In 2014 Janet Yellen became the first female chair of the Federal Reserve, responsible for decisions that shape the US economy on every level.

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.

Although Reizia Cohen Klingberg had never been political, the Nazi invasion of Poland inspired her to risk her life as a freedom fighter.

When the Nazi regime dissolved the feminist organization to which Hannah Karminski had devoted her life, she found new ways to serve the German Jewish community by saving children and providing aid for families.

Dr. Helena Kagan improved the lives of generations of Jewish, Muslim, and Christian children in Jerusalem.

As senior rabbi of Washington DC’s Sixth & I Historic Synagogue, Shira Stutman has found new ways to engage Jews at the intersection of Jewish practice and social justice.

Rabbi Mychal Springer’s lifelong work to make hospital chaplaincy more inclusive and supportive across denominations culminated in her creation of the Center for Pastoral Education, which offers chaplaincy training for rabbis across the Jewish spectrum as well as clergy of other faiths.

Julie Schwartz broke new ground as the first woman rabbi to serve as an active duty chaplain in the US Military.

As both one of the first women and one of the first openly gay rabbis to be ordained in Britain, Elli Tikvah Sarah has profoundly reshaped the liberal Jewish community of Britain.

Eliana Light has used her passion for music and Jewish education to engage children and adults in a relationship with the divine.

Dafna Nundi Gewurtz Izraeli examined Israeli society through the lens of gender studies, showing how sexism in the Israeli army had wider repercussions for gender inequality in Israeli businesses and politics.

Jenny Hirsch devoted years to a society for women’s employment, but when the organization ironically refused to pay her, she reinvented herself as a mystery writer.

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.

A brilliant pediatrician used to working in difficult circumstances, Anna Braude Heller struggled to keep children’s hospitals open through both WWI and WWII.

Bela Ya’ari Hazan showed great courage as a combat instructor and courier for the Resistance during WWII.

As chair of UNICEF, Zena Harman accepted the organization’s Nobel Prize in 1965, a fitting tribute for her many years of work with refugees.

Rivka Bumaghina Guber’s selflessness and her painful sacrifices for the young State of Israel earned her the title “Mother of the Sons” and the respect of the nation.

Margo Glantz fused the Yiddish literature of her parents, the Mexican culture of her homeland, and the French traditions of her academic training to create experimental new works of literature.

Despite multiple opportunities to flee to Palestine, Gisi Fischer Feischmann chose to work within the system in Nazi-held Europe to save as many Jews as she could.

A longtime aide to her father and executive vice president of his company, Ivanka Trump is poised to become the most influential first daughter since Alice Roosevelt Longworth.

While Doris Zelinsky has spent her professional career in the food industry, the work closest to her heart has been preserving the memory of the Holocaust.