Edith Monture
Charlotte Edith Anderson Monture (often known simply as Edith Monture) was a Mohawk WWI veteran and the first Indigenous woman to become a registered nurse in Canada and gain the right to vote in a federal election.
Candace Grier-Lowe
Dr. Candace Grier-Lowe is a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine and part of the Norway House Cree Nation community in Manitoba, Canada. Her childhood involved developing a strong bond with animals, often bringing home strays to add to her ever-growing group of pets. Candace wanted to pursue a career working with animals, but her high school guidance counselor discouraged her.
Mary Golda Ross
Mary Golda Ross was the first female Native American aerospace engineer. She is remembered for her work as a mathematician and engineer on several professional and theoretical aerospace projects during America's space age.
Marie Van Brittan Brown
Marie Van Brittan Brown was a nurse from Jamaica, Queens, New York, who invented the first video home security system with her electronics technician husband. Their home security system revolutionized the security industry, deterring crime and granting people safety in their homes.
Clara C. Frye
Clara C. Frye was a nurse from Tampa, Florida, that converted her three-bedroom family home into a makeshift hospital for African American patients denied medical treatment due to the color of their skin. The dining room table donned the role of an operating table, with Frye's bedroom often serving as a recovery room for patients.
Tahani Amer
Tahani Amer is an American Muslim that works at NASA and grew up in a suburb of Cairo, Egypt. In 2001, Dr. Amer patented an invention that measures an object's ability to conduct heat through a thin material coating. Her invention can be used for testing how objects move through the air, for example, a car driving on the road or an airplane flying through the sky.
Joan Higginbotham
Born in Chicago, Illinois, Joan Elizabeth Higginbotham maintained a distinguished 20-year career with NASA as a real-life rocket scientist and astronaut. As a member of the STS-116 Discovery crew, Higginbotham embarked on a 12-day mission to continue the International Space Station's construction. After the Discovery left Earth's atmosphere, Higginbotham earned the title of the third African American woman to travel to space.
Aditi Sen De
Dr. Aditi Sen De is a computational physicist at Harish Chandra Research Institute in Uttar Pradesh, India. Her research focuses on various aspects of quantum communication that use the laws of quantum physics to protect data. She is the recipient of the 2018 Swarup Bhatnagar Prize in Physical Sciences, the most prestigious award awarded to a scientist by the Indian government.
Indra Nooyi
Indra Nooyi was born in Madras (now known as Chennai), Tamil Nadu, India, in 1955. She is a former chairperson and chief executive officer (CEO) of PepsiCo and was ranked the 2nd most powerful woman on the Fortune list in 2015.
Melanie Perkins
Melanie Perkins is the founder of the free-to-use graphic design website, Canva.
Swati Mohan
Swati Mohan is an Indian-American aerospace engineer who became the Guidance and Controls Operations Lead on the NASA Mars 2020 mission. Mohan and her team ensured the spacecraft carrying the Mars rover was properly oriented for travel and landing on the red planet's surface.
Nergis Mavalvala
Nergis Mavalavala is a Pakistani-American quantum astrophysicist best known for her role in the first observation of gravitational waves. She describes herself as an "out, queer person of colour" and currently serves as the first female dean of the School of Science at MIT.
Rachel Carson
Rachel Carson is an American Marine Biologist and Writer. Through her novel Silent Spring she criticized the practices of agricultural scientists and the long-term effects of pesticides on ecosystems. She even brought awareness to their impacts on humans and challenged the government's part in spreading misinformation.
Kamala Harris
Kamala Devi Harris is the Vice President-elect of the United States and served as the former junior senator of California. Throughout her political career, Harris achieved an 87 percent conviction rate for homicides and a 90 percent conviction rate for all felony gun violations. Harris was also part of initiatives to reduce skyrocketing homicide rate and combat truancy for at-risk elementary school youth. Furthermore, she created a Hate Crimes Unit focusing on hate crimes against LGBTQ children and teens in schools.
Jennylynd James
Jennylynd James is a food safety and quality assurance expert with global experience in food processing in the fresh fruit and vegetable industry. She is the editor of Microbial Hazard Identification in Fresh Fruits and Vegetables and co-author of the FAO technical guide, Processing of Fresh-cut Tropical Fruits.
Ilhan Abdullahi Omar
Ilhan identifies as a democratic socialist who supports broader access to student loan forgiveness programs, medicare for all and is opposed to the efforts to seal the U.S. -Mexico border. As a member of Congress, she has found herself in a group of like-minded people who work collectively to pass laws to better the racialized divide in the United States. In 2017, Time Magazine named Ilhan part of FIRSTS: Women Who Are Changing the World, an award given to women who break barriers in their respective disciplines.
Edna Adan Ismail
Midwife, Women's Rights Activist, and Founder Of The First Women's Hospital In Somalia. Edna believed opening a hospital would allow her to tackle cases of interest, with the first maternity hospital completed in 2002 under the vow of improving local women's health and reducing the infant mortality rate in the area.
Madame C.J. Walker
Madam C.J. Walker, the first self-made U.S. woman millionaire of any race, owned property in Idlewild. She made her fortune starting a line of hair products and straighteners that help ease the process of hair styling for African American women beyond braids and protective styles. As her business grew and succeeded, Madame C.J. Walker decided to apply her success to philanthropy giving to organizations that focused on the social well-being of Black Americans.