Rosa Louise McCauley Parks (February 4, 1913 – October 24, 2005) was an activist in the civil rights movement best known for her pivotal role in the Montgomery Bus Boycott. The United States Congress has called her “the first lady of civil rights” and “the mother of the freedom movement”.
On December 1, 1955, in Montgomery, Alabama, Parks refused to obey bus driver James F. Blake‘s order to give up her seat in the “colored section” to a white passenger, after the whites-only section was filled. Parks was not the first person to resist bus segregation, but the NAACP believed that she was the best candidate for seeing through a court challenge after her arrest for civil disobedience in violating Alabama segregation laws. Parks’ prominence in the community and her willingness to become a controversial figure inspired the black community to boycott the Montgomery buses for over a year, the first major direct action campaign of the post-war civil rights movement. Her case became bogged down in the state courts, but the federal Montgomery bus lawsuit Browder v. Gayle succeeded in November 1956.
(Photo – US Public Domain – Author unknown)
Rosa Parks – source: Wikipedia

Marie Skłodowska Curie –  born Maria Salomea Skłodowska; November 1867 – 4 July 1934) was a Polish and naturalized-French physicist and chemist who conducted pioneering research on radioactivity. She was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, the first person and only woman to win twice, the only person to win a Nobel Prize in two different sciences, and was part of the Curie family legacy of five Nobel Prizes. She was also the first woman to become a professor at the University of Paris, and in 1995 became the first woman to be entombed on her own merits in the Panthéon in Paris. She was born in Warsaw, in what was then the Kingdom of Poland, part of the Russian Empire. She studied at Warsaw’s clandestine Flying University and began her practical scientific training in Warsaw. In 1891, aged 24, she followed her older sister Bronisława to study in Paris, where she earned her higher degrees and conducted her subsequent scientific work. She shared the 1903 Nobel Prize in Physics with her husband Pierre Curie and with physicist Henri Becquerel. She won the 1911 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Her achievements included the development of the theory of radioactivity (a term that she coined), techniques for isolating radioactive isotopes, and the discovery of two elements, polonium and radium. Under her direction, the world’s first studies into the treatment of neoplasms were conducted using radioactive isotopes. She founded the Curie Institutes in Paris and in Warsaw, which remain major centres of medical research today. During World War I, she developed mobile radiography units to provide X-ray services to field hospitals. ( Photo – US Public Domain, author Henri Manuel (died 1947))
Marie Skłodowska Curie – source: Wikipedia

Baroness Thatcher The Right Honourable . The Baroness Thatcher Prime Minister of the United Kingdom LG OM DStJ PC FRS HonFRSC. Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher, LG, OM, DStJ, PC, FRS, HonFRSC (née Roberts; 13 October 1925 – 8 April 2013) was a British stateswoman who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990 and Leader of the Conservative Party from 1975 to 1990. She was the longest-serving British prime minister of the 20th century and the first woman. A Soviet journalist dubbed her the Iron Lady, a nickname that became associated with her uncompromising politics and leadership style. As Prime Minister, she implemented policies that have come to be known as Thatcherism.
A research chemist at Somerville College, Oxford, before becoming a barrister, Thatcher was elected Member of Parliament for Finchley in 1959. Edward Heath appointed her Secretary of State for Education and Science in his Conservative government. In 1975, Thatcher defeated Heath in the Conservative Party leadership election to become Leader of the Opposition, the first woman to lead a major political party in the United Kingdom. She became Prime Minister after winning the 1979 general election.
(Photo – attribution by Chris Collins / Margaret Thatcher Foundation / CC BY-SA 3.0 – author unknown)
The Right Honourable Margaret Hilda Thatcher, – source: Wikipedia

Mae Carol Jemison (born October 17, 1956) is an American engineer, physician and NASA astronaut. She became the first African American woman to travel in space when she went into orbit aboard the Space Shuttle Endeavour on September 12, 1992. After medical school and a brief general practice, Jemison served in the Peace Corps from 1985 until 1987, when she was selected by NASA to join the astronaut corps. She resigned from NASA in 1993 to found a company researching the application of technology to daily life. She has appeared on television several times, including as an actress in an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. She is a dancer and holds nine honorary doctorates in science, engineering, letters, and the humanities. She is the current principal of the 100 Year Starship organization. (Photo – US Public Domain – author NASA)
Mae Jemison – source:Wikipedia

