Marian Wright Edelman is the founder and president of the Children's Defense Fund. She is the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller The Measure of Our Success: A Letter to My Children and Yours, as well as numerous others that she has authored and edited. She is the winner of many awards for her work including a MacArthur Prize Fellowship, the Albert Schweitzer Humanitarian Award, a Heinz Award, and a Neibuhr Award. In 2000, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Robert F. Kennedy Lifetime Achievement Award for her writings. Edelman is a graduate of Spelman college and Yale Law School.