As a young law graduate of Tamil descent, Navanethem Pillay was subject to the racial discrimination of South Africa's apartheid regime. When no other firm would hire her, she became the first woman in Natal Province to open her own law practice. For the next 28 years, she defended civil rights activists, torture victims, battered women and political prisoners, including Nelson Mandela. Under apartheid, she was barred from even entering a judge's chambers. In 1995, she became the first...

In 2007, Americans were shocked to discover the conditions in outpatient facilities of the Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Hundreds of wounded veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were living in dilapidated buildings, infested with cockroaches, rodents and black mold. The reporter who brought the scandal to light was The Washington Post's Pulitzer Prize-winning national security correspondent Dana Priest. Within weeks of her expose, the Secretary of the Army and the Commander of...

In 2007, Americans were shocked to discover the conditions in outpatient facilities of the Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Hundreds of wounded veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were living in dilapidated buildings, infested with cockroaches, rodents and black mold. The reporter who brought the scandal to light was The Washington Post's Pulitzer Prize-winning national security correspondent Dana Priest. Within weeks of her expose, the Secretary of the Army and the Commander of...

A devout Muslim, Shirin Ebadi has long argued for an interpretation of Islamic law consistent with democracy and equality before the law. The first woman to serve as a judge in Iran, she was President of the City Court of Tehran from 1971 until the revolution of 1979, when the new Islamic regime barred women from serving as judges. For many years, the theocratic government would not even permit Dr. Ebadi to practice law. When she was finally granted a license to practice law, she courageously...

"You mean to tell me that me, Toni Novello, the little kid from Puerto Rico who has been in the National Institutes of Health all her life has been picked?" When President George H.W. Bush tapped Dr. Antonia Novello to be Surgeon General from 1990 to 1993, she could hardly believe her ears. She was both the first woman and the first Latin American ever to serve as the nation's number one public health officer. She had come a long way from the little town of Fajardo, Puerto Rico, where her...

When Katie Couric joined The Today Show in 1991, the oldest of America's morning news programs was floundering in the ratings, but her cheerful personality and unpretentious charm quickly made it the most popular morning show in America. Couric soon proved she was more than a mere television personality. Behind the contagious smile and down-to-earth-manner was an experienced journalist and producer. A former producer and political correspondent for CNN, she won an Emmy Award reporting for the...

When Vaira Vike-Freiberga was a small child, her family was forced to flee the Soviet occupation of their native Latvia, and she began school in a refugee camp in Germany. After World War II, her family moved to Morocco and young Vaira completed high school in Casablanca, far from her captive homeland. As a Professor of Psychology at the University of Montreal, she became a leader in her profession, serving as President of the Canadian Psychological Association, of the Social Science...

"When I went to the movies with other black children, we had to sit in the balcony while the white kids got to sit in the better seats below. We had to walk to school while the white children rode in school buses paid for by our parents' taxes. Such messages, saying we were inferior, were a daily part of our lives." Young Coretta Scott's gift for music and enthusiasm for education led her far beyond the segregated world of her childhood, but when she met the young Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.,...

Benazir Bhutto (1953 - 2007) was twice elected Prime Minister of Pakistan, the first woman ever to serve as prime minister of an Islamic country. But the road that brought her to power led through exile, imprisonment and devastating personal tragedy. Only days after young Benazir Bhutto returned to her native Pakistan from university studies abroad, the country's elected government was overthrown. Her father, Prime Minister Ali Bhutto, was imprisoned and hanged. Young Benazir too was...

Benazir Bhutto (1953 - 2007) was twice elected Prime Minister of Pakistan, the first woman ever to serve as prime minister of an Islamic country. But the road that brought her to power led through exile, imprisonment and devastating personal tragedy. Only days after young Benazir Bhutto returned to her native Pakistan from university studies abroad, the country's elected government was overthrown. Her father, Prime Minister Ali Bhutto, was imprisoned and hanged. Young Benazir too was...

Young Coretta Scott's gift for music and enthusiasm for education led her far beyond the segregated world of her childhood, but when she met the young Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the two resolved to return to the Deep South together and pursue the cause of justice in her own home state of Alabama. The Montgomery bus boycott thrust the young couple to the forefront of a revitalized civil rights movement, even as it exposed their growing family to the retaliation of those who opposed any...

The philanthropist, art collector and education advocate Agnes Gund is President Emerita of New York's Museum of Modern Art in New York City. Born in Cleveland, Ohio, she fell in love with arts as a child and earned a master's degree in art history at Harvard. Beneficiary of a substantial inheritance, she has built an encyclopedic collection of modern and contemporary art, from the 1940s to the present. In 1977, when a budget shortfall forced New York City to cut art classes in its public...