 Anna Eleanor Roosevelt October 11, 1884 – November 7, 1962) was an American political figure, diplomat and activist.  She served as the First Lady of the United States from March 1933 to April 1945 during her husband President Franklin D. Roosevelt‘s four terms in office, making her the longest serving First Lady of the United States.  Roosevelt served as United States Delegate to the United Nations General Assembly from 1945 to 1952. President Harry S. Truman later called her the “First Lady of the World” in tribute to her human rights achievements. …
Following her husband’s death in 1945, Roosevelt remained active in politics for the remaining 17 years of her life. She pressed the United States to join and support the United Nations and became its first delegate. She served as the first chair of the UN Commission on Human Rights and oversaw the drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Later she chaired the John F.Kennedy administration’s Presidential Commission on the Status of Women. By the time of her death, Roosevelt was regarded as “one of the most esteemed women in the world”; she was called “the object of almost universal respect” in her New York Times obituary.  In 1999, she was ranked ninth in the top ten of Gallup’s List of Most Widely Admired People of the 20th Century. (Photo – US Public Domain – author unknown)
Anna Eleanor Roosevelt – source: wikipedia

Oprah Winfrey (born Orpah Gail Winfrey; January 29, 1954) is an American media executive, actress, talk show host, television producerand philanthropist. She is best known for her talk show The Oprah Winfrey Show, which was the highest-rated television program of its kind in history and was nationally syndicated from 1986 to 2011 in Chicago. Dubbed the “Queen of All Media”, she was the richest African American of the 20th century and North America’s first black multi-billionaire, and has been ranked the greatest black philanthropist in American history. She has also been sometimes ranked as the most influential woman in the world. At the end of the 20th century, Life listed Winfrey as both the most influential woman and the most influential black person of her generation, and in a cover story profile the magazine called her “America’s most powerful woman”. In 2007, USA Today ranked Winfrey as the most influential woman and most influential black person of the previous quarter-century. Ladies Home Journal also ranked Winfrey number one in their list of the most powerful women in America and Senator Barack Obama has said she “may be the most influential woman in the country”. In 1998, Winfrey became the first woman and first African American to top Entertainment Weekly‘s list of the 101 most powerful people in the entertainment industry. Forbes named her the world’s most powerful celebrity in 2005, 2007, 2008, 2010, and 2013. (Photo – CC BY 2.0 – author https://www.flickr.com/photos/aphrodite-in-nyc)
Oprah Winfrey – source: Wikipedia

 Joanne Rowling CH, OBE, FRSL, FRCPE, FRSE, (/ˈroʊlɪŋ/ “rolling”; born 31 July 1965), writing under the pen names J. K. Rowling and Robert Galbraith, is a British novelist, philanthropist, film producer, television producer and screenwriter, best known for writing the Harry Potter fantasy series. The books have won multiple awards, and sold more than 500 million copies, becoming the best-selling book series in history. They have also been the basis for a film series, over which Rowling had overall approval on the scripts  and was a producer on the final films in the series.
… Rowling has lived a “rags to riches” life story, in which she progressed from living on state benefits to being the world’s first billionaire author. She lost her billionaire status after giving away much of her earnings to charity, but remains one of the wealthiest people in the world. She is the United Kingdom’s bestselling living author, with sales in excess of £238M. (Photo – CC BY 2.0 – author Daniel Ogren)
J.K. Rowling – source: Wikipedia

Maya Angelou (/ˈændʒəloʊ/ (listen); born Marguerite Annie Johnson; April 4, 1928 – May 28, 2014) was an American poet, singer, memoirist, and civil rights activist. She published seven autobiographies, three books of essays, several books of poetry, and is credited with a list of plays, movies, and television shows spanning over 50 years. She received dozens of awards and more than 50 honorary degrees.Angelou is best known for her series of seven autobiographies, which focus on her childhood and early adult experiences. The first, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969), tells of her life up to the age of 17 and brought her international recognition and acclaim.She became a poet and writer after a series of occupations as a young adult, including fry cook, sex worker, nightclub dancer and performer, cast member of the opera Porgy and Bess, coordinator for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and journalist in Egypt and Ghana during the decolonization of Africa. She was an actress, writer, director, and producer of plays, movies, and public television programs. In 1982, she was named the first Reynolds Professor of American Studies at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.  … (Photo – US Public Domain – author Clinton Library – Permission William J. Clinton Library)
Maya Angelou – source: Wikipedia

