Bobbi Fiedler

Roberta Frances "Bobbi" Fiedler (née Horowitz; April 22, 1937 – March 3, 2019) was an American politician who served as a Republican U.S. Representative from California.
Early life and education.
Born Roberta Frances Horowitz in Santa Monica, California on April 22, 1937, Fiedler attended area public schools. Studies continued at Santa Monica Technical School (1955–1957) and Santa Monica City College (1955–1959).
Career.
Fiedler began her political career at Encino's Lanai Road Elementary School, where she mobilized other mothers to protest court-ordered desegregation busing. Fiedler formed an organization called Bustop in 1976, and the organization grew to 30,000 members in weeks. Fiedler's role in the grass-roots group helped propel her to public office, as she won a surprising upset in 1977 against Los Angeles school board president Robert Docter, who favored desegregation busing. While serving on the Los Angeles (City) Board of Education, Fiedler and fellow board member Roberta Weintraub were fierce opponents of desegregation busing.
Career.
In 1980, Fiedler ran as a Republican for Congress against Democrat James C. Corman, who had served 20 years in Congress. Fiedler was an underdog, running against Corman in a district that was 62% Democratic, and with the incumbent next in line to be chairman of the United States House Committee on Ways and Means. The National Republican Congressional Committee targeted Corman, hoping not to defeat him, but to embarrass him. Desegregation busing was the central issue in the election between Fiedler and Corman. "Time" reported on the campaign as follows: "Again the issue is local: busing that was ordered by the Supreme Court of California in 1977 to desegregate public schools in Los Angeles County.
Corman's campaign manager, Clint Reilly, later recalled that his candidate's position on racial integration drew heavy fire from Fiedler, whom he described as "the leader of LA's anti-busing movement." Reilly noted that the Republican Party raised more than a million dollars for Fiedler, and "the campaign was waged in the racially charged atmosphere of the San Fernando Valley." After a fierce campaign in which Corman was often picketed by anti-integration activists, the candidates entered election day in a dead heat in the polls, and Corman lost to Fiedler by 750 votes out of 200,000 cast.
Fiedler was one of several Jewish woman who have been elected to Congress from California; she was followed in 1982 by Barbara Boxer and in 1992 by Jane Harman. (The first woman elected from California was Florence Prag Kahn of San Francisco in 1924.) Fiedler considered herself an independent Republican, breaking with her party over her support for abortion rights and the Equal Rights Amendment.
After her narrow victory in 1980, Fiedler was re-elected in 1982, defeating Democrat George Henry Margolis 71.8% to 24.1%. She won in another landslide in 1984, defeating Charlie Davis 72.3% to 25.9%.
U.S. Senate campaign.
In 1986, Fiedler did not run for re-election to the House of Representatives, opting instead to make what proved to be an unsuccessful bid for the Republican nomination to challenge three-term Democratic incumbent Alan Cranston for his United States Senate seat.
She was charged with political corruption in January 1986 after an undercover investigation allegedly showed that Fiedler offered $100,000 to a rival, State Senator Ed Davis (R), if he would withdraw from the Republican senatorial primary. The charges were dismissed by Judge Robert Altman before the matter went to trial. Despite the dismissal of the charges in February 1986, Fiedler garnered only 7.2% of the vote in the Republican primary.
Death.
Fiedler died in Northridge, Los Angeles on March 3, 2019.


Sherron Watkins

Sherron Watkins (born August 28, 1959) is an American former Vice President of Corporate Development at the Enron Corporation. Watkins was called to testify before committees of the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate at the beginning of 2002, primarily about her warnings to Enron's then-CEO Kenneth Lay about accounting irregularities in the financial statements.
In August 2001, Watkins alerted Lay of accounting irregularities in financial reports. However, Watkins has been criticized for not reporting the fraud to government authorities and not speaking up publicly sooner about her concerns, as her memo did not reach the public until five months after it was written. Watkins was represented by Houston attorney Philip H. Hilder.
Watkins was selected as one of three "Persons of the Year 2002" by "Time" magazine, alongside two other whistleblowers, Cynthia Cooper of WorldCom and Coleen Rowley of the FBI.
Early life and education.
Watkins was born in Tomball, Texas. Watkins holds a Bachelor of Business Administration (with honors) from the University of Texas, where she was a member of Alpha Chi Omega sorority, and a Master in Professional Accounting, also from the McCombs School of Business. Watkins is a Certified Public Accountant.
Career.
Watkins began her career in 1982 at Arthur Andersen as an auditor. She spent eight years at Andersen in both the Houston and New York offices. She joined New York-based MG Trade Finance in 1990 to manage their portfolio of commodity-backed finance assets until October 1993.
She joined Enron in 1993, and departed in November 2002. Since then, Watkins has been giving speeches at colleges and management congresses.
In 2004, she released a book about her experiences at Enron and the problems of US corporate culture, "Power Failure: The Inside Story of the Collapse of Enron".


Rena Dardis

Rena Dardis (January 1924 - 6 January 2017), was the publisher and founder of Anvil Press and The Children’s Press.
Early life.
Born Katherina Dardis in Kilkenny to Christopher Patrick Dardis a school inspector from Kinnegad, Co Westmeath and Sara Teresa Conwell, the daughter of a farmer from Killybegs, Co Donegal, Dardis soon moved to Dublin her older sister, Margaret. Her family lived on Palmerstown Road, Rathmines where she continued to live until she required specialised care in 2009. Her parents had three more children after the arrival in Dublin, triplets Christopher, Rachel and John.
Dardis was a sporty woman, playing tennis at Brookfield Tennis Club and golf in Milltown Golf Club. She started work in Guinness Brewery. However she was not happy with the ability for women to progress there and soon moved on to a career in advertising and became director and copywriter with O’Kennedy Brindley. From 1969 to 1971 she was President of the Institute of Creative Advertising and Design.
In 1962 Dardis was part of the team that founded Anvil Press. Her partners were Seamus McConville and Dan Nolan. Anvil established itself with memoirs and the Irish War of Independence. Dardis continued to run the Press after the death of her partner Dan Nolan. She was one of those who lobbied for funding for a children's press in the 1980s. When she succeeded she started the Children's Press. For her work on children's books, in 1996 Dardis received the Children’s Books Ireland Award. In 2009 their titles were bought by Mercier Press.Dardis was an early believer in making her writers the star of the process and encouraged them to interact with their readers.
Dardis died on 6 January 2017 at Leeson Park Nursing Home.


