Fitzgerald is an actress best known for her work on TV's "West Wing" as Carol Fitzpatrick, assistant to C.J. Craig (played by Allison Janney). The political drama was a natural fit for the daughter of a judge - Common Pleas Judge James Fitzgerald III - and the executive director of the Pennsylvania Society - Carol McCullough Fitzgerald.
But acting isn't her only passion. Besides acting, in 1995 Fitzpatrick co-founded Voices in Harmony, a nonprofit theater program in Los Angeles that works with at-risk teens to turn their stories into plays. "Staging Hope," filmed in 2006, follows Fitzgerald and her colleagues as she brings a similar program to the displaced-persons camps in war-torn northern Uganda.
"We do it in Los Angeles," Fitzgerald said, "so why not in Kitgum?"
These African teenagers - barely out of childhood - have experienced atrocities beyond comprehension due to a civil war that had been raging since before most of them were born. Many had been abducted by the Lord's Resistance Army and forcibly conscripted or used as sex slaves. Their only way out was death or escape. Other children watched as their relatives were killed. Many were forced from their homes and into the crowded, disease-ridden refugee camps.
Despite the distance between the two places, Fitzgerald encountered many similarities between the L.A. teens and those in Uganda. "Teenagers are teenagers, people are people," Fitzgerald said. "I have to relearn this lesson that no matter what it looks like on the outside - if there are differences in age, euthenics, geography, socioeconomic background - no matter what the external differences, people are people. I love relearning that lesson whether it's in L.A. or Uganda."