 Gabriela Mistral – Lucila Godoy Alcayaga (American Spanish: [luˈsila ɣoˈdoj alkaˈʝaɣa]; 7 April 1889 – 10 January 1957), known by her pseudonym Gabriela Mistral (Spanish: [ɡaˈβɾjela misˈtɾal]), was a Chilean poet-diplomat, educator and humanist. In 1945 she became the first Latin American author to receive a Nobel Prize in Literature, “for her lyric poetry which, inspired by powerful emotions, has made her name a symbol of the idealistic aspirations of the entire Latin American world”. Some central themes in her poems are nature, betrayal, love, a mother’s love, sorrow and recovery, travel, and Latin American identity as formed from a mixture of Native American and European influences. Her portrait also appears on the 5,000 Chilean peso bank note…. (Photo – US Public Domain – author Anna Riwikin (1908 – 1970))
Gabriela Mistral – source: Wikipedia

 Wangarĩ Muta Maathai (wà^ŋɡàˈɹɛ |m|ɑː|ˈ|t|aɪ; 1 April 1940 – 25 September 2011) was a renowned Kenyan social, environmental and political activist and the first African woman to win the Nobel laureate. She was educated in the United States at Mount St. Scholastica (Benedictine College) and the University of Pittsburgh, as well as the University of Nairobi in Kenya. She died of cancer on Sunday September 11, 2011.In 1977, Maathai founded the Green Belt Movement, an environmental non-governmental organization focused on the planting of trees, environmental conservation, and women’s rights. In 1984, she was awarded the Right Livelihood Award in 2004. Maathai was an elected member of Parliament and served as assistant minister for Environment and Natural resources in the government of President Mwai Kibaki between January 2003 and November 2005. She was an Honorary Councillor of the World Future Council. She was affiliated to professional bodies and received several awards. (Photo – CC BY-SA 2.0 – author Kingkongphoto & www.celebrityphotos.com)
Wangarĩ Muta Maathai – source: Wikipedia

 Elizabeth Blackwell (February 3, 1821 – May 31, 1910) was a British physician, notable as the first woman to receive a medical degree in the United States, and the first woman on the Medical Register of the General Medical Council.Blackwell played an important role in both the United States and the United Kingdom as a social and moral reformer, and pioneered in promoting education for women in medicine. Her contributions remain celebrated with the Elizabeth Blackwell Medal, awarded annually to a woman who has made significant contribution to the promotion of women in medicine.Blackwell was initially uninterested in a career in medicine especially after her schoolteacher brought in a bull‘s eye to use as a teaching tool. Therefore, she became a schoolteacher in order to support her family. This occupation was seen as suitable for women during the 1800s, however, she soon found it unsuitable for her. Blackwell’s interest in medicine was sparked after a friend fell ill and remarked that, had a female doctor cared for her, she might not have suffered so much.Blackwell began applying to medical schools, an immediately began to endure the prejudice against her gender that would persist throughout her career. She was rejected from each medical school she applied to, except Geneva Medical College, in which the male students voted on Blackwell’s acceptance. In 1847, Blackwell became the first woman to attend medical school in the United States.
(Photo – US Public Domain – author unknown)
Elizabeth Blackwell – source: Wikipedia

Susan B. Anthony (February 15, 1820 – March 13, 1906) was an American social reformer and women’s rights activist who played a pivotal role in the women’s suffrage movement. Born into a Quaker family committed to social equality, she collected anti-slavery petitions at the age of 17. In 1856, she became the New York state agent for the American Anti-Slavery Society.

