President Barack Obama appointed Melanne Verveer as Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women’s Issues. The President’s decision to create a position of Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women’s Issues is unprecedented, and reflects the elevated importance of these issues to the President and his entire Administration. In her capacity as director of the Department of State’s new office on Global Women’s Issues, Ambassador Verveer coordinates foreign policy issues and activities relating to the political, economic and social advancement of women around the world. She mobilizes concrete support for women’s rights and political and economic empowerment through initiatives and programs designed to increase women’s and girls’ access to education and health care, to combat violence against women and girls in all its forms, and to ensure that women's rights are fully integrated with human rights in the development of U.S. foreign policy.

Ambassador Verveer most recently served as Chair and Co-CEO of Vital Voices Global Partnership, an international nonprofit she co-founded. Vital Voices invests in emerging women leaders and works to expand women’s roles in generating economic opportunity, promoting political participation, and safeguarding human rights. Prior to her work with Vital Voices, Ambassador Verveer served as Assistant to the President and Chief of Staff to the First Lady in the Clinton Administration and was chief assistant to then-First Lady Hillary Clinton in all her wide-ranging international activities to advance women’s rights and further social development, democracy and peace-building initiatives. She also led the effort to establish the President’s Interagency Council on Women. Prior to her time in the White House, Ambassador Verveer served in a number of leadership roles in public policy organizations and as legislative staff.

Ambassador Verveer has a B.A. and M.A. from Georgetown University. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, Women’s Foreign Policy Group, and numerous other organizations.

Dr. Sally Ride, Ph.D. studied at Stanford University before beating out 1000 other applicants for a spot in NASA's astronaut program. After rigorous training, Ride joined the Challenger shuttle mission on June 18, 1983, and became the first American woman in space.

Born on May 26, 1951, Sally Ride grew up in Los Angeles and went to Stanford University where she was a double major in physics and English. Ride received bachelor’s degrees in both subjects in 1973. She continued to study physics at the university, earning a master’s degree in 1975 and a Ph.D. in 1978.

That same year, Sally Ride beat out 1,000 other applicants for a spot in the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) astronaut program. She went through the program’s rigorous training program and got her chance to go into space and the record books in 1983. Prior to her first space flight, she was subject to media attention due to her gender. During a press conference, she was asked questions like "Will the flight affect your reproductive organs?" and "Do you weep when things go wrong on the job?” Despite this and the historical significance of the mission, Ride insisted that she saw herself in only one way—as an astronaut. On June 18, Ride became the first American woman in space aboard the space shuttle Challenger. As a mission specialist, she helped deploy satellites and worked other projects. She returned to Earth on June 24.

The next year, Sally Ride again served as a mission specialist on a space shuttle flight in October. She was scheduled to take a third trip, but it was cancelled after the tragic Challenger accident on January 28, 1986. After the accident, Ride served on the presidential commission that investigated the space shuttle explosion.

After NASA, Sally Ride became the director of the California Space Institute at the University of California, San Diego, as well as a professor of physics at the school in 1989. In 2001, she started her own company to create educational programs and products known as Sally Ride Science to help inspire girls and young women to pursue their interests in science and math. Ride served as president and CEO. Along with her life partner, Tam O'Shaughnessy, Ride co-wrote six children's books on space with the goal of encouraging children to study science.

For her contributions to the field of science and space exploration, Ride received many honors, including the NASA Space Flight Medal and the NCAA’s Theodore Roosevelt Award. She was also inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame and the Astronaut Hall of Fame.

On July 23, 2012, Sally Ride died at the age of 61, following a 17-month battle with pancreatic cancer. Ride remains the youngest American astronaut to be launched into space. She will always be remembered as a pioneering astronaut.

Information source: A&E biography profile.
 

"Too educated, too strong, too successful, to stubborn and too hard to control" was Wangari Maathai's ex-husband's verdict when he divorced her. And perhaps the judge agreed: when she called him "incompetent", he promptly slapped her in jail for six months for contempt of court.

But that verdict has been echoed by thousands of supporters over the years to describe Africa's first female Nobel peace prize-winner. Brought up in a village in Kenya's central highlands, she was educated by nuns before joining Barack Obama's father as one of 300 Kenyan students given scholarships in the US in 1960. Maathai, 70, became the first east African woman to hold a doctorate, and a job offer at the University of Nairobi was withdrawn because she was seen as too ambitious for a woman. She found a job in a different department, before becoming furious at the sexism that saw her paid less than male academics, and denied pensions and medical insurance for her children. In 1977, she started encouraging village women to plant trees to prevent deforestation and provide them with fuel. "Women from the countryside [in Kenya] were talking about how they did not have enough food because their land had been converted into cash crops," she explained. So far, 45m have been planted in Kenya alone under her Green Belt Movement, for which she received the Nobel prize, and 7bn worldwide in the UN program she patronised.

