Ilana Rovner

When Ilana Rovner was in law school in the 1960s, there had been only two women federal judges in the history of the United States. In 1992, after being nominated by President George H. W. Bush, she became the first woman appointed to the Seventh Circuit, serving as a federal judge for the Court of Appeals. A child during World War II, Rovner and her mother left Latvia for the United States to join her father and to escape the occupation of their native country by Nazi Germany. Updated July 2015