Organizations and Institutions

The first female president of her childhood synagogue, Congregation Beth Israel, Jackie Gothard helped the Orthodox synagogue rebuild after Hurricane Katrina.

A seasoned social worker and executive director of Jewish Family Service of Greater New Orleans, Deena Gerber helped residents put their lives back together in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

After a highly successful decade as the lead on Little House on the Prairie, Melissa Gilbert defied the odds for child actors by becoming a Hollywood power-broker as president of the Screen Actors Guild from 2001–2005.

Inspired by the youth villages that allowed Israel to welcome staggering numbers of orphans after the Holocaust, Anne Heyman created the Agahozo-Shalom Youth Village to shelter orphans of the Rwandan genocide.

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.

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.

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.

My mother was no shrinking violet. After a few weeks at home following the wedding, she got a job at the Gary Welfare Department, where she went on home visits and discovered Gary’s devastatingly impoverished African-American community. I am sure that this was a pivotal moment for her—and she never turned back.

Aloni spearheaded an ideology in which feminism is a lens for social equality across all social sectors. Her work with Palestinians was informed by her feminism, and her feminism was informed by her work with Palestinians. She held on to a world view in which equality and compassion were part of the process of learning to see the "other" in society, whether that "other" was distinguished by gender, ethnicity, religion, or anything else.

An outspoken Democrat, Debbie Wasserman Schultz was entrusted with great responsibility for the party both in the US House of Representatives and as chair of the Democratic National Committee.

A “Blue Dog” (conservative) Democrat with a gift for cultivating friendships and alliances on both sides of the aisle, Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords fought to recover from a 2011 shooting and became a gun control activist.

CEO Martine Rothblatt’s fascination with interconnectivity led her to found both GeoStar and Sirius Radio, but it was her drive to save her daughter’s life that led her to create biotech company United Therapeutics Corporation.

Designer Diane von Furstenberg made her mark on the fashion world in 1974 with the invention of the wrap dress.

Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg sparked debate and controversy over women’s opportunities and hurdles in the workforce with her first book, Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead.

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.

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.

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.

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.