Annie Dorsen

Annie Dorsen (born 1973) is a New York theater director. She is the co-creator and director of the Broadway musical "Passing Strange", and her work in "algorithmic theater" includes the plays "Hello Hi There", "A Piece of Work", and "Yesterday Tomorrow". Dorsen has received an Alpert Award in the Arts, a Guggenheim Fellowship and a MacArthur Fellowship.
Early life and education.
Dorsen was born in 1973 in New York City to Harriette and Norman Dorsen. She has two sisters. She graduated with a BA degree from Yale University in 1996, and received an MFA degree from Yale School of Drama in 2000.
Career.
In collaboration with Heidi Rodewald and Stew, Dorsen created and directed the rock musical "Passing Strange", a semi-fictional story about Stew's life that was co-commissioned by Berkeley Repertory Theatre and The Public Theater. The show opened Off-Broadway at The Public Theater in 2007, and had its Broadway premiere at the Belasco Theatre in 2008. While "Passing Strange" was running on Broadway, Dorsen also created "Democracy in America", an Off-Broadway satire of American politics and polling, in which anyone could pay a fee to add their own material to the script being performed.
Dorsen has collaborated with computer programmers to produce "algorithmic theater" in which custom algorithms process source material to generate live scripts and scores that are performed by chatbots and human actors.
Her first piece of "algorithmic theater" was "Hello Hi There", in which chatbots use text from the Chomsky–Foucault debate, the works of William Shakespeare, the Bible, and YouTube comments to create unique dialogue for each performance. In the five-act play "A Piece of Work", chatbots and a human actor perform a script created in real-time by processing the text of "Hamlet". "Yesterday Tomorrow", the final piece in Dorsen's trilogy of algorithmic performances, uses custom algorithms to produce a live score, performed by three singers, that transitions from the Beatles song "Yesterday" to the song "Tomorrow" from the musical "Annie".
In 2017, Dorsen received a grant from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts to support her play "The Great Outdoors", in which audience members lie down inside an inflatable planetarium and listen to a human performer read recent Internet comments selected and processed by an algorithm. A year later, Dorsen received the Spalding Gray Award, which provided funds to produce her play "The Slow Room". The play, a human performance of a fixed script assembled from virtual sex chat room messages, premiered later that year at Performance Space New York.
Recognition.
Dorsen received one of the 2014 Alpert Awards in the Arts, which recognize the work of experimental artists by providing a US$75,000 prize to each recipient. In 2018, she received a Guggenheim Fellowship. The following year she received a MacArthur Fellowship. She was one of six MacArthur fellows from New York City.


Nancy Adam

Nancy Adam (23 Feb 1888 – 6 May 1982) was a Scottish trade union official who served as the first woman officer of the Trades Union Congress (TUC).
Life.
Born in Glasgow, Adam became involved in the trade union movement at an early age. She worked as an organiser for the National Federation of Women Workers, under Mary Macarthur. She left the federation to study at Ruskin College for two years, after which she found work as the secretary to James Maxton, a prominent Labour Party Member of Parliament. After some time working for him and also for Tom Dickson, she moved to the Miners' Federation of Great Britain, where she was the personal secretary to General Secretary A. J. Cook for eight years.
In 1932, Adam began working for the TUC as the secretary of its Women's National Advisory Committee. She became known as the organisation's first woman officer, and remained in the post until her retirement in 1951.
Adam was made a Member of the Order of the British Empire in 1945. She died at the age of 94, in 1982.


Sophie Masloff

Sophie Masloff (née Friedman; December 23, 1917 – August 17, 2014) was an American politician. A long-time member of the Democratic Party and civil servant, she was elected to the Pittsburgh City Council and later served as the mayor of Pittsburgh from 1988 to 1994. She was the first woman and the first Jew to hold that office.
Early life.
Masloff was born Sophie Friedman on December 23, 1917 to Romanian Jewish parents Jennie and Louis Friedman in the Hill District of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Her father died when she was two years old. She spoke only Yiddish until she began attending elementary school. She graduated from Fifth Avenue High School in 1935, and began a job as clerk in the Allegheny County Court of Common Pleas in 1938, where she stayed for 38 years.
Political career.
City council.
Masloff was elected to the Pittsburgh City Council in 1976. As one of two females on council in the 1970s she was often witness to Councilwoman Michelle Madoff's colorful arguments. After a years long fight by Madoff to have the one restroom that was available to City Council at the Pittsburgh City Hall redesigned to be used in a uni-sex fashion Masloff was invited to a "toilet party" by Madoff to celebrate her success. Masloff did not attend, later commenting to the press: "What the hell do I care about her toilet? I got more important things to do."
In January 1988, Masloff was elected president of the city council. Just four months later, mayor Richard Caliguiri died in office on May 6, 1988. According to the city charter, the city council president stood first in the line of succession, so Masloff automatically became mayor.
Pittsburgh mayor.
Masloff served out the remainder of Caliguiri's term, and was unopposed in a bid for a full term in November 1989. She was the first woman and the first Jew to hold the post. She once referred to the rock band The Who as "The How," among many other rehearsed malapropisms.
Retirement and other achievements.
Masloff declined to run for a second full term in the 1993 election and retired to her home in Pittsburgh's Squirrel Hill neighborhood in 1994. After stepping down as mayor, she has served as a Presidential Elector for Pennsylvania in 1996 and was a delegate to the Democratic National Convention from Pennsylvania in 2000 and 2004. She also appeared in advertisements for Bruegger's and Schneider's Dairy.
In 2007 a street near PNC Park was named Sophie Masloff Way in honor of Masloff at her 90th birthday. On September 13, 2011 Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett was on hand at the Pittsburgh Zoo as a seal was named for Masloff. Masloff died of natural causes on the morning of August 17, 2014, at the Center for Compassionate Care in Mt. Lebanon, Pennsylvania.
A new fireboat, acquired for Pittsburgh's fire department in 2017, was named in honor of Masloff.


Kathleen Marshall

Kathleen Marshall (born September 28, 1962) is an American director, choreographer, and creative consultant.
Life and career.
Born in Madison, Wisconsin, she graduated from Taylor Allderdice High School in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 1980 and Smith College in 1985. She worked in the Pittsburgh theatre scene when she was younger, performing with such companies as Pittsburgh Civic Light Opera. She began her Broadway career as an assistant to her brother Rob, the choreographer of "Kiss of the Spider Woman", in 1993. The two also collaborated on "She Loves Me" (1993), "Damn Yankees" (1994), "Victor/Victoria" (1995) and "Seussical" (2000). She was the artistic director for the Encores! series of staged musical revivals from 1996 through 2000. During that time, she choreographed "The Boys from Syracuse", "Li'l Abner" and "Call Me Madam" and both directed and choreographed "Babes in Arms" and "Wonderful Town".
Marshall was a judge on the NBC reality series "". Viewers' votes selected the stars of the August 2007 Broadway revival of "Grease", which she directed and choreographed.
The "Encores!" production of "Wonderful Town" transferred to Broadway in November 2003 and ran until January 2005, with both direction and choreography by Marshall. She was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Direction of a Musical and Best Choreography, and won for Best Choreography. She was the director and choreographer of the Broadway revival of "Pajama Game" which opened in February 2006 and which was the Broadway acting debut of Harry Connick Jr..
Marshall directed and choreographed a Broadway revival of Cole Porter's "Anything Goes" beginning in April 2011, with Sutton Foster starring as Reno Sweeney. Marshall was nominated for the Tony Award for both directing and choreography and won for choreography. She was the director and choreographer of the musical "Nice Work If You Can Get It" which opened on Broadway in April 2012.
She directed the musical adaptation of the film, "Ever After", on Broadway in the 2015-16 musical theatre season.
She directed the new television movie of "Once Upon a Mattress" which was broadcast on ABC in December 2005.
Personal.
In February 2009, Marshall received the Smith College Medal in honor of her work.
Marshall and Scott Landis, a producer and former agent, were married in September 2009. They have two children, Ella and Nathaniel, twins, who were born in May 2010.
Stage productions.
Source: Internet Broadway Database