As First Lady of the United States from 1989 to 1993, Barbara Pierce Bush became one of the most admired women in America. She was only 16 when she met her future husband, George Herbert Walker Bush at a Christmas dance. The couple corresponded throughout his service overseas in World War II and married in 1945. Although she had worked in defense plants during the war, after her marriage she devoted herself to her home and raising her children. Although both George and Barbara Bush had deep...

Rosa Parks, the "mother of the civil rights movement" was one of the most important citizens of the 20th century. Mrs. Parks was a seamstress in Montgomery, Alabama when, in December of 1955, she refused to give up her seat on a city bus to a white passenger. The bus driver had her arrested. She was tried and convicted of violating a local ordinance. Her act sparked a citywide boycott of the bus system that lasted more than a year. The boycott raised an unknown clergyman named Martin Luther...

The 1995 Miss America, Heather Whitestone lost her hearing, at 18 months of age. Doctors told her mother that a normal life for Heather was impossible. As a child, she learned to read lips and use a hearing aid. She spent six months re-learning to pronounce her own name. Assisted by special education teachers, she excelled in school, but had few friends. She became involved in pageants to earn scholarship money for college, but fared poorly at first, because she was unable to understand...

Lesley Stahl has been co-editor of 60 Minutes since March 1991. This season marks her 11th on the broadcast and her first season as anchor of 48 Hours Investigates. Stahl has had a remarkable year reporting for 60 Minutes. She made headlines last June with her interview of indicted terrorist Abdul Rahman Yasin, still wanted in the first attack on the World Trade Center in 1993. In his first interview, Yasin told Stahl that New York Jewish neighborhoods were the original targets for...

Marian Wright Edelman is the founder and president of the Children's Defense Fund and one of the most respected voices for children in the nation. The youngest daughter of a Baptist minister, she developed a sense of mission while growing up in a small segregated South Carolina town. Edelman later entered Spelman College and became involved in the civil rights movement and realized that "helping others would be the very purpose of life." After being arrested for her activism, she decided to...

When President George H.W. Bush tapped Dr. Antonia Novello to be Surgeon General, she could hardly believe her ears. She was both the first woman and the first Latin American ever to serve as the nation's number one public health officer. She had come a long way from the little town of Fajardo, Puerto Rico, where her widowed mother had struggled to raise a child who was sick from birth. Overlooked in the public health system of her native island, Antonia waited 18 years for the...

Barbara Walters made history in 1975 when she became the first woman ever to anchor a network new broadcast. She had already earned the respect of the television public as co-host of the Today Show, where her professionalism as an interviewer broke new ground for women in broadcasting. She has won international fame for her exclusive interviews with world leaders and is today widely regarded as "the most influential woman in television."

Faye Wattleton was the first African-American, first woman, and the youngest President & CEO ever elected to the Planned Parenthood Federation of America. Her father was a factory worker and her mother was a seamstress and a Church of God minister. Wattleton entered Ohio State University at age 17 and, after graduation, taught at a nursing school. She went on to earn her master’s degree in infant care from Columbia University. She is known for her advocacy of family planning and...

Edna Buchanan was heralded as the best police-beat reporter in the United States and one of the nation’s first female crime journalists, when she wrote for the Miami newspapers. She won a Pulitzer Prize in 1986 for general reporting. A high school graduate who worked wiring switchboards at a New Jersey Western Electric factory when she decided to take a creative writing course at night. She visited Miami on vacation, fell in love with the city, and immediately moved there. Buchanan soon...

Sandra Day O'Connor was the first woman ever to be appointed to the United States Supreme Court. Yet when she first graduated with honors from Stanford University Law School, third in her class, the only job she was offered by a law firm was to work as a legal secretary. She found work as a deputy county attorney in California, before moving to Arizona, where she opened her own law firm. She was elected to the Arizona legislature and became majority leader of the Arizona Senate. She served as...

Dr. Alice Rivlin, an economist and former cabinet officer, is a nationally recognized expert on fiscal and monetary policy. She earned her doctorate at Harvard, and later served as Assistant Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare during the administration of President Lyndon Johnson. She was the founding director of the Congressional Budget Office, heading the body from 1975 to 1983. On leaving the CBO, she was the recipient of a MacArthur Foundation Prize Fellowship, the so-called...

Today, Diane Sawyer is known to millions as the host of the daily evening newscast ABC World News, but she long been familiar to American television audiences through her decade as the host of the same network's Good Morning America program, and for her previous career at CBS News. Sawyer grew up in Louisville, Kentucky and attended Wellesley College, assisted by a scholarship she had won as America's Junior Miss. After graduation, she returned to Louisville, where she began her...

Arlene Violet is the former Attorney General of the State of Rhode Island, who was an energetic, outspoken, no nonsense "protector of citizen's rights." A former nun in the Sisters of Mercy religious order for 23 years, she entered the convent at age 18, and taught at an inner-city parochial school. Violet moved into a low-income high-crime housing project, where she "earned her degree in street smarts." Her "vow to serve those in need" and her frustration with the legal system, led her to...