Picture this: It’s 1973. You just graduated from Yale Law School, one of only about a dozen women out of a class size of nearly 200. Like most of your peers, you could easily join a prestigious corporate law firm in New York, instantly catapulting yourself into a six-figure income bracket.

But you take a different course. You decide to go work for a nonprofit — the Children’s Defense Fund, founded by prominent civil rights leader Marian Wright Edelman. You spent the previous summer working for Edelman, exposing racism at schools in the deep South. The work didn’t pay a lot, but it was meaningful.

This time, you go up to New England and knock on doors in New Bedford. You talk with families of kids with disabilities about the lack of educational opportunities and access. They’re heartbreaking stories and difficult to hear, but they will ultimately lead to historic federal legislation requiring schools to provide quality education for all students — including those with disabilities.

I often tell this anecdote about Hillary Clinton when I talk with friends and neighbors about why I’m supporting her for president. What gets lost in the 10-second sound-bites and 24-hour news cycle that is a modern-day presidential campaign is often a picture of the candidates themselves. A human picture.

And this picture of Clinton has always inspired me. Maybe it’s because I too chose a different path out of law school. Maybe because I too have been driven by something more than dollar signs and income brackets. Maybe because I too have seen the positive public policy changes that can come from a good pair of sneakers and door-knocking.

Clinton has devoted her life’s work to breaking down the barriers that hold Americans back and building ladders of opportunity for communities that are most in need. The kitchen-table issues that keep Coloradans up at night: How am I going to pay for my kid’s college? When am I finally going to get that raise? How will I pay for my prescriptions? How will I care for my family member with Alzheimer’s? Those are exactly the types of fights that she’s been waging for years.

Clinton is working for real solutions that will make a real difference in people’s lives. And she’ll work harder than anyone to actually make them happen.

How can I say that with such certainty? Because she has. As First Lady, she refused to give up when Congress defeated health care reform. Instead, she worked with Republicans and Democrats to help create the Children’s Health Insurance program, which now provides coverage to 8 million kids.

As a U.S. senator, she pushed the Bush administration to secure $20 billion to rebuild New York after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, and fought to provide health care for first responders at Ground Zero.

She introduced eight pieces of legislation to protect and expand women’s access to critical health care services, and she repeatedly introduced, co-sponsored, and voted for legislation to get women equal pay.

Most recently, she brought national attention to a city in Michigan whose injustice and plight had been overlooked and ignored for far too long.

As Coloradans go to caucus in two days, I hope they keep this picture of Clinton in their minds. I hope they think about what type of president we need to lead us into the next eight years and what type of candidate is best prepared to continue building on the progress we’ve made under Obama.

I’m confident that if they do, they’ll see what I and thousands of others across our state have seen: Hillary Clinton is the greatest change-maker there is, and the most qualified person to be our next president.

State Rep. Crisanta Duran, a Democrat, represents House District 5 in Denver.

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