On this week’s episode of Newsmakers, we took a closer look at US Senator Tammy Duckworth. The senator recently made headlines because she traveled to Taiwan for three days this week as part of a show of support from the United States.

Senator Duckworth was born in 1968 in Bangkok, Thailand. As a child, she lived in various Southeast Asian countries, learning to speak Thai and Indonesian. Duckworth joined the US Army Reserves in 1992, eventually serving in Iraq where she was injured in 2004.

She became head of the Illinois States Department of Veterans Affairs in 2006, before being elected to the United States House of Representatives in 2012. In 2016, she was elected as a United States Senator.

A member of the Taiwan Senate Caucus, Senator Duckworth has always been a supporter of Taiwan. Last year, she led a delegation of US lawmakers to Taiwan amid the country’s first major COVID outbreak, promising that the US would not leave the country to fight alone. The same year, she introduced the Taiwan Partnership Act to establish a partnership between the U.S. National Guard and the Taiwan Defense Forces. Last May, it introduced the Taiwan Security Enhancement Act.

Senator Duckworth made headlines this week as she visited Taiwan for three days. During her trip, she met with President Tsai Ing-wen and other senior officials. According to the U.S. representative office, his trip focused on regional security, trade and investment, and global supply chains.