Candidate for
US Representative; Pennsylvania Congressional District; District 13; Democratic Party

Marjorie Margolies is the President of Women's Campaign International (WCI), a group that provides advocacy training for women throughout the world. WCI was the first international organization to bring Bosnian and Serbian women together. Its trainings in Africa led to the doubling of women in several parliaments on the continent. WCI has gone to some of the most dangerous places in the world -- from Afghanistan to Sri Lanka, Bosnia-Herzegovina to Columbia + to train, encourage, and empower women. And in each of these missions, she has brought a team that has included young women from the United States to carry on the mission of WCI for generations to come.

Marjorie's career has been a career of firsts: one of the first woman television journalists on the ground in Vietnam; the first unmarried U.S. citizen to adopt a foreign child; the first woman ever elected to Congress from Pennsylvania in her own right, and the first Democrat since 1916 elected from Pennsylvania's 13th District.

During her term in the House, Marjorie co-sponsored and fought for passage of legislation that is just as relevant today as when she served: the Family and Medical Leave Act, the ban on assault weapons, and increased federal funding for women's health care. Marjorie cast the deciding vote for the Clinton budget in 1993, which, though costing her re-election, laid the groundwork for the largest expansion of our nation's economy since World War II. In 1995, Marjorie served as the Director of the United States delegation to the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, China that created a global commitment to achieving equality, development and peace for women worldwide.

Marjorie is an adjunct professor at the Fels Institute of Government at the University of Pennsylvania. In addition, as a Woodrow Wilson Fellow, Marjorie lectures at universities throughout the country. A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and a CBS News Foundation Fellow at Columbia University, Marjorie began her career as a television journalist at WCAU-TV in Philadelphia.

For two decades, Marjorie was a journalist with NBC and its owned and operated stations both in New York and Washington, DC. She was a contributing correspondent to the Today Show, Sunday Today, A Closer Look, CNBC, and Real Life with Jane Pauley. Marjorie's reporting has won numerous awards including five Emmys.

Marjorie is a best-selling author writing They Came to Stay chronicling the adoption of her two daughters, Lee Heh from Korea in 1970 joined four years later by Holly from Vietnam. In 1993, Marjorie wrote A Woman's Place... The Freshmen Women Who Changed the Face of Congress.

She is the mother of a combined family of 11 children and, with the refugee families she has been sponsoring over the years, her household has taken care of 25 children in total.