In 1851, she met Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who became her lifelong friend and co-worker in social reform activities, primarily in the field of women’s rights. In 1852, they founded the New York Women’s State Temperance Society after Anthony was prevented from speaking at a temperance conference because she was female. In 1863, they founded the Women’s Loyal National League, which conducted the largest petition drive in United States history up to that time, collecting nearly 400,000 signatures in support of the abolition of slavery. In 1866, they initiated the American Equal Rights Association, which campaigned for equal rights for both women and African Americans. In 1868, they began publishing a women’s rights newspaper called The Revolution. In 1869, they founded the National Woman Suffrage Association as part of a split in the women’s movement. In 1890, the split was formally healed when their organization merged with the rival American Woman Suffrage Association to form the National American Woman Suffrage Association, with Anthony as its key force.(Photo – US Public Domain – author Engraved by G.E. Perine & Co. N.Y.) 
Susan B. Anthony – source: Wikipedia

Betty Williams (born 22 May 1943, Belfast, Northern Ireland) is a co-recipient with Mairead Corrigan of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1976 for her work as a cofounder of Community of Peace People, an organization dedicated to promoting a peaceful resolution to the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Williams heads the Global Children’s Foundation and is the President of the World Centre of Compassion for Children International. She is also the Chair of Institute for Asian Democracy in Washington D.C. and a Distinguished Visiting Professor at Nova Southeastern University. She lectures widely on topics of peace, education, inter-cultural and inter-faith understanding, anti-extremism, and children’s rights.Williams is a founding member of the Nobel Laureate Summit, which has taken place annually since 2000. In 2006, Williams became a founder of the Nobel Women’s Initiative along with Nobel Peace Laureates Mairead Corrigan Maguire, Shirin Ebadi, Wangari Maathai, Jody Williams and Rigoberta Menchú Tum. These six women representing North and South America, the Middle East, Europe and Africa, bring together their experiences in a united effort for peace with justice and equality. It is the goal of the Nobel Women’s Initiative to help strengthen work being done in support of women’s rights around the world. Williams also is a member of PeaceJam. (Photos – CC BY-SA 2.0 – author Kingkongphoto & www.celebrityphotos.com)
Betty Wllliams – source: Wikipedia

Tegla Chepkite Loroupe (born 9 May 1973) is a Kenyan long-distance track and road runner. She is also a global spokeswoman for peace, women’s rights and education. Loroupe holds the world records for 25 and 30 kilometres and previously held the world marathon record. She was the first African woman to hold the marathon World Record, which she held from 19 April 1998 until 30 September 2001. She is the three-time World Half-Marathon champion. Loroupe was also the first woman from Africa to win the New York City Marathon, which she has won twice. She has won marathons in London, Rotterdam, Hong Kong, Berlin and Rome. In 2016, she was the person organising the Refugee Team for the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio. …She has established a school (Tegla Loroupe Peace Academy) and orphanage for children from the region in Kapenguria, a high-mountain town in north-west Kenya.The 2006 Peace Marathon was held on 18 November 2006, in Kapenguria, Kenya. Two thousand warriors from six tribes competed. The next Peace Marathon is 15 November 2008 in Kapenguria, Kenya. Many ambassadors to Kenya are expected, together with the Prime Minister, and several Kenyan, Tanzanian, and Ugandan Ministers. In February 2007, she was named the Oxfam Ambassador of Sport and Peace to Darfur. In December 2006, she travelled with George Clooney, Joey Cheek, and Don Cheadle to Beijing, Cairo, and New York on a diplomatic mission to bring an end to violence in Darfur. She won the “Community Hero” category at the 2007 Kenyan Sports Personality of the Year awards. (Photos – CC BY 3.0 br – author Fernando Frazao / Agencia Brasil)

 Rio de Janeiro – A chefe da missão da Equipe Olímpica de Atletas Refugiados, Tegla Loroupe fala após chegada no Aeroporto RioGaleão. (Foto: Tomaz Silva/Agência Brasil)

Tegla Chepkite Loroupe: source: Wikipedia

Dame Jane Morris Goodall, DBE (/ˈɡʊdˌɔːl/; born Valerie Jane Morris-Goodall, 3 April 1934), formerly Baroness Jane van Lawick-Goodall, is an English primatologist and anthropologist. Considered to be the world’s foremost expert on chimpanzees, Goodall is best known for her over 55-year study of social and family interactions of wild chimpanzees since she first went to Gombe Stream National Park in Tanzania in 1960. She is the founder of the Jane Goodall Institute and the Roots & Shoots programme, and she has worked extensively on conservation and animal welfare issues. She has served on the board of the Nonhuman Rights Project since its founding in 1996. In April 2002, she was named a UN Messenger of Peace. Dr. Goodall is also honorary member of the World Future Council.
In 1977, Goodall established the Jane Goodall Institute (JGI), which supports the Gombe research, and she is a global leader in the effort to protect chimpanzees and their habitats. With nineteen offices around the world, the JGI is widely recognised for community-centred conservation and development programs in Africa. Its global youth program, Roots & Shoots began in 1991 when a group of 16 local teenagers met with Goodall on her back porch in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. They were eager to discuss a range of problems they knew about from first-hand experience that caused them deep concern. The organisation now has over 10,000 groups in over 100 countries. (Photos – CC BY 2.0 – author Erik (HASH) Hersman)
Jane Goodall : source: Wikipedia