Jean Wade Rindlaub

Jean Wade Rindlaub (9 February 1904 – 19 December 1991) was one of the first American women to become a major advertising executive. She was inducted into the Advertising Hall of Fame in 1989.
Personal life.
Rindlaub was born Helen Jean Wade in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, on February 9, 1904. The eldest of two daughters born to Robert Mifflin Wade (1874–1944) and Lola Heller Hess Wade (1878–1941), her family called her by her middle name, Jean, and she followed that tradition through adulthood.
Jean and her younger sister, Mary Emily (1911–1973), were schooled at home by their father who operated the Pennsylvania Business and Shorthand College. Jean learned shorthand and typing at a young age and by age eleven could type 50 words per minute. As a young adult she worked as a secretary to the advertising manager of the local Armstrong Cork Company. Within a short time, she began assisting with copywriting.
Rindlaub left Pennsylvania in 1930, relocating to New York City to marry Willard W. Rindlaub (1903–1983). Within a month she began working at the prestigious advertising agency, Batten, Barton, Durstine & Osborn (BBDO). Though Rindlaub worked full-time during her long marriage she and her husband had two children, John Wade Rindlaub (born 1934) and Anne Rindlaub Dow (1938–2003).
Career.
Though hired as a secretary, Jean Rindlaub was quickly promoted to copywriter as an expert on "woman’s viewpoint." Throughout her 33-year career at BBDO, she conducted extensive market research that surveyed thousands of women about their needs and reactions to products. She worked on over fifty major accounts in the areas of food (including convenience foods and kitchen equipment), cosmetics, clothing, and other products targeted to women consumers. Her early clients included Bond Bread, Duff's Gingerbread, Enna Jettick shoes, and Strutwear. She led successful advertising campaigns for some of the most influential manufacturing companies in America, including Campbell Soup Company, Carter’s clothing, General Mills, Oneida Limited silverware and United Fruit Company.
The first campaign that won Jean Rindlaub widespread critical acclaim promoted Oneida silverware during WWII. Called “Back Home for Keeps,” the ads featured young couples in love, planning for future happiness, once the war ended and soldiers were back in the United States. The ads provided a symbol of hope for both young women at home and soldiers abroad who used them as pin-up posters.
After the war, Rindlaub specialized in food ads. She founded BBDO’s first test kitchen to develop new recipes and products for General Mills and United Fruit. She oversaw one of many revisions of Betty Crocker's image and invested considerable effort in marketing Betty Crocker cake mixes which, at the time, lagged behind Pillsbury and Duncan Hines. Under her guidance, Betty Crocker cake mixes led the consumer market.
One of the most influential women in advertising, Rindlaub served as a director of Advertising Women of New York (AANY). In 1944, she became the first woman elected vice president of BBDO. In 1951, the Advertising Federation of America named her “Advertising Woman of the Year,” shortly thereafter she became the first woman elected to BBDO’s board of directors (1954). Her advertisements are included in America's "100 Best Copywriters," "100 Best Advertisements," and other awards. In 1962, she became the first recipient of the Printer's Ink Award (silver medal) awarded by the Advertising Federation of America. Rindlaub's career at BBDO was marked by successive awards before she retired in 1963. During retirement she worked as an advertising consultant and became increasingly active in community work for several groups, including the National Council of Women, Women of Christ Church and the Girl Scouts. In 1989 the American Advertising Federation Hall of Fame inducted Rindlaub as an honoree.
At the age of 87, Rindlaub died of complications from a stroke in Stamford, Connecticut.


Bernice Fitz-Gibbon

Bernice Bowles "Fitz" Fitz-Gibbon (September 6, 1894 – February 22, 1982) was an American advertising executive and a pioneer in retail advertising, working at Marshall Field's, Macy's, Gimbels and Wanamaker's. She was inducted into the Advertising Hall of Fame in 1982. She was named #62 on the 100 people of the 20th century by "Advertising Age". She was also honored by Retail Advertising Confederation and the Copywriters Club of New York.
Fitz-Gibbon was born in Waunakee, Wisconsin and grew up on a farm. She earned a degree from University of Wisconsin–Madison, then worked at small newspapers before taking a position at Marshall Field's. She moved to New York City in 1926 to work on the Macy's account, where she penned the tagline "It's smart to be thrifty." While working at Gimbel's from 1940 to 1954, she wrote "Nobody, but nobody, undersells Gimbels." At Gimbels, Fitz-Gibbon was known for her "Fitzkreigs," described as "a blitz of words springing from the rapier-sharp and highly imaginative brain of Miss Fitz-Gibbon."
She married Herman Block in 1925; he died in 1951. She continued her ascendancy and got into a notable feud with author Sloan Wilson over women in the workplace. After receiving numerous industry awards and starting her own firm, Fitz-Gibbon retired to Madison, Wisconsin in 1976. She died in Onalaska, Wisconsin.


Beatrice Maude

Beatrice Maude (July 22, 1892 – October 14, 1984) was an American actress and theatrical director.
Early life.
Beatrice Maude was born in California. Her mother and grandmother were both actresses; her mother Maud Madison was also a dancer.
Career.
Broadway appearances by Beatrice Maude included roles in "The Happy Ending" (1916), "Seventeen" (1918), "Jonathan Makes a Wish" (1918), "A Night in Avignon" (1919), "George Washington" (1920), in which she played Betsy Ross, "The Married Woman" (1921-1922), "The World We Live In" (1922-1923), in which she played a butterfly, "Try It With Alice" (1924), "The Buccaneer" (1925), "Tragic 18" (1926), "The Light of Asia" (1928), "Mourning Becomes Electra" (1932), "The Show Off" (1932), and "Dodsworth" (1934-1935). She also played both Ophelia and Juliet in Walter Hampden's repertory company in 1920.
In 1928, Maude ran a summer stock company in Stamford, Connecticut, and hired actor Robert Montgomery. In 1932 and 1933, she was executive director of the Robin Hood Theatre in Arden, Delaware. She was co-manager of the Cape May Playhouse in 1935.
Maude acted in films, including "The Final Judgment" (1915, silent), "Dodsworth" (1936), "Arkansas Judge" (1941), "Mr. and Mrs. Smith" (1941), "Born to Kill" (1947), "Lawless Code" (1949), "Slaves of Babylon" (1953), "Women's Prison" (1955), and "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" (1956). On television, she played small roles on "Your Favorite Story" (1954), "I Married Joan" (1955), and "I Led 3 Lives" (1955).
Personal life.
Maude died in Los Angeles in 1984, aged 92 years. Her mother's papers including letters to Beatrice, are archived in the New York Public Library's Jerome Robbins Dance Division.


Marr Chang-chi

Marr Chang-chi () is a Taiwanese politician.
Marr attended National Taiwan University, then obtained a doctorate in chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley. She remained in the United States to pursue her career in related industries. Marr subsequently became research director at Applied Materials Company, the vice president of CDE Engineering Company, and chief technology officer at Lan Corporation. Marr served as a member of the Legislative Yuan in Taiwan from 2005 to 2008, representing overseas Chinese on behalf of the People First Party. As a legislator, she was active in interpellation sessions regarding technology. She was placed on the Kuomintang preliminary party list as an at-large legislative candidate in 2008, with the joint endorsement of the Kuomintang and People First Party.


