– Madeleine Albright

Today when Madeleine Albright was on campus, she met with the Center for Responsible Leadership fellows, Model UN students and Foreign Service students for an hour-long conversation.

During the conversation, she mentioned many things that were interesting, and thought-provoking, but nothing as provoking as “women must interrupt.” She followed this provocative statement explaining that due to our history of being second place, we (as women) must interrupt to have our voices heard.

While it is hard to interrupt a speaker, by waiting for somebody to finish speaking, they could take credit for the idea. Many times this has happened to me within class, organization or work meetings. Only a few times have I had to courage (or guts) to interrupt the speaker, or just jump right in without allowing somebody to speak first, to share my idea. On the global scale, women need to speak up and not wait for a man to solve a problem. We are equally capable and competent.

She also said, “there is no embarrassing question, just embarrasing answers. So ask away.”