Ruth Bader Ginsburg (/ˈbeɪdər ˈɡɪnzbɜːrɡ/; born Joan Ruth Bader; March 15, 1933 – September 18, 2020) was an American jurist who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1993 until her death in 2020. She was nominated by President Bill Clinton and was generally viewed as a moderate judge at the time of her nomination and eventually becoming part of the liberal wing of the Court as the Court shifted to the right over time. Ginsburg was the second woman to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court, after Sandra Day O’Connor. During her tenure, Ginsburg wrote notable majority opinions, including United States v. Virginia (1996), Olmstead v. L.C. (1999), and Friends of the Earth, Inc. v. Laidlaw Environmental Services, Inc. (2000).Ginsburg spent much of her legal career as an advocate for gender equality and women’s rights, winning many arguments before the Supreme Court. She advocated as a volunteer attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union and was a member of its board of directors and one of its general counsel in the 1970s.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg – source: Wikipedia

Kamala Devi Harris (/ˈkɑːmələ ˈdeɪvi/ (listen) KAH-mə-lə DAY-vee; born October 20, 1964) is an American politician and attorney who is the 49th and current vice president of the United States. She is the first female vice president and the highest-ranking female official in U.S. history, as well as the first African American and first Asian American vice president. A member of the Democratic Party, she served as the attorney general of California from 2011 to 2017 and as a United States senator representing California from 2017 to 2021. Harris became vice president upon being inaugurated in January 2021 alongside President Joe Biden, having defeated the incumbent president, Donald Trump, and vice president, Mike Pence, in the 2020 election.

Kamala Devi Harris – source: Wikipedia

Ketanji Brown Jackson (née Brown; born September 14, 1970) is an American attorney and jurist serving as a federal judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit since 2021. Born in Washington, D.C., and raised in Miami, Florida, Jackson attended Harvard University for college and law school, where she served as an editor on the Harvard Law Review. She began her legal career with three clerkships, including one with U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Stephen Breyer. Prior to her elevation to an appellate court, from 2013 to 2021, she served as a district judge for the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. Jackson was also vice chair of the United States Sentencing Commission from 2010 to 2014. Since 2016, she has been a member of the Harvard Board of Overseers.On February 25, 2022, President Joe Biden announced that Jackson was his nominee for Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, filling the vacancy created upon Breyer’s retirement.

Ketanji Brown Jackson – source: Wikipedia

Juliette Nadia Boulanger (French: [ʒyljɛt nadja bulɑ̃ʒe] (listen); 16 September 1887 – 22 October 1979) was a French music teacher and conductor. She taught many of the leading composers and musicians of the 20th century, and also performed occasionally as a pianist and organist.

From a musical family, she achieved early honours as a student at the Conservatoire de Paris but, believing that she had no particular talent as a composer, she gave up writing music and became a teacher. In that capacity, she influenced generations of young composers, especially those from the United States and other English-speaking countries. Among her students were many important composers, soloists, arrangers, and conductors, including Grażyna Bacewicz, Burt Bacharach, Daniel Barenboim, Lennox Berkeley, İdil Biret, Elliott Carter, Aaron Copland, John Eliot Gardiner, Philip Glass, Roy Harris, Quincy Jones, Dinu Lipatti, Igor Markevitch, Astor Piazzolla, Virgil Thomson, and George Walker.

Boulanger taught in the US and England, working with music academies including the Juilliard School, the Yehudi Menuhin School, the Longy School, the Royal College of Music and the Royal Academy of Music, but her principal base for most of her life was her family’s flat in Paris, where she taught for most of the seven decades from the start of her career until her death at the age of 92.

Boulanger was the first woman to conduct many major orchestras in America and Europe, including the BBC Symphony, Boston Symphony, Hallé, and Philadelphia orchestras. She conducted several world premieres, including works by Copland and Stravinsky.