Christine Blower, Baroness Blower

Christine Blower, Baroness Blower (born 20 April 1951) was the eleventh General Secretary of the National Union of Teachers, a trade union representing qualified teachers across England and Wales. In March 2018, she stood for election and was shortlisted for the position of the Labour Party's General Secretary. She is the Vice Chair of the pressure group Unite Against Fascism.
Early life.
She was born in Surrey, part of the Home Counties.
Her father was a coalminer in his younger days in the north east of England, and then a GPO engineer, as well as a Labour supporter.
She grew up in Chessington and attended Ellingham County Primary School and then Tolworth Girls School, a bi-lateral school where she was educated in the grammar stream. Having contemplated a career in law or probation work, she instead trained as a teacher.
Teaching career.
In 1973, she took her first teaching post, at Holland Park School, a comprehensive in Kensington and Chelsea which was then part of the Inner London Education Authority, where she taught French. At the time, the school had changed from streamed teaching to mixed-ability teaching, a style of teaching she prefers as it does not "create the sheep and goats situation that comprehensives were set up to avoid". Her daughter Sophie later attended the school.
In 1980, she became Head of Modern Languages at St Edmund's Secondary School in Fulham, then Head of Department at Quintin Kynaston School in Westminster in 1983.
With the threatened break up of the ILEA, Blower moved back to Hammersmith and Fulham in 1990 and concentrated on working with young teenagers at risk of care or custody at Farm Lane Adolescent Resource Centre. After its closure, she was redeployed as a member of the local authority's Behaviour Support Team. As she explained in 1997, "The brief of the team is to try and deal with the behaviour in order to calm the children down, get them focussed in on tasks so they can stay in the mainstream".
National Union of Teachers.
Blower joined the NUT at the start of her teaching career. Between 1986 and 2004 she held various posts in the West London association, including Secretary.
She was elected to the National Executive of the NUT between 1992 and 2000.
Other positions include national vice-president in 1996 and then the 125th national president of the NUT from 28 March 1997 to 10 April 1998, succeeding Carole Regan. Blower used this platform to argue for a greater role for teachers in the running of Pupil Referral Units and for "properly resourced nursery provision". She was a critic of grammar schools, SATs and the schools regulator. Of the latter, she argued that "much of what people have to do for Ofsted is an utter waste of time".
Blower failed in her bid to be elected as general secretary in 1999, with incumbent Doug McAvoy re-elected with a 17,000 majority. She was later elected Deputy general secretary on 28 January 2005 under his successor Steve Sinnott.
After the sudden death of Sinnott while in post, she became acting general secretary on 5 April 2008, and led the union's first national strike in two decades – over teachers' pay – a fortnight later.
On 5 May 2009, she was elected unopposed as the first woman general secretary of the NUT.
In February 2013, in line with the NUT, Blower was among those who gave their support to the People's Assembly in a letter published by "The Guardian" newspaper. She also gave a speech at the People's Assembly Conference held at Westminster Central Hall on 22 June 2013.
SATs.
Blower has aligned herself to long-standing NUT criticisms of the standard assessment tests (or SATs) in schools, including the national boycotts led by the union in 1993 and 2010.
Her opposition has centred on the tests' use in the compilation of national league tables, which the NUT would also like to see abolished. Blower has referred to the tests as "high stakes", with teachers under pressure to narrow the curriculum, "skewing everything to enable their pupils to jump through a series of unnecessary hoops". Addressing the Government's position in the magazine "Tribune", she wrote: "Tests do not drive up standards. They just cause additional stress for pupils, teachers and parents. Teachers are continually rushing to deliver a huge curriculum that ends up unbalanced because of the pressure to reach Government-imposed targets. Many feel that they cannot depart from the restrictions of the national curriculum".
Under Blower's leadership, the NUT has published its proposals for alternative approaches to assessment, most recently in conjunction with the NAHT in 2009 and with ATL in 2010. A further document co-authored by the three unions was published in December 2010.
In her presidential address to NUT Conference on 29 March 1997, Blower reported that in the previous year her daughter Sophie had been withdrawn from the Key Stage 2 tests.
She told delegates, "As a parent and a teacher, I will continue to support campaigns to rid education of blanket testing of our children." There was much criticism of this 'direct action' in the press, but defending herself, Blower argued that "[Sophie] did something considerably more useful with her time than if she'd been at school during the tests". This element of her speech was portrayed by some as an example of hard left militancy.
Academies and free schools.
The NUT under Blower's leadership has been a vocal critic of the Academies programme, both in its original New Labour model through to the expansions brought about by the Academies Act 2010 which favours schools rated "outstanding" by Ofsted.
Policy introduced by Michael Gove also allows for free schools, newly founded and directly funded schools intended to fulfil a local need and with freedoms very similar to Academies. The NUT opposes Free Schools and Blower has voiced concerns that they are able to employ teaching staff without Qualified Teacher Status.
Both of these types of school are outside LEA control and have the potential to make Collective bargaining more difficult.
Blower has disputed the success of the Swedish system as well as American charter schools, both regularly cited by Michael Gove as exemplars of narrowing the social divide.
In a cover story for "The Spectator" magazine in August 2010, it was claimed that NUT activists were "bullying" head teachers known to be considering academy conversion and, with it, a break from local authority control.
Politics.
Blower was a Labour member until the early 1990s. In 1982, she stood as a Labour candidate for East Putney ward on Wandsworth Council, but was not elected, with the three seats being held by the Conservative Party; one of the winning Conservatives whom Blower stood against was future MP Christopher Chope.
Speaking before the May 1997 general election, she distanced herself from Labour leader Tony Blair's New Labour rebranding of the party. Two years later, she told a journalist that she was "to the left of old Labour" and confirmed that she had no affiliation to any political party or group. However, in 2000, she was a member of the London Socialist Alliance, ahead of the Greater London Assembly Elections. She said at the time that it "was formed to prevent disillusionment with Labour giving a new birth to the far right as it did in the 1970s". At this election, she ran for election as the party candidate in West Central and on the multi-member party list system; she was unsuccessful on both.
In March 2016, ahead of her departure as general secretary of the NUT, Blower announced that she would be joining the Labour Party "led by Jeremy Corbyn, to fight for the better world we know is possible". She was shortlisted for the post of Labour's general secretary in 2018, but the role instead went to her opponent, fellow trade unionist Jennie Formby.
Blower was nominated for a life peerage in the 2019 Prime Minister's Resignation Honours. She was created Baroness Blower, of Starch Green in the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham, on 15 October 2019. As a Labour peer, she has sat in the House of Lords since 4 November 2019.
Family.
Her partner of thirty seven years, Dennis Charman, a retired teacher, was secretary of Hammersmith and Fulham NUT.
Her two daughters have taken the double-barrelled surname Charman-Blower. Sophie attended the University of Edinburgh, where she acted as Edinburgh spokesperson for the Stop the War coalition, whilst studying ancient civilisations of the Mediterranean and Middle East. She followed this up with an MA in human rights law at SOAS, University of London, and now works for Marie Stopes International. She attempted to be selected as the Labour candidate for the London Assembly constituency of West Central in 2020, but was unsuccessful.
Elections contested.
London Assembly election


Mi-Ai Parrish

Mi-Ai Parrish is a Asian-American journalist and media executive, including former president and publisher of USA TODAY NETWORK Arizona, The Arizona Republic, a daily newspaper, and azcentral.com in Phoenix, Arizona, the first person of color in the role. The company won a Pulitzer Prize during her tenure.
She leads Arizona State University Media Enterprise and holds an endowed chair at Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communications as Sue Clark-Johnson Professor of Media Innovation and Leadership. She is CEO and President of MAP Strategies Group.
She was the first woman and person of color to serve as president and publisher of The Kansas City Star and kansascity.com. She was president and publisher of The Idaho Statesman, which was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in breaking news. She was a journalist at Chicago Sun-Times, San Francisco Chronicle, (Minneapolis) Star Tribune, Virginian-Pilot and Arizona Republic.
She is a graduate of the University of Maryland and named to its Hall of Fame. Parrish has also served four times as a juror for the Pulitzer Prize.
Awards and honors.
Parrish is a 2020 Women of Distinction honoree, 2018 winner of the Ocotillo Award for Legislative Advocacy, 2017 winner of the ATHENA Businesswoman of the Year, recipient of the Asian Corporate Entrepreneur Leader Corporate Champion, and PSA Behavioral Health Corporate Champion award winner. She was 2016 Best Opinion Writer in the USA TODAY Network for work on the First Amendment and freedom of speech. Parrish was honored with Gannett Company's annual award for company Purpose.
She is the vice chairwoman of the Banner Health board, the secretary of the Greater Phoenix Leadership board, appointed by Gov. Doug Ducey as a Zanjero business ambassador, and serves on the boards of the Greater Phoenix Economic Council, Sandra Day O'Connor Institute, Poynter Institute Advisory Board, The 19th* News, Common Sense Media, and Arizona Community Foundation.
Parrish has provided commentary on free speech and the First Amendment to outlets including ABC World News Tonight, CNN, Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC, CBS Evening News, Sky TV, UnoTV, BBC and others. Her work has been covered in the Washington Post, USA TODAY, New York Times and more.
2016 U.S. presidential race.
Parrish has been the focus of politically motivated threats of physical violence based on The Arizona Republic, a Republican-supporting newspaper, endorsing Hillary Clinton, the Democratic president nominee. The newspaper staff have been threatened with physical violence.
2017 Arizona Legislature Sex Harassment Investigations.
After a female member of the Arizona State House of Representatives lodged allegations of harassment by another Arizona house member, other women spoke out. Parrish published an account of an encounter with the accused legislator that had been witnessed by her attorney.


