Chelsea Clinton is a Woman of the Year because... "She believes there are solutions to the world's most complex problems—and she's not stopping until we solve them. She's dedicated and she's dogged, and the world is going to be a much better place when she's done with it."
—Matt Damon, actor and cofounder of water.org
Let's forget the last name for a moment and focus on the résumé: four degrees (Stanford, Columbia, and two from Oxford), respected turns as a consultant and on Wall Street, and a reputation as the hardest-working person in the room. With her latest gig, she is tackling one of the most formidable problems of our time: the global inequality of women and girls. And for much of the past year, she did it wearing maternity pants.
Take all of that into consideration, and Chelsea Clinton's family history becomes one of the least impressive things about her. Yes, the 34-year-old is the daughter of former president Bill Clinton and former secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton. And yes, she is now the mother of Charlotte ("the most beautiful, smartest five-day-old you'll ever meet," bragged her grandmother after her birth). But most important, Clinton is a woman who believes the universe has room for improvement. "I've always had a sense of optimism that the world really can get better," she says, and she has dedicated this next stage of her life to making that happen.
When Clinton was young, she dreamed of studying medicine. By the time she graduated from Stanford in 2001, she had different ideas. Raised by parents who encouraged her to follow her heart, Clinton rebelled the way only the child of public servants could and became a management consultant. But after seven years in the private sector, she followed the advice her beloved maternal grandmother, Dorothy Rodham, had been giving her for years and left her job to join the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation, where she's been racking up successes ever since. In Malawi, Rwanda, and Tanzania, a seed and fertilizer initiative she championed has improved the crop outputs of more than 30,000 farmers (many of whom are women); she also built a 16-organization partnership to help stop elephant poaching. Along the way, the biggest names in global health have come to respect her analytic, data-obsessed mind: "Her pragmatism is legendary," says Paul Farmer, M.D., a medical anthropologist and a founder of the international nonprofit Partners in Health. "A lot of people who are interested in policy are unskilled at figuring out how to get something done. Chelsea's got both those gifts. She can link the big picture to 'OK, how do we do something for this kid right now?' It's rare to be able to go from the small-scale nitty-gritty to the big picture. She's good at it. She's great at it, in fact."
Nowhere is this skill more evident than in her approach to a treatable disease that kills more than 2 million people worldwide every year: diarrhea. When Clinton, now vice chair of the foundation, took up the cause, she talked about it any chance she got ("it became one of my absolute favorite words to say in front of large audiences," she says, laughing). Then she worked with local governments to lower the cost of treatments, a move that could save the lives of an astonishing 170,000 children in Nigeria, Kenya, India, and Uganda by 2015. "Her work has impacted the lives of families across the globe," says Rajiv Shah, M.D., the administrator of the United States Agency for International Development.
Back home, Clinton also hosts a series of "Day of Action" events across America (and one in Brazil!); since 2012, participants have committed to more than 17,000 hours of community service. "Chelsea has a special ability to connect with young Americans and give them the confidence they need to be changemakers," says Jimmy Wales, cofounder of Wikipedia.
And then there is her massive new undertaking, No Ceilings: The Full Participation Project, a partnership between the Clinton Foundation and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. It's a mouthful of a name, and it has one of the biggest goals imaginable—to encourage women and girls to achieve more all over the world. It is work that is inspired, in many ways, by Clinton's grandmother. "She lived a life that even Dickens couldn't imagine," says Clinton. "Her grandparents, with whom she lived after her parents abandoned her at the age of three, pushed her out of the house at 13. I think about how determined she was not to let it define her. She had straight A's. If there had been a system or scholarship for her, an entire constellation of opportunities would have opened up."
To make sure that constellation is open for the next generation, No Ceilings is built on a simple premise: If we can measure where the world stands in terms of opportunities and rights for women and girls—which countries are doing well with maternal health, for instance—then we can begin to take steps to do better. The project has Chelsea Clinton written all over it. "This is why I love data," she says. "The sense of the impossible diminishes with each small step." So how does this data-loving Clinton plan to measure her success as a parent to Charlotte with husband Marc Mezvinsky? "I hope that I'll be a mother who is able to give her child the same things my parents gave to me—never doubting that I was the center of their world, that I had a real sanctuary around the dinner table every night in our own little universe of three," she says. "And I want to be a parent who works to improve that world around me. I was raised to believe that if you can do something, you should do something."
Genevieve Roth is the special projects director at Glamour.* She oversees our Women of the Year awards.*