Juliette Nadia Boulanger – source: Wikipedia

Alice Ida Antoinette Guy-Blaché (née Guy; French pronunciation: ​[alis gi.blɑʃe] ; 1 July 1873 – 24 March 1968) was a French pioneer filmmaker. She was one of the first filmmakers to make a narrative fiction film, as well as the first woman to direct a film. From 1896 to 1906, she was probably the only female filmmaker in the world.  She experimented with Gaumont‘s Chronophone sync-sound system, and with color-tinting, interracial casting, and special effects.

She was artistic director and a co-founder of Solax Studios in Flushing, New York. In 1912, Solax invested $100,000 for a new studio in Fort Lee, New Jersey, the center of American filmmaking prior to the establishment of Hollywood. That year, she made the film A Fool and His Money, probably the first to have an all-African-American cast. The film is now preserved at the National Center for Film and Video Preservation at the American Film Institute for its historical and aesthetic significance.^[5]

Alice Guy-Blache – source: Wikipedia

Chien-Shiung Wu (Chinese: 吳健雄; May 31, 1912 – February 16, 1997) was a Chinese-American particle and experimental physicist who made significant contributions in the fields of nuclear and particle physics. Wu worked on the Manhattan Project, where she helped develop the process for separating uranium into uranium-235 and uranium-238 isotopes by gaseous diffusion. She is best known for conducting the Wu experiment, which proved that parity is not conserved. This discovery resulted in her colleagues Tsung-Dao Lee and Chen-Ning Yang winning the 1957 Nobel Prize in Physics, while Wu herself was awarded the inaugural Wolf Prize in Physics in 1978. Her expertise in experimental physics evoked comparisons to Marie Curie. Her nicknames include the “First Lady of Physics”, the “Chinese Madame Curie” and the “Queen of Nuclear Research”.

Chien-Shiung Wu – source: Wikipedia

Nadia Murad Basee Taha (Arabic: نادية مراد باسي طه; born 1993) is an Iraqi Yazidi human rights activist who lives in Germany. In 2014, she was kidnapped from her hometown Kocho and held by the Islamic State for three months.Murad is the founder of Nadia’s Initiative, an organization dedicated to “helping women and children victimized by genocides, mass atrocities, and human trafficking to heal and rebuild their lives and communities”.In 2018, she and Denis Mukwege were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for “their efforts to end the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war and armed conflict“. She is the first Iraqi and Yazidi to be awarded a Nobel Prize.Presently, she is an advocate for Sustainable Development Goals appointed by Secretary-General of the United Nations.

Nadia Murad Basee Taha – source: Wikipedia

Louise Blanchard Bethune (July 21, 1856 – December 18, 1913) was the first American woman known to have worked as a professional architect. She was born in Waterloo, New York. Blanchard worked primarily in Buffalo, New York and partnered with her husband at Bethune, Bethune & Fuchs

Her work includes the Hotel Lafayette. The Buffalo Meter Company Building was renamed Bethune Hall in her honor by the University at Buffalo.

Louise Blanchard Bethune – source: Wikipedia

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf (born Ellen Eugenia Johnson, 29 October 1938) is a Liberian politician who served as the 24th President of Liberia from 2006 to 2018. Sirleaf was the first elected female head of state in Africa.

Sirleaf was born in Monrovia to a Gola father and Kru-German mother. She was educated at the College of West Africa. She completed her education in the United States, where she studied at Madison Business College and Harvard University. She returned to Liberia to work in William Tolbert’s government as Deputy Minister of Finance from 1971 to 1974. Later, she worked again in the West, for the World Bank in the Caribbean and Latin America. In 1979, she received a cabinet appointment as Minister of Finance, serving to 1980.

After Samuel Doe seized power in 1980 in a coup d’état and executed Tolbert, Sirleaf fled to the United States. She worked for Citibank and then the Equator Bank. She returned to Liberia to contest a senatorial seat for Montserrado County in 1985, an election that was disputed. She was arrested as a result of her open criticism of the military government in 1985 and was sentenced to ten years imprisonment, although she was later released. Sirleaf continued to be involved in politics. She finished in second place at the 1997 presidential election, which was won by Charles Taylor.