When I Was Growing Up

When I Was Growing Up is an autobiographical poem written by revolutionary feminist activist, Nellie Wong in 1973, describing her struggle to identify as an Asian-American girl growing up in the United States. Wong reflects on the universal representations of Western ideals of beauty advertised in American popular culture; from which, Wong expresses her desire to be white, to be normal. She states "...to become/a woman, a desirable woman, I began to wear/imaginary pale skin." The lack of and negative stereotypical representations of Asian-American women in Western popular culture denied Nellie Wong the agency to privilege her intersectional identity. The result of this patriarchal tool made Wong shameful of her Chinese heritage: "when I was growing up, I felt/dirty. I thought that god/made white people clean/and no matter how much I bathed/I could not change, I could not shed/my skin in the gray water."
Nellie Wong's piece identifies the invisibilization of racial issues in the second-wave feminist movement. Her work, particularly this piece, is often cited in the works of feminists or advocates of feminisms with intersectional frameworks like "This Bridge Called My Back". Although some argue that we live in a post-feminist society, that women have achieved equality, today this poem still speaks great volumes regarding the ways in which hegemonic femininity is still perceived and the tokenism people of various racial, sexual, religious, class, socio-economic status are portrayed as in Western popular culture and media.
The last section of the poem,
has its last line indicated in the "Columbia Granger's Index to Poetry in Anthologies".
The poem has been frequently anthologized in educational curricula.


WomenLift Health

WomenLift Health is an advocacy group of women leaders in global health, an initiative originating from Michele Barry of Stanford University and established in 2019. In April 2020, they hosted a webinar highlighting women who have effectively led responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. Later in the year they hosted the Women Leaders in Global Health Conference. Members of its advisory board include Geeta Rao Gupta and Jeremy Farrar.
The group's mission is "to expand the power and influence of talented women in global health and catalyze systemic change to achieve gender equality in leadership".


Mosun Belo-Olusoga

Mosun Belo-Olusoga (born 13 September 1957) is a Nigerian financial services industry practitioner and a credit and risk management specialist. She served as the chairman of Access Bank PLC and sits as a non-executive director on the board of Premium Pensions Limited, Action Aid and MTN Foundation. She has served as the Non-Executive Director of Asset and Resources Management, and Acting MD of Africa, Guaranty Trust Bank.
Education.
Mosun studied Economics at the University of Ibadan and graduated with a bachelor's degree in 1979. In 1983, she became a chartered accountant finishing as the best qualifying accountant in her set. She also won the SWAN (Society of Women Accountants of Nigeria) award. In 1993, she became a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria. She is also an Honorary Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Bankers of Nigeria. She is an alumna of the Harvard Business School, Kellogg School of Management and Columbia Business School all in the United States, as well as International Institute for Management Development in Switzerland and INSEAD in France.
Career.
She served as the Chairman of Access Bank PLC and sits as a Non-Executive Director on the board of Premium Pensions Limited, Action Aid and MTN Foundation. She has served as the Non-Executive Director of Asset & Resources Management, and Acting MD of Africa, Guaranty Trust Bank.
She was the chairman of Access Bank Group for the mandatory 12 years and retired in 2019 for Ajoritsedere Awosika.Mosun Belo-Olusoga
has diverse experience in the financial industry. she is a Fellow, Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria and also she is Honorary Fellow, Chartered institute of Bankers. she worked as a group head in Risk management and Corporate bank (Assistant General Manager). Commercial Bank General manager and Transaction Services Group Deputy General Manager. she is currently working as the KRC limited as the Principal consultant. she is the Chairman of Access Bank PLC. She is the director Action Aid, FCSL Asset Management Limited and Premium Pension Limited.


Elsa Fougt

Elsa Fougt (15 or 25 December 1744 – 19 June 1826) was a Swedish printer and newspaper editor. She managed the Royal Printery between 1772 and 1811 (first as a coworker with her spouse, from 1782 alone as director), and was responsible for the country's official print. She was also and the publisher and chief editor of the newspaper "Stockholms Weckoblad" from 1774 to 1779. She was an important figure in the literary market in Sweden.
Life.
Fougt was the daughter of the royal printer Peter Momma and the publisher Anna Margareta von Bragner. In 1762 she married the official Henric Fougt Sr.
When her parents died, both in 1772, Elsa and her spouse took over their businesses, of which the most important was the Royal Printery, which they managed together until the death of her spouse in 1782. As a widow, she managed the business herself and in her own name for nearly thirty years. Elsa Fougt published French, German and Swedish drama, and imported books from the Société typographique de Neuchâtel in Switzerland.
She was herself also editor for the paper "Stockholms Weckoblad" from 1774 to 1779.
She was a member of the order Amarenterorden, in which she gave memorial speeches of the salonist Anna Charlotta von Stapelmohr and one of the co-founders of the order, Beata Elisabeth Théel.
In 1811, she retired and was succeeded by her son Henric Fougt Jr. in May, 1811. Henric Fougt Jr. laid down the business by the end of 1833. Norstedt & Söner acquired it in 1835. Henric Fougt Jr., like his parents, held the privilege to print all official publications in the Swedish Realm.
Prior to Henric Fougt Sr. and his wife Elsa Fougt and their son Henric Fougt Jr., the father of Elsa Fougt - Peter Momma - had held the same position; they all were the official "Royal Printers" of the Swedish Realm.


Angelika Kausche

Angelika Kausche is a German-born American politician. She is a member of the Georgia House of Representatives, affiliated with the Democratic Party, representing Georgia House District 50.
Personal life and education.
Kausche is a German-American, born in Wuppertal, who relocated to the United States in 1997 and became a naturalized American citizen in 2011. She possesses a Masters of Business Administration from the University of Trier in Germany and a Masters in Organizational Communication from Western Michigan University.
Kausche first moved to Georgia in 2015 and is involved in volunteer work as well as her local Rotary Club in Johns Creek, Georgia.
Career.
Before immigrating to the United States, Kausche had worked in German banks for several years. In the years following her relocation, Kausche taught as an adjunct professor at various colleges in both Michigan and North Carolina. Kausche is now retired.
Kausche was first elected to the Georgia House of Representatives in 2018 after an atypical campaign that saw Kausche flip her hitherto Republican district, winning by 317 votes. Kausche serves on the Environment, Higher Education, and Small Business Development committees in the Georgia House.


Rosalie Konou

Rosalie Aten Konou is the Marshall Islands' first female lawyer. She has held the positions of head of the island nation's Legal Aid Office and Assistant Attorney General.


