandering prophet peered into her crib and declared, “This child will be great. This child is going to lead.” This prophecy became a guiding narrative for her family and for Ellen herself. Yet, she was born into a nation deeply fractured by its own origin story. Liberia was founded by freed American slaves, known as the 'Congo people,' who, in a tragic irony, established a ruling class that marginalized the native 'country people.'

Ellen’s own heritage was a complex tapestry that mirrored this divide. With a Gola chief for a grandfather and a light-skinned mother of Kru and German descent, she had the unique ability to navigate both worlds. She looked and lived like the 'Congo' elite but possessed undeniable 'country' roots. This dual identity gave her a form of social camouflage, an asset that would prove invaluable in her later efforts to unite a nation torn apart by class and ethnic strife. However, her early life was far from the corridors of power. Married at 17, she quickly had four sons and found herself trapped in a cycle of domestic drudgery and escalating abuse, which culminated in her husband threatening her with a gun. It was this trauma that fueled her unyielding determination to escape, not just her marriage, but the constraints placed upon her, by pursuing an education in America—a decision that would set her on the path to fulfilling that childhood prophecy.

Narrator: After her divorce and education abroad, Ellen began to flourish professionally at Liberia’s Treasury Department. But her sharp intellect could not ignore the systemic rot she witnessed. Under President Tubman, Liberia’s economy was a mirage of prosperity, built on foreign exploitation of raw materials while the ruling elite enriched themselves. This system of state-sanctioned theft was something Ellen could not abide.

In 1969, at an economic conference organized by a Harvard economist, she was given the stage. Instead of delivering the expected flattering speech, Ellen did the unthinkable. She stood before Liberia’s ruling class and described their government with a single, devastating word: “kleptocracy.” She gave concrete examples of the corruption everyone knew but no one dared name—from clerks demanding bribes for divorce papers to immigration officers extorting travelers. The room fell into a stunned silence. The organizer, fearing for her life, immediately arranged a fellowship for her at Harvard. This act of defiance marked her transformation from a government technocrat into a political truth-teller. Years later, after returning to Liberia under a new president, she delivered another scathing commencement address, calling for “deep contempt” for the government’s hypocrisy. This time, she wasn’t offered a fellowship; she was stripped of her duties and professionally sidelined, learning firsthand the steep price of speaking truth to power.

Narrator: The simmering tensions in Liberia finally exploded in 1980 with Samuel Doe’s violent military coup. Ellen, having just been appointed Finance Minister, was forced to navigate a terrifying new reality. She survived the initial wave of retribution that saw her colleagues publicly executed on a beach, and she reluctantly accepted a position in Doe’s government, believing she could do more to help her country from within than from exile. However, Doe’s regime quickly devolved into a brutal, corrupt dictatorship.

Ellen’s attempts to work within the system gave way to open defiance. After subtly criticizing Doe’s government in a speech using a Liberian parable about a rat trap, she was publicly threatened by Doe’s second-in-command and forced to flee the country. She returned years later, only to escalate her opposition. In a 1985 speech to Liberians in Philadelphia, she called Doe’s administration a group of “idiots,” a remark that infuriated the dictator. Upon her return to Monrovia, she was arrested, placed under house arrest, and, after attempting to smuggle a message of defiance to her supporters, thrown into the notorious post stockade prison. This act of suppression backfired, transforming Ellen from a political critic into an international cause célèbre and a symbol of resistance against tyranny.

Narrator: The 2005 presidential election, Liberia’s first after the civil war, pitted Ellen against the popular football star George Weah. The runoff campaign exposed a stark gender divide. Weah’s camp adopted the slogan, “You know book, you not know book, I will vote for you,” a message that deeply insulted Liberia’s market women. Though many were uneducated themselves, they toiled to send their children to school and saw education as the nation’s only path forward. In response, they launched a political revolution.

Led by figures like Vabah Gayflor, the market women became Ellen’s most powerful grassroots army. But facing threats of violence from Weah’s supporters, they employed their own “crafty techniques.” At a bar near a major junction, women offered young men beer or small sums of money in exchange for their voter ID cards, effectively disenfranchising them. In other cases, mothers took matters into their own hands. One woman, known as “the Oma,” recounted sneaking into her son’s room while he slept, taking his voter ID from his wallet, and burying it in the yard to prevent him from voting for Weah. “I carried him for nine months,” she later said, without shame. “Then he will take people country and give it away?” These acts, born of desperation and a fierce maternal sense of duty, were instrumental in securing Ellen’s historic victory as Africa’s first elected female head of state.

Narrator: Ellen’s presidency was a radical challenge to a deeply patriarchal society, and the “Empire” of male dominance struck back with vicious force. Shortly after her inauguration, a new and macabre form of ritualistic killing emerged. Women were found brutally murdered, their genitalia removed in what was interpreted as a symbolic, misogynistic assault on the female president’s authority. The message was clear: brute strength could still challenge power won at the ballot box.

Madame President confronted this backlash with decisive courage. When her supporters brought her photos of five mutilated women from Bong County, she was moved to tears but immediately took action. Bypassing a passive local police force, she called the county superintendent directly and demanded arrests. By that afternoon, five suspects were in custody. She also faced down political bullying from former soldiers who blocked streets and threatened a return to war over back pay. Unafraid, she walked out into the horde of angry, armed men to confront their leader directly, using raw Liberian English to challenge their threats and defuse the crisis. Her actions signaled that the era of impunity and intimidation was over, but they also revealed the violent, deep-seated resistance she faced in trying to rebuild the nation.

Narrator: In 2014, Liberia faced its greatest test since the civil war: the arrival of the Ebola virus. Initially, both the government and the public were in denial. Madame President, focused on economic development, believed the outbreak would peter out, while citizens, distrustful of the government, dismissed it as a hoax. This denial allowed the virus to spread like wildfire, its transmission tragically aided by the cultural imperative to touch and care for the sick.

The government’s first major intervention—a military-enforced quarantine of the West Point slum—was an unmitigated disaster, leading to riots, the death of a teenage boy, and a complete erosion of public trust. Realizing the nation was overwhelmed, Madame President made a crucial pivot. She penned a desperate, honest letter to President Barack Obama, admitting, “we will never break the transmission chain and the virus will overwhelm us.” This direct appeal, combined with the infection of two American missionaries, finally galvanized a massive international response. Yet, the true victory came from Liberians themselves. They shifted from fatalism to self-reliance, launching grassroots hand-washing campaigns and creating makeshift PPE from garbage bags. This combination of international aid and local ingenuity allowed Liberia to become the first of the three hardest-hit nations to be declared Ebola-free, a testament to both her leadership and the resilience of her people.

Narrator: The single most important takeaway from Madame President is the extraordinary power of resilience in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds. Ellen Johnson Sirleaf’s journey is not just a story of political success; it is a testament to the human capacity to endure unimaginable personal and national trauma—from domestic abuse and political imprisonment to civil war and a deadly epidemic—and emerge not just intact, but with the strength to lead and rebuild. Her life demonstrates that leadership is forged in the crucible of crisis.

The book leaves us with a challenging reflection on what it takes for a woman to break the highest political glass ceiling. The author suggests that in Liberia, it took the complete and utter devastation of society—a point where the old patriarchal systems had failed so catastrophically—for people to be willing to roll the dice on a woman leader. This raises a profound question for us all: Must a society be brought to its knees before it is ready to embrace a different kind of power?