She won the 2005 presidential election and took office on 16 January 2006. She was re-elected in 2011. She was the first woman in Africa elected as president of her country. She won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2011, in recognition of her efforts to bring women into the peacekeeping process. She has received numerous other awards for her leadership. In June 2016, Sirleaf was elected as the Chair of the Economic Community of West African States, making her the first woman to hold the position since it was created.

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf- source: Wikipedia

Christiane (Janni) Nüsslein-Volhard (German pronunciation: [kʁɪsˈti̯anə ˈnʏslaɪ̯n ˈfɔlˌhaʁt] (listen); born 20 October 1942) is a German developmental biologist and a 1995 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine laureate. She is the only woman from Germany to have received a Nobel Prize in the sciences.

Nüsslein-Volhard earned her PhD in 1974 from the University of Tübingen, where she studied protein-DNA interaction. She won the Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research in 1991 and the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1995, together with Eric Wieschaus and Edward B. Lewis, for their research on the genetic control of embryonic development.

Christiane (Janni) Nüsslein-Volhard – source: Wikipedia

Rigoberta Menchú Tum (Spanish: [riɣoˈβeɾta menˈtʃu]; born 9 January 1959) is a K’iche’ Guatemalan human rights activist, feminist, and Nobel Peace Prize laureate. Menchú has dedicated her life to publicizing the rights of Guatemala’s Indigenous peoples during and after the Guatemalan Civil War (1960–1996), and to promoting Indigenous rights internationally. She received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1992 and the Prince of Asturias Award in 1998, in addition to other prestigious awards. She is the subject of the testimonial biography I, Rigoberta Menchú (1983) and the author of the autobiographical work, Crossing Borders (1998), among other works. Menchú is a UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador. She ran for president of Guatemala in 2007 and 2011, having founded the country’s first Indigenous political party, Winaq.

Rigoberta Menchú Tum – source: Wikipedia

 Jessica Andrea Watkins (born May 14, 1988) is a NASA astronaut, geologist, aquanaut and former international rugby player. Watkins was announced as the first Black woman who will complete an International Space Station long-term mission in April 2022. …  In June 2017, Watkins was selected as a member of NASA Astronaut Group 22 and began her two-year training in August. In December 2020, she was selected to be a part of the Artemis Team to return humans to the Moon. The year 2025 is the target date for the crewed lunar landing mission. In November 2021, she became the 4th astronaut of Group 22, and first Black woman, to be assigned a mission to the International Space Station (ISS) after being chosen as the final member of SpaceX Crew-4, scheduled to launch in April 2022. It will be Watkins’ first time in space. She will serve as a mission specialist for the six-month mission. Her role will involve observing and photographing geological changes on Earth, as well as other investigations into earth and space science, biological science, and the effects of long-duration spaceflight on humans.

Jessica Andrea Watkins – source: Wikipedia

Marin Alsop ([ˈmɛər.ɪn ˈæːl.sɑːp]; born October 16, 1956) is an American conductor and violinist. She is currently music director laureate of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, as well as chief conductor of the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra and the Ravinia Festival. In 2020 she was elected to the American Philosophical Society…

… Alsop was music director of the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music from 1992 to 2016. From 1993 to 2005, she was first principal conductor and then music director of the Colorado Symphony. She is now the orchestra’s conductor laureate. Alsop has also served as associate conductor of the Richmond Symphony in Richmond, Virginia from 1988 to 1990, music director of the Eugene Symphony in Eugene, Oregon from 1989 to 1996, and Creative Conductor Chair for the St. Louis Symphony from 1994 to 1996. In 2002, Alsop started the Taki Concordia Conducting Fellowship for female conductors. On September 20, 2005, Alsop became the first conductor ever to receive a MacArthur Fellowship….