Margaret Hillis

Margaret Eleanor Hillis (October 1, 1921, Kokomo, Indiana – February 5, 1998, Evanston, Illinois) was an American conductor. She was the founder and first director of the Chicago Symphony Chorus.
Life.
Hillis was born in Kokomo, Indiana, in 1921. She began to study the piano at the age of five and continued with several other instruments, including woodwinds, brass, and double bass. She made her conducting debut, while still a student, as assistant conductor of her high school orchestra.
After suspending her studies during World War II to become a civilian flight instructor in Muncie, Indiana, Hillis received a bachelor of music degree in composition from Indiana University in 1947 and later studied conducting privately with Julius Herford and with Robert Shaw at the Juilliard School. She later became assistant conductor of Shaw's Collegiate Chorale.
In 1950, Hillis founded the Tanglewood Alumni Chorus,
which later performed as the New York Concert Choir and Orchestra. She also worked as a choral conductor for the New York City Opera and the American Opera Society. During her years in New York she taught choral conducting at the Juilliard School and Union Theological Seminary. From 1970–1977 she was Director of Choral Activities at Northwestern University in Evanston, IL.
Hillis was also founder and music director of the American Choral Foundation (now Chorus America), an organization that sought to raise the standards of choral performance.
In 1992, Hillis conducted the Interlochen Arts Academy Orchestra and Choir as part of the Mozart Bicentennial Celebration in Alice Tully Hall in Lincoln Center, New York.
From 1968 through to the time of her death in 1998, she lived at 929 Sheridan Road in Wilmette IL. At her home, she would from time to time conduct small group practices and hold informal ensemble performances in her spacious living room for friends and acquinatances.
Prior to her death, Hillis bequeathed her personal collection of scores, books, and other memorabilia to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra's Rosenthal Archives. Included are numerous sound recordings as well as scores and parts bearing her personal markings and analyses, Grammy Awards and other certificates and mementos, photographs, and personal papers and correspondence.
Margaret Hillis was an older sister to Elwood "Bud" Hillis, who served as Representative to the United States Congress from Kokomo, Indiana for eight terms (1971–1987).
Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Chorus.
On September 22, 1957, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra announced that Margaret Hillis, at Music Director Fritz Reiner's invitation, would organize and train a symphony chorus. Auditions began two weeks later, and on March 13 and 14, 1958, the Chicago Symphony Chorus made its subscription concert debut performing Mozart's Requiem with Bruno Walter conducting. A few weeks later, Reiner himself led the Chorus for the first time in performances of Verdi's Requiem.
Hillis was also the first woman to conduct the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, first on a special concert in November 1957 and later on subscription concerts in December 1958, leading the orchestra and chorus in Honegger's "Christmas" Cantata. Hillis captured nationwide attention on October 31, 1977, when she substituted on short notice for the ailing Sir Georg Solti, conducting the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Chorus in a performance of Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 8 in New York's Carnegie Hall.
Under Hillis's leadership, the Chicago Symphony Chorus performed and recorded many of the major works in the choral symphonic repertoire, gave important world premieres, appeared with visiting orchestras, and was part of many noteworthy milestones in the CSO's history. Hillis won nine Grammy Awards from the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences for best choral performance.
She also worked with community and regional orchestras, and was director for several years of the Kenosha Civic and the Elgin Symphony Orchestras. Hillis regularly conducted the Civic Orchestra of Chicago, the training orchestra of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Starting in the late 1970s, she worked actively as a guest conductor, leading performances of the National, San Francisco, Indianapolis, Milwaukee, Saint Paul, Baltimore, Minnesota, Columbus, Peoria, San Antonio, Spokane, and Oregon symphony orchestras; the New York Choral Society; the Los Angeles Master Chorale; the Gloria Dei Cantores; and the Santa Fe Opera.
Honors and awards.
Grammy Award for Best Choral Performance


Eva Galambos

Eva Cohn Galambos (July 1, 1928 – April 19, 2015), was a German-American activist, economist, and politician who served as the first mayor of Sandy Springs, Georgia from December 1, 2005 to January 7, 2014. She was succeeded by Rusty Paul.
Early life and education.
Born Eva Cohn in Berlin, Germany, her father was a judge. He was ousted from his position, along with other prominent Jews, in 1933 when Adolf Hitler came to power. The family then moved to Genoa, Italy, where they lived for six years before settling in Athens, Georgia, where her father got a job at the University of Georgia with the help of Harold Hirsch. Galambos attended Athens High School and graduated as valedictorian in 1944. She later graduated from the University of Georgia in 1948 with a Bachelor of Business Administration. She later earned a Master of Arts degree in labor and industrial relations from the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign and a PhD in economics from Georgia State University. She was the recipient of the 2011 Andrew Young School Distinguished Alumni Award from the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies at Georgia State University.
Career.
Labor activism.
Galambos began her career as an associate editor of the "Atlanta Journal of Labor", writing local copy to interest the union members. Her "love for activism" extended to campaigning for rent control in the city of Atlanta. While "thanked" for her research, the practice, adopted in New York, was not enacted in a Southern city more sensitive to issues of government overreach. The Swedish economist Assar Lindbeck, a housing expert, quipped that "rent control appears to be the most efficient technique presently known to destroy a city – except for bombing". Galambos later obtained a position, working on behalf of the International Association of Machinists.
She was a labor economist for many years, teaching at Clark Atlanta University and Georgia State University.
Politics.
Galambos had held various positions in the Sandy Springs community before being elected the first mayor of the city in early-November 2005. She was the president of the Committee for Sandy Springs, 1975–2005, which fought to incorporate Sandy Springs. She was also a co-founder and former secretary of Sandy Springs Revitalization; founder of Sandy Springs Clean and Beautiful; chairwoman of services committee for the Sandy Springs Council of Neighborhoods; former chairwoman of the Fulton County Public Housing Authority; and founder of Sandy Springs Civic Roundtable.
Death.
She died of cancer in Atlanta on April 19, 2015, at the age of 86. Her funeral was held at Temple Kehillat Chaim in Roswell, Georgia on April 21, 2015.


Juanita Breckenridge Bates

Juanita Breckenridge Bates (December 31, 1860 - June 11, 1946) was an American Congregationalist minister, her application being the test case to determine the policy of the denomination. She was the first woman to be awarded a Bachelor of Divinity degree from Oberlin College (1891), and Oberlin was the first school to award this degree. For decades, she was a community organizer in the women's suffrage movement.
Early years and education.
Juanita Breckenridge was born in Hopewell, Rivoli Township, Mercer County, Illinois on December 31, 1860. She was the daughter of Hugh and Mary (Watson) Breckenridge. Her father was a Methodist minister.
She was educated at Rock Island High School, Wheaton College (B.S.), and Oberlin College Theological Seminary (1891, B.D.). While at Oberlin, she was a member of Ladies' Literary Society.
Career.
Breckenridge.
In Spring, 1890, she applied to the Cleveland Congregational Conference for a license to preach. Her case was made the test case to determine the policy of the denomination and the license was granted at the fall conference, 1890, after six months of discussion. She was ordained at Brookton, New York, on June 28, 1892. The ordination sermon was preached by her brother, Rev. W. W. Breckenridge, and the charge was given by the venerable Rev. Thomas K. Beecher. Brookton was the first charge of Rev. Annis F. Eastman, and the congregation was so pleased with her ministry that they called Breckenridge to succeed her.
Bates.
On September 27, 1893, she married Hon. Frederick E. Bates in New Windsor, Illinois. At that time, she resigned from her Congregational Church position as she intended to visit her mother in the midwest.
Bates chaired the Suffrage Party in Ithaca, New York, and was a leader of Tompkins County, New York in New York state's campaign for woman suffrage. The city of Ithaca and Tompkins County carried for suffrage.
She was interested in Sabbath School, The Social Service League, Y.W.C.A. work, and both home and foreign mission work. She served as first vice-president of the Ithaca Political Study Club; was a member of Susquehanna Ministerial Association, New York State Congregational Conference; and was a director of New York State Federation of Women's Clubs, Ithaca Woman's Club, Political Study Club, City Federation of Women's Organizations of Ithaca.
Personal life.
She married Frederick Bates in 1893. He served as mayor of Ithaca in 1916. They had two children, Juanita and Abraham. Frederick died in 1922, and Bates managed the large estate left by her husband.
Bates died June 11, 1946, in Ithaca, and was buried in Lake View Cemetery.


