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Harriet Lowenstein gave the Joint Distribution Committee its name and led many of the organization’s efforts to aid those trapped in Europe during both World Wars.

Miriam Belsky Solotaroff made headlines in 1937 when she “rocked the school board” of New York for insisting on maternity leave to care for an adopted baby, a privilege only granted to biological mothers at the time.

As the founder of Radical Doula, Miriam Zoila Perez created a network for birthing coaches to support people of all genders, races, and economic backgrounds through pregnancy, birth, miscarriage, and abortion.

Sara Blakely’s creation and marketing of Spanx made her the world’s youngest self-made billionaire, a success she has paid forward by training aspiring female entrepreneurs.

Alexandra “Aly” Raisman not only won gold and bronze medals for her individual performances at the 2012 Olympics but captained the women’s gymnastic team that won the gold medal that year.

Evolutionary biologist and epidemiologist Nina Fefferman uses mathematical models to chart how individual choices ripple outward to affect whole groups, helping create strategies to save populations from endangered tortoises to human communities stricken by disease.

Jeanne Greenberg Rohatyn has helped shape the art world both directly as curator of three art galleries and indirectly as the host of salons where artists of all stripes have met and begun surprising collaborations.

Lena Dunham became the first woman to win a Director’s Guild Award for Outstanding Director for a Comedy Series for her HBO series Girls, for which she writes, directs, produces and plays the lead character.

Through her fashion blog, Man Repeller, Leandra Medine argued that fashion should be about what women find interesting and exciting to wear, not just attracting a man.

Resisting trends towards fussy recipes with complicated instructions and esoteric ingredients, Deb Perelman focused her Smitten Kitchen food blog on “foolproof” recipes that incorporated feedback from online commenters.

Jaclyn Friedman voiced new possibilities for sex-positive feminism and a rejection of rape culture as editor of Yes Means Yes: Visions of Female Sexual Power and a World Without Rape.

Driven by her own experiences as a teenage mother, Gloria Feldt became an advocate for women's rights and reproductive choice, leading Planned Parenthood for a decade.

Marcy Syms became one of the youngest female presidents of a New York Stock Exchange-traded company when her family’s business, Syms Corp., went public in 1983.

Sandy Eisenberg Sasso was the first woman rabbi ordained by the Reconstructionist movement, which was one of many firsts in her career.

Madeline Kahn acted in dramas and musicals on stage, film, and television, but she was best known for her comedic roles as Mel Brooks’s favorite female lead.

Called “the angel” and “the saint” by her patients, midwife Hannah Sandusky was remarkable both for the sheer number of births she oversaw and for the respect that male doctors granted her for her skills.

Alice Bailes joined the resurgence of natural childbirth in America both as a midwife and as coeditor of The Handbook on Home Birth.

One of the few midwives to continue working in Baltimore after the 1924 ordinance that required they be licensed and registered, Lena Barber kept detailed records of hundreds of her deliveries.

Rosa Edelhurst Fineberg kept detailed records of her work as a midwife that shed light on the lives of Jewish immigrants at the turn of the century.

As co-editor of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee’s newsletter, the Student Voice, Dorothy Miller Zellner helped craft the organization’s message and report on stories suppressed by the mainstream media.

Harriet Tanzman was a chronicler of the civil rights movement, creating new entry points into civil rights history.

Carol Ruth Silver was one of the first two white women to be jailed in the Freedom Rides, an experience that sparked a career in law and politics, fighting for the rights of others.

Debra Schultz served as an advisor to the Jewish Women’s Archive in creating the Living the Legacy curriculum based on research she had done on the history of Jewish women in the civil rights movement.

Vivian Leburg Rothstein’s early experiences fighting for civil rights led her to a long career advocating for peace, women’s rights, and the labor movement.