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A lifelong labor activist, Rose Finkelstein organized pay raises and better hours for women workers throughout New England.

Through diplomacy and ingenuity, twenty-two-year-old Beate Sirota Gordon wrote unprecedented rights for women into Japan’s post-war constitution.

Ilana Glazer defied the odds for young female comedians by co-creating the popular and critical hit sitcom Broad City with Abbi Jacobson.

Frustrated by the lack of opportunities for young female comedians, Abbi Jacobson teamed up with fellow comedian Ilana Glazer to create the immensely popular Broad City.

When the reality of playing for the WNBA turned out to be less than she had dreamed, Shay Doron took her MVP skills back to her home team in Israel.

Committed to both her athletic career and her Orthodox faith, Naama Shafir faced challenges alien to most basketball players, from walking to games on Shabbat to altering uniforms for modesty.

Searching for play therapies that could reach at-risk children, Viola Spolin created the “Theater Games” that gave rise to improv theater.

Driven to document the real lives of women often ignored by male writers and historians, Sally Fox used photographs, paintings, and political cartoons to reveal the history of women at work and at play.

Both as a historian and as a fiction writer, Hanne Blank has questioned how we relate to our bodies and our sexuality, from gender norms to fat-shaming.

In 2014, Rabbi Deborah Waxman became the first woman (and first lesbian) to simultaneously lead both a seminary and a congregational organization as head of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College and the Jewish Reconstructionist Communities.

In 2009, Rabbi Julie Schonfeld became the first female leader of an American rabbinical organization, serving as executive vice president of the Conservative movement’s Rabbinical Assembly.

Astrophysicist Joan Feynman shaped our understanding of solar winds, auroras, and sunspots, and her battle to open scientific bastions to women transformed the field for those who followed.

Yelena Akhtiorskaya transmuted her own family’s immigrant experience into her ambitious debut novel, Panic in a Suitcase.

A longtime star of the Broadway stage, Idina Menzel became the first person ever to claim both a Billboard Top 10 slot (for Holiday Wishes in 2014) and a Tony Award (for Wicked in 2003).

Known best for her Oscar-winning performance in the romantic comedy Shakespeare in Love, Gwyneth Paltrow has repeatedly sought out difficult roles playing unconventional women, including playing Sylvia Plath in 2003.

Sophie Okonedo credits her heritage as a “North London, working-class, black, Jewish girl” with giving her the range to act in roles ranging from Hotel Rwanda to Doctor Who.

Actress Maggie Gyllenhaal has garnered critical acclaim for her performance in difficult roles in 2002’s Secretary, 2009’s Crazy Heart, and 2014’s The Honourable Woman.

Patricia Arquette has navigated a career path from Hollywood to television and back again, culminating in a landslide of awards for her supporting role in 2014’s Boyhood.

An unconventional CEO with tattoos, a black belt, and a reputation as a radical social activist, Stosh Cotler has mobilized Jewish Americans to fight for immigration reform, racial equality, and workers’ rights.

Lani Guinier’s groundbreaking work in law and civil rights theory led to her becoming the first woman of color granted tenure at Harvard Law School.

As a psychologist, Carolyn Goodman created early intervention programs for at-risk families, but when her son, Andrew Goodman, was killed during Freedom Summer, she became a powerful civil rights activist.

Yavilah McCoy is the founder of Ayecha, a nonprofit Jewish organization that provided Jewish diversity education and advocacy for Jews of color in the United States.