Adelaide Herrmann

Adelaide Herrmann (1853–1932) was a well-known American magician and vaudeville performer billed as "the Queen of Magic." She was married to Alexander Herrmann, another magician.
Early career.
Adelaide Herrmann was born Adelaide Scarcez (also spelled Scarsia) in 1853 in London. Her father, who was born in Belgium, helped establish the Egyptian Hall.
As a young woman, she studied aerial acrobatics and dance. She learned to ride the velocipede, a 19th-century bicycle, and traveled as a trick-rider with Professor Brown's velocipede troupe. In 1874 she came to New York City as a dancer for Imre Kiralfy.
She began her magic career as assistant to her husband, magician Alexander Herrmann. They married in 1875 at City Hall, where New York City Mayor William H. Wickham performed their ceremony. Together, Alexander ("Professor Herrmann" or "Herrmann the Great") and Adelaide entertained audiences with a variety of magic tricks, including escape tricks and the bullet catch trick. Adelaide was a key part of many illusions, performing as a levitating sleeper, a human cannonball, a bicycle rider who carried a girl on her shoulders, and a dancer who spectrally swirled in red silk like a pillar of fire. The Herrmanns toured the United States, Mexico, South America, and Europe.
In 1888, the Herrmanns put on a show wherein they revealed how the spiritualist Ann O'Delia Diss Debar was a fraudulent medium in front of journalists.""
Solo career.
When Alexander died in 1896, Adelaide Herrmann decided to continue the show. She initially worked with her husband's nephew, Leon Herrmann, but a clash of personalities led them to part ways after only three seasons.
Afterwards, Adelaide Herrmann became extremely well known as a magician in her own right, earning the moniker "The Queen of Magic." She toured as a headliner for over 25 years and performed internationally, touring London and Paris. In 1903, she made her Broadway debut at the Circle Theater. She performed often with other vaudeville acts and was frequently mentioned in the "New York Times." In a November 2, 1899 article for Broadway Magazine entitled “The World’s Only Woman Magician,” Herrmann stated, “I shall not be content until I am recognized by the public as a leader in my profession, and entirely irrespective of the question of sex.”
Herrmann was one of the few magicians to perform the infamous "bullet catch" trick, and possibly the only woman magician to perform the trick at the time. Despite reports that she had disliked watching her husband perform the dangerous trick, on January 19, 1897, a month after his death, she stood in his place in front of a firing squad at the Metropolitan Opera House in Chicago. Surviving publicity material describes her as catching six bullets fired at her by local militiamen.
Her favorite illusion was “The Phantom Bride,” which had themes of loss and marriage. Through “hypnotism,” she made a bride's body, draped in white, rise on a brightly lit stage. She passed a hoop over her hovering form, showing there were no wires, then pulled away the white silk — the bride was gone. In “The Witch” illusion, she stumbled onto the stage dressed as an old woman, trying to reach a fire burning in the darkness. When she finally arrived at the pyre, she dove into the flames. Unlike her older “Cremation” act, where she returned as a taunting ghost, she now emerged reborn and youthful.
Her “Noah’s Ark” was her greatest vaudevillian hit. At first an ark was shown empty, then buckets of water symbolizing the flood were poured down its chimney. Soon two cats, one black and one white, climbed from the chimney, while a gangplank emerged over which prowled a parade of dogs in costumes of birds, leopards, lions, tigers, zebras, and elephants. A flock of white doves flew from the windows, and the biblical boat opened to reveal a lounging woman dressed in white.
Herrmann continued performing into her 70s until 1926, when a deadly warehouse fire at a theatrical warehouse on West 46th Street in Manhattan destroyed her props and killed most of the animals used in the "Noah's Ark" illusion. She rebounded briefly with a pared-down show called “Magic, Grace and Music,” highlighting the three elements at which she'd excelled in her career. The National Vaudeville Artists’ Year Book from 1928 shows Herrmann in her final performing year.
Herrmann died of pneumonia on February 19, 1932. She is buried at the Woodlawn Cemetery, New York.


Jenny Longuet

Jenny Caroline "Jennychen" Marx Longuet (1 May 1844 – 11 January 1883) was the eldest daughter of Jenny von Westphalen Marx and Karl Marx. Briefly a political journalist writing under the pen name "J. Williams", Longuet taught language classes and had a family of five sons and a daughter before her own death due to cancer at the age of 38.
Biography.
Early years.
Jenny Caroline Marx, known to family and close friends as "Jennychen" to distinguish her from her mother, was born in Paris on 1 May 1844, the oldest daughter of Karl Marx and Jenny von Westphalen Marx. She was a fragile child but was nevertheless the first of the Marx children to survive childhood.
In 1868, at the age of 24, she accepted a position as a French language teacher in order to help her parents financially. She also contributed a number of articles to the socialist press, in 1870 writing under the pen name "J. Williams" on the treatment of the Irish political prisoners by the British government.
She met her future husband, the French journalist and radical political activist Charles Longuet in 1871. The pair became engaged in March 1872 and were married on 10 October the same year in a civil ceremony at St Pancras registry office, she taking the name Jenny Longuet.
As with her parents, the young couple faced economic hardship in their earliest years. They moved to Oxford soon after their marriage, hoping that Charles could find work as a teacher, but he was unable to do so. Jenny earned a meagre income for the pair working as a private tutor, giving lessons in French, German, and singing.
The couple's financial lives became more stable in 1874, when both Jenny and Charles found work as teachers, with Jenny holding a position as a German teacher at the St Clement Danes School. The minimal salary she earned at the school was supplemented by giving private lessons. Her husband obtained a position teaching French at King's College, together making enough to maintain a small house in London.
Jenny Longuet was pregnant in almost every year of her married life. She gave birth to a first son in September 1873, but the child died the following summer of diarrhea. A second son, Jean Laurent Frederick "Johnny" Longuet (1876–1938) fared better, surviving to eventually become a leader of the Socialist Party of France.
A third son, born in 1878, mentally challenged and sickly, died at the age of 5, while a fourth, Edgar "Wolf" Longuet (1879–1950) lived a full life, becoming a medical doctor as well as an activist in the French Socialist Party.
Return to France.
A political amnesty granted by the government of France in July 1880 allowed Charles Longuet the opportunity to return to his native country and he was quick to return, taking a position as an editor of "La Justice," a radical daily newspaper founded by Georges Clemenceau. By this time, however, Jenny had begun to suffer from cancer and she for a time remained in London with her three sons, to be near her aging parents.
In February 1881 Jenny and the boys, moved to France to join her husband. The family settled in the town of Argenteuil, near Paris, where they were regularly visited by the boys' doting grandfather.
Despite her ill health, Jenny delivered another son, Marcel Longuet (1881-1949) who later worked as a journalist, including for the Parisian newspaper L'Aurore. A final child, a daughter also named Jenny Longuet, was born in September 1882 and lived until 1952.
Death and legacy.
Just four months after the birth of her daughter, Longuet died at Argenteuil on 11 January 1883, at the age of 38, probably from cancer of the bladder, a condition which had afflicted her for some time. Her father was too ill to attend the funeral in France; he died two months later.