Maathai was beaten and jailed for her protests against President Daniel Arap Moi's government, including its plans to build a 60-storey government building in the middle of Uhuru Park in central Nairobi. In the end her campaign was successful, and she went on to win a seat as an MP, with a whopping 98% of the vote.

Social justice, democracy and the environment are intrinsic to her campaigns. And she has spoken out about the "new colonisation" that has seen the continent sell off its natural resources to fund infrastructure such as roads. In 2006, she helped found the Nobel Women's Initiative to push for peace, justice and equality around the world. One panellist said: "Her contribution to sustainable development, democracy and peace is astounding."
Written in March 2011 by Homa Khaleeli for The Guardian.
In late 2011, Maathai died of complications from ovarian cancer. 

Massively successful designer Tory Burch recently said,“There’s always a stigma attached to the word ‘ambition’ and women. I’ve embraced it. Ambition is not a four-letter word and women have to embrace that.” Though she runs a company with $700 million in annual sales and stores across the world, she says at every step of the way something has been eating away at her accomplishments and that this is something all ambitious women need to persevere through.


“Well, there’s been a stigma to women in business, and I think the women traditionally in business that are successful are not married and do not have kids.  That has got to change, and if I can help change that in any way, that would be a big, big feat for me.  I feel that women are tremendously successful and add incredible value to the economy of our country, and for me that’s very important.

I think that women in the past haven’t been able to have successful marriages and children and do it all.  It’s a stereotype and it’s one that I would really like to get rid of.  It’s very important to have successful women that have successful marriages and who are incredible moms.  That’s a big, big part of who I am and what my company is about.”

And Tory is certainly ambitious. After working for designers including Ralph Lauren and Vera Wang, Tory decided to venture out on her own. She worked out of her apartment for the first two years which was quite difficult considering there were six kids running around. It paid off as within a few years she had about 1,000 employees, 65 retail stores around the world, and revenues topping $500 million, according to the Wall Street Journal and in June 2008, she won the CFDA award for Accessory Designer of the Year. A certain 2005 Oprah appearance didn't hurt either in which the Queen of Television dubbed Tory the next big thing in fashion.

This Tough Girl Tuesday we’re recognizing Michelle Bachelet who has spent a lifetime advocating women’s rights in a variety of influential roles. Her career began in the Chilean Government as Minister of Defense and Minister of Health where she implemented health care reform and several gender policies intended to improve the conditions of women in the military and police forces. Later Michelle became the first female President of Chile from 2006-2010. She is currently serving as the first Under-Secretary-General and Executive Director of UN Women, and under her leadership UN Women will lead, support and coordinate the work on gender equality and the empowerment of women at global, regional and country levels. 

This Feel Good Friday we are switching it up a bit and wanted to share a special story from a Woman of Confidence. Meet Katia E. Caban Matos, she is a sales force leader from our BeautiControl brand who has experienced tremendous growth in her beauty business but more importantly she has seen a transformation in herself that is of Confidence, Strength and Perseverance. Click below to check out her inspiring story!

 This Tough Girl Tuesday we are recognizing Gloria Steinem - one of the most influential women of our time. As an American writer and activist who has been involved in feminist and other social justice movements for more than forty years, Gloria co-founded the Women's Action Alliance, a pioneering national information center that specialized in nonsexist, multiracial children's education, and the National Women's Political Caucus, a group that continues to work to advance the numbers of pro-equality women in elected and appointed office at a national and state level. Her journalistic credits include co-founder of Ms. Magazine where she was instrumental in the magazine's move to join and be published by the Feminist Majority Foundation, and she also helped to establish New York magazine, where she was a political columnist and wrote feature articles. Recognizing that women needed to be visible and powerful in the media, in 2005 Gloria co-founded the Women's Media Center, which is a non-profit progressive women's media organization. Gloria has received a host of accolades and recognition for her triumphant activism efforts including Parenting Magazine’s Lifetime Achievement Award for her work in promoting girls' self-esteem, Biography Magazine listed her as one of the 25 most influential women in America, and she was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in Seneca Falls, New York.