Turning dining hall dollars into food for the hungry, Rachel Sumekh has empowered college students to address food insecurity in their communities and has shined a light on hunger on university campuses.
A political operative who served as deputy director of issues and research for George McGovern’s 1972 presidential campaign, Sara Teitelbaum Ehrman had an inadvertent brush with history when she drove Hillary Rodham to Arkansas while urging her not to marry Bill Clinton.
When her husband was murdered during Freedom Summer in 1964 in Mississippi, Rita Levant Schwerner Bender used the ensuing media attention to focus the public’s awareness on the importance of civil rights.
Veronika Wolf Cohen has shaped Israeli minds in two very different ways, by developing national music curricula and by leading innovative Israeli-Palestinian dialogue groups.
Rabbi Barbara Penzner has been a moral force for her congregation, leading it in multiple actions to uphold human rights around the world and in the local community.
Throughout her career, Rabbi Avis Miller has searched for new ways to educate, engage, and support unaffiliated Jews and those on the margins of the Jewish community.
As president of Guyana for two years, Janet Rosenberg Jagan was the first American-born woman to serve as president of any country. Jagan was a student at the Cook County Nursing School in Chicago when she met Cheddi Jagan, a dentistry student.
Mary Loeb Gendler has helped shape social justice movements in indirect but effective ways, from crafting new rituals for Jewish feminists to helping Tibetan exiles leverage the tools of nonviolent protest.
Years of covering Putin’s regime in Russia made journalist Maria Alexandrovna “Masha” Gessen uniquely qualified to point out uncomfortable parallels between Putin’s leadership style and that of President Trump.
After the 2016 election, journalist Laura Moser created Daily Action to mobilize and coordinate people who wanted to become active in resisting problematic policies of the Trump administration.
Hari Nef, the first trans woman model to be signed to the prestigious IMG modeling agency, has used her public platform to speak out on issues that affect other transgender people.
From Depression-era protests to twenty-first century marches, Ethel Baskin Schwartz dedicated her life to organizing and fighting for unions and civil rights.
Hailed by local newspapers as “the battling belle of Detroit,” Myra Wolfgang went from staging sit-ins to becoming International Vice President of the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Union.
Golda Ginsburg Krolik fought to improve human rights thoughout the twentieth century, from helping the poor to rescuing Holocaust survivors to offering equal opportunities to African Americans.
Despite her short life, suffragist Ida Ginsburg made an impact on her community as founding president of the Jewish Women’s Club of Temple Beth El, which became the Detroit chapter of the National Council of Jewish Women.
A dedicated lawyer who fought sexism and anti-Semitism, Regine Freund Cohane also had the unique distinction of being half of the first married couple to try a case before the US Supreme Court.
As an early proponent of the Lamaze method, Flora Suhd Hommel helped normalize natural childbirth through the Childbirth Without Pain Education Association (CWPEA).
Opera singer Emma Lazaroff Schaver was profoundly affected by giving concerts to Holocaust survivors in displaced persons camps, an experience that shaped the rest of her life.