Maxine Waters

With her passion for the people of her district, representative Maxine Waters became one of the most well known members of the U.S. House of Representatives. Born in Los Angeles, the fifth of thirteen children, Waters worked as part of the Head Start program in the impoverished neighborhood of Watts in the late '60s, before attending California State University, Los Angeles, where she earned her degree in sociology. She began her life as a public servant in 1976 when she entered the California State Assembly, where she worked to divest state pension funds away from businesses that had ties to the apartheid government in South Africa. After she was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1990, Waters proved herself to be an outspoken advocate for her district, especially in the aftermath of the L.A. riot that followed the Rodney King verdict, personally helping to deliver relief supplies and publicly demanding the reinstatement of vital services to neighborhoods hit hardest by the event. She would vehemently oppose the Iraq War, as well as U.S. involvement in the 2004 coup in Haiti, and has strongly opposed minimum sentencing. Waters became the ranking member of the House Financial Services Committee in 2012. She was married to retired NFL linebacker and former ambassador to the Bahamas Sid Williams.