Africa's first female president was Wis waitress

"I hope young girls will now see me as a role model that will inspire them," Johnson-Sirleaf said an interview with The Associated Press at her Monrovia villa late Monday. "I certainly hope more and more of them will be better off, women in Liberia, women in Africa, I hope even women in the world."

--Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf

At age 67, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf is set to become not just Liberia's first elected female president - but the first in Africa, and one of only a handful in the world.She has swept floors and waited tables in Wisconsin and earned a degree from Harvard. She has been jailed at home and exiled abroad. Now she's on the verge of making history.

Read more...