A socialist feminist with a doctorate in political economy, Käthe Leichter was a prominent figure in “Red Vienna” during the interwar years. As a politician, labor organizer, and author, she dedicated her life to benefitting working-class women through social and political reform, and to the struggle against fascism.

Stella Levy was an early leader of the Women’s Corps of the Israel Defense Forces, serving as commanding officer from 1964 to 1970.

Linda Lingle was only the second Jewish woman to be elected a United States governor when she became governor of Hawaii in 2002. Previously serving on the Maui County Council and as Maui’s mayor, Lingle became Hawaii’s first woman and Jewish governor when she was elected.

A direct, no-nonsense politician who participated in Israel’s governance from its independence onward, Golda Meir served as Israel’s first female Prime Minister through the turbulent period of the Yom Kippur War.

Following successive careers as a New York City politician president and director of a major Jewish organization, Ruth Messinger has become nothing less than an icon of American Jewish progressive leadership. She became Manhattan borough president in 1990. After losing the 1997 mayor’s election to Rudolph Giuliani, she became the president and CEO of the American Jewish World Service, a position she held from 1998 to 2017.

G. G. Michelson (1925-2015) was a corporate and civic leader who was a trailblazer for women. As chair of Columbia University’s board of trustees from 1989 to 1992, she was the first woman to head the board of an Ivy League institution; she was also the first woman on the New York State Financial Control Board. In her 47-year career at Macy’s, she rose from management trainee to senior vice president and, as an executive, negotiated with unions representing twenty thousand employees.

Margarete Muehsam-Edelheim was a journalist with a doctorate in law. In her native Berlin, she co-founded the organization Women Law Graduates and served as a City Councilor. In the United States, Muehsam-Edelheim was a founding member of the Leo Baeck Institute’s Women Auxiliary, as well as serving in many capacities for various organizations.

Sylvia Ostry, born in Winnipeg, Canada, was a distinguished economist, academic, and government leader. She taught at universities across Canada, served in numerous government posts, and authored over eighty publications, mostly on policy analysis.

Born in Russia to wealthy parents, Shoshana Persitz was a passionate Zionist and a leader in education reform. She operated a Hebrew-language publishing house in Russia before making Aliyah to Israel, where she continued in publishing and served three terms in the Knesset.

As Chief Women’s Officer of the Labour Party, Marion Phillips was one of the most important figures in the campaign to free women from domestic drudgery at the beginning of the twentieth century. Her work brought a quarter of a million women into the Labour Party.