Nobel Peace Prize Winner Has WI Connection

10/8/11 – One of three Nobel Peace Prize winners received part of her college education in Madison. Liberia’s president, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, studied at the former Madison Business College – where she waited tables in a drug-store diner to make money. And she went on to get a master’s degree from Harvard in 1971. The 72-year-old Johnson Sirleaf was honored for her efforts to secure peace in the African nation of Liberia, where she became the first democratically-elected female president in 2005. The Nobel committee also said Johnson Sirleaf promoted economic growth in Liberia, and generally made women stronger in that country. Johnson-Sirleaf shared today’s Nobel honor with another peace activist from Liberia, and an activist for democracy from Yemen.