Patricia Nell Scott Schroeder

Patricia Nell Scott was born in Portland, Oregon. She graduated from the University of Minnesota and was one of only 15 women in a class of more than 500 at Harvard Law School, graduating in 1964. In 1972, at age thirty-two and with two young children, she ran for the US Congress in Colorado on an anti-Vietnam War platform, pulling off a stunning victory to become the first woman elected to Congress from Colorado.

Schroeder served twelve terms in the House, becoming the first woman to serve on the House Armed Services Committee. Famous for her quick wit, when asked how she could balance raising young children while serving in Congress, she famously retorted: "I have a brain and a uterus, and they both work." In 1983, observing how scandals never stuck to President Ronald Reagan, she coined the immortal political term "the Teflon President." Schroeder championed women's rights, reproductive freedom, and was the primary author and driving force behind the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993, granting millions of American workers job-protected leave for family medical emergencies.