Indiana-born Melanie Wood made history at 16 years old, when she became the first female to make the U.S. International Mathematical Olympiad team. She helped the team receive silver medals in 1998 and 1999, and remained the only female to make the team until 2004…
Born of a long line of privileged risk-takers, Katharine Graham’s rise through publishing was undoubtedly paved by her family’s wealth and status. However, not one to rest comfortably on inherited laurels, Graham used her own strength and acumen to revive a struggling paper and push forward causes that were close to her heart…
Lynch was not born with a silver spoon in her mouth. Her early childhood was punctuated by the types of tragedies some kids simply never move past. Her father walked out on her mother and four siblings when Lynch was a young girl, and her mother committed suicide when Lynch was still a preteen…
In September 2020, Citibank announced a change in leadership it hoped would usher in a new era for its business. Jane Fraser was slated to become the company’s new Chief Executive Officer, a role she assumed in February of this year…
Whitney Wolfe Herd was a self-made billionaire before her 13th birthday. The cofounder of Tinder went on to serve the company as vice president of marketing, a role she held when she started receiving the derogatory texts from her boss and ex-boyfriend that prompted her to sue the company for sexual harassment…
Iowa native Mona Van Duyn was born and raised in the state in which she would later obtain a Bachelor of Arts and a Master of Arts in creative writing. A year after earning her Master’s degree, she married fellow classmate Jarvis Thurston…
Political candidate, Air Force combat vet, and author MJ Hegar has seen her fair share of action. Her military career began in the ROTC at the University of Texas at Austin, where she studied criminology and sociology…
Maya Lin burst onto the art scene while still an undergraduate at Yale University in 1981, when she won a national contest to design the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington D.C. She earned her Bachelor of Arts from Yale that same year, and stuck with the school to obtain a Master of Architecture in 1986…
Hailing from a poverty-stricken farming family in Arkansas, former U.S. Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders didn’t see the inside of a doctor’s office until she was 16 years old. A few short years later, she was in medical school, exhibiting the drive and grit that would soon take her into office…
First finding fame in 2003 with the cinematic gut-punch “Monster,” Patty Jenkins has been exploring themes of feminism and femininity in film for the better part of two decades. She turned her focus to the small screen throughout the early 2000s, directing a handful of episodes for shows including “Entourage” and “Arrested Development” (in the latter’s case, sadly not the ones featuring “Monster” star Charlize Theron)…