Marin Alsop – source: Wikipedia

Olga Vyacheslavovna Smirnova (Russian: Ольга Вячеславовна Смирнова; born 6 November 1991) is a Russian ballet dancer who is currently a prima ballerina with the Dutch National Ballet in Amsterdam, Netherlands. She has danced at venues across Europe as well as appearing in Beijing and Japan….In 2011, immediately after her graduation, she was recruited by the Bolshoi Ballet directly in the rank of soloist. She was promoted to first soloist in her first season, to leading soloist at the end of her second season in 2013, and to prima ballerina in 2016. Until 2018, Smirnova worked under the tutelage of the legendary Marina Kondratieva, currently her master tutor at the Bolshoi is Maria Allash.In 2012 and 2013, she danced leading roles in La Bayadère, Diamonds, The Pharaoh’s Daughter and Swan Lake. In 2013, she performed the role of Tatiana at the Bolshoi’s premiere of Cranko’s Onegin. She has created roles such as Bianca in Mailliot’s Taming of the Shrew, Jorma Elo‘s Dream of Dream, the Marquess in Pierre Lacotte‘s Marco Spada. Her repertoire also includes Aurora in Sleeping Beauty, Anastasia in Ivan the Terrible, Terpischore in Balanchine‘s Apollo, and Marguerite in John Neumeier‘s Lady of the Camellias.

Olga Vyacheslavovna Smirnova – source: Wikipedia

Kamini Roy (12 October 1864 – 27 September 1933) was a Bengali poet, social worker and feminist in British India. She was the first woman honours graduate in British India.

She picked up the cue for feminism from a fellow student of Bethune School, Abala Bose. Speaking to a girls’ school in Calcutta, Roy said that, as Bharati Ray later paraphrased it, “the aim of women’s education was to contribute to their all-round development and fulfillment of their potential”.

In a Bengali essay titled The Fruit of the Tree of Knowledge she wrote,

The male desire to rule is the primary, if not the only, stumbling block to women’s enlightenment … They are extremely suspicious of women’s emancipation. Why? The same old fear – ‘Lest they become like us’.

In 1921, she was one of the leaders, along with Kumudini Mitra (Basu) and Mrinalini Sen, of the Bangiya Nari Samaj, an organization formed to fight for woman’s suffrage. The Bengal Legislative Council granted limited suffrage to women in 1925, allowing Bengali women to exercise their right for the first time in the 1926 Indian general election. She was a member of the Female Labour Investigation Commission (1922–23).

Kamini Roy – source: Wikipedia

Laura Jane Addams (September 6, 1860 – May 21, 1935) was an American settlement activist, reformer, social worker,  sociologist,  public administrator,  and author. She was an important leader in the history of social work and women’s suffrage in the United States and advocated for world peace.  She co-founded Chicago’s Hull House, one of America’s most famous settlement houses. In 1910, Addams was awarded an honorary master of arts degree from Yale University, becoming the first woman to receive an honorary degree from the school.  In 1920, she was a co-founder of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

In 1931, she became the first American woman to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, and is recognized as the founder of the social work profession in the United States. She was a radical pragmatist and the first woman “public philosopher” in the United States. In the Progressive Era, when presidents such as Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson identified themselves as reformers and social activists, Addams was one of the most prominent reformers.  She helped America address and focus on issues that were of concern to mothers, such as the needs of children, local public health, and world peace. 

Jane Adams- source: Wikipedia

A teacher, also called a schoolteacher or formally an educator, is a person who helps students to acquire knowledge, competence or virtue.

Informally the role of teacher may be taken on by anyone (e.g. when showing a colleague how to perform a specific task). In some countries, teaching young people of school age may be carried out in an informal setting, such as within the family (homeschooling), rather than in a formal setting such as a school or college. Some other professions may involve a significant amount of teaching (e.g. youth worker, pastor).

In most countries, formal teaching of students is usually carried out by paid professional teachers. This article focuses on those who are employed, as their main role, to teach others in a formal education context, such as at a school or other place of initial formal education or training…

Teachers – source: Wikipedia

Mary Violet Leontyne Price (born February 10, 1927) is an American soprano who was the first African American soprano to receive international acclaim. From 1961 she began a long association with the Metropolitan Opera, where she was the first African American to be a leading performer. She regularly appeared at the world’s major opera houses, the Royal Opera House, San Francisco Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, and La Scala, the last at which she was also the first African American to sing a leading role. She was particularly renowned for her performances of the title role in Verdi’s Aida.

Born in Laurel, Mississippi, Price attended Central State University and then Juilliard, where she had her operatic debut as Mistress Ford in Verdi’s Falstaff. Having heard the performance, Virgil Thomson engaged her in Four Saints in Three Acts and she then toured—starring alongside her husband William Warfield—in a successful revival of Gerswhin’s Porgy and Bess. Numerous concert performances followed, such as a recital at the Library of Congress with composer Samuel Barber on piano… 

Leontyne Price – source: Wikipedia