Lorinda Perry

Lorinda Perry (December 23, 1884 – August 30, 1951) was an American economist, college professor, and lawyer, based most of her life in Illinois.
Early life.
Perry was born December 21, 1884 in Melvin, Illinois, the daughter of Eugene Beauharnais Perry and Elizabeth Wilson Perry. Her father was a Union Army veteran of the American Civil War, and a medical doctor; her mother was born in Scotland.
Perry trained as a teacher at Illinois State Normal University from 1900 to 1904, and graduated from the University of Illinois in 1909. She earned her master's degree at Illinois in 1910, with a thesis titled "The history of the lake shipping trade of Chicago". In 1910, she held a fellowship in the Department of Research of the Women's Educational and Industrial Union, and from 1911 to 1913, she was a graduate student at Bryn Mawr College. Her fellowship research focused on the millinery trade in Philadelphia and Boston; she earned her doctorate in 1913, under the supervision of Marion Parris Smith and Susan Myra Kingsbury. Her study was later published as "Millinery as a Trade for Women" (1916)"."
Career.
Lorinda Perry was head of the department of political and social sciences at Rockford College from 1914 to 1916, and taught in the household science department at the University of Illinois from 1916 to 1919. She spoke on women's work during World War I, saying "Statistics prove that the war has caused one and a quarter million women to be added to the number previously in industry in England," but that their wages did not match those of the men who held the same jobs before the war. She also organized household science students to make and donate garments to the Red Cross for French war refugees. She helped to establish the Rockford College Club and the University Woman's Club at the University of Illinois. Beyond campus, Perry taught a course in "household accounting" to the members of the Home Improvement Association of Champaign, and at the YWCA in Decatur.
In 1919, Perry taught in Chicago. In 1920 she became a professor of economics at Hunter College in New York. Later in life, she attended law school at the University of Chicago, earned a Juris Doctor degree, and was a member of the Illinois State Bar Association. "MIss Perry was interested always in her community, and was courageous, intelligent, and honorable in her handling of the problems she met, never compromising with principle," recalled one obituary in 1951.
Personal life.
In 1940, Perry was single and living in Chicago with her single siblings Benjamin, Josephine, Elizabeth, and Eugene. Benjamin and Eugene were medical doctors; Elizabeth was a lawyer, and Josephine served in the Illinois General Assembly. Lorinda Perry died August 30, 1951, aged 66 years, in Chicago; her gravesite was in Gibson City, Illinois.


Sheila Finestone

Sheila Abbey Finestone, (January 28, 1927 – June 8, 2009) was a Canadian Member of Parliament and Senator.
Early life.
Born in Montreal, Quebec, the daughter of Minnie Cummings Abbey and Monroe Abbey. Her father was a president of the Canadian Jewish Congress. Finestone received a Bachelor of Science degree from McGill University in 1947. The same year, she married Alan Finestone (1923–1997). They had four sons: David (born 1950), Peter (born 1951), Maxwell (born 1954) and Stephen (born 1956).
Career.
From 1977 to 1980, she was president of the Fédération des femmes du Québec. In 1984 she was elected as a Liberal Member of Parliament for the Montreal riding of Mount Royal. She was re-elected in the 1988, 1993 and 1997 elections.
Finestone was sworn to the Privy Council in November 1993 as Secretary of State (Multiculturalism and Status of Women). Finestone was appointed to the Senate of Canada in August 1999. She completed her term in the Senate in 2002 when she reached the mandatory retirement age of 75.
She was a member of the board of the Canadian Landmine Foundation.
In 2008, Finestone was the recipient of the Distinguished Service Award of the Canadian Association of Former Parliamentarians, "presented annually to a former parliamentarian who has made an outstanding contribution to the country and its democratic institutions." The award was accepted on her behalf by her son Peter, due to Finestone's inability to attend, following health challenges.
Death.
Finestone died of cancer on June 8, 2009 in Ottawa.


Carole Mandi

Carole Mandi is a Kenyan publisher, entrepreneur, newspaper columnist and media personality. She is the publisher and owner of Carole Mandi Media Ltd (CCML) which owns "True Love", "Drum" and "Home Living" Magazines. True Love and Drum Magazines were previously published by South Africa's Media24 but Mandi successfully bid for the magazine franchises and took over the business in 2010. She is also a weekly lifestyle contributor for the Saturday and Sunday Nation.
For two years Mandi hosted Sebuleni, a weekly local lifestyle talk show on NTV before she transitioned to publishing business. Just recently, Mandi launched an initiative called 'Women of Influence' to celebrate International Women's Day
Background and education.
Mandi developed interest in writing at an early age and while in high school, she was already writing letters to the editor. The trained teacher (literature and linguistics) continued writing for magazines at the university.
Her first job was an editorial assistant at a small publication for women but in 1995, she was employed by a mainstream media house in Kenya, Nation Media Group. But Mandi quit this job to raise her two young children in 2002.
In 2004, she became an editor with Media24 which then published "True Love", "Drum" and "Move" magazines. When Media24 folded their business in Kenya, Mandi bid for the magazine franchises and took over in 2010 as publisher of "True Love" and "Drum".
From their savings and debts, Mandi and her husband acquired the publishing license and established Carole Mandi Media Limited (CMML) in 2010. "True Love" relaunched in 2010 and "Drum East Africa" in January 2011. In December 2012, CCML launched a bi-monthly home, garden and lifestyle magazine "Home & Living""."
CMML’s brand "True Love is" a monthly lifestyle magazine which targets women aged between 25 and 35 and retails in Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and Rwanda.
Family.
Mandi was born to a Tanzanian mother (now deceased) and a Luhya father known as Dick Aguda who is a former sports editor for Daily Nation. She is married.


Sharon Priest

Sharon Mary Priest (née Devlin; born September 12, 1947) is a Canadian-American politician and businessperson, who was mayor of Little Rock, Arkansas, before being the first woman elected to the role of Secretary of State of Arkansas in 1994. She was re-elected in 1998 and her tenure ended in 2003. During her terms in office, she introduced an internet-based Information Network of Arkansas, encouraged participation in elections and in the 2000 US Census, and worked towards electoral reform. She also served as president of the National Association of Secretaries of State.
Background.
Priest was born on September 12, 1947, in Montreal, Quebec. She worked in Canada with a distributor for the American company Munsey Products before moving to Little Rock, Arkansas, upon her marriage in 1974. While in Little Rock, Priest prepared taxes for H & R Block from 1976 to 1978 and worked at a real estate company she had opened from 1983 to 1986. She later was a membership director for a chamber of commerce from 1990 to 1994.
During this time period, Priest started her political career as a member of the board of directors (city council) for Little Rock in 1986. For the city, she was the deputy mayor of Little Rock from 1989 to 1990 and reappointed to the board of directors in 1990. The following year, Priest became the mayor of Little Rock in January and held her mayorship until December 1992.
Running as a Democrat in 1994, Priest beat Julia Hughes Jones to become the Secretary of State of Arkansas. With her win, Priest became the first woman to take office as Secretary of State of Arkansas as the result of an election. Overall, Priest was the second woman to become Arkansas's secretary of state, as Nancy J. Hall was appointed after her husband died during his office term in 1961.
Priest was reelected as Arkansas's Secretary of State in 1998, defeating candidate Rose Bryant Jones. She remained as Secretary of State for Arkansas until 2003. During her years in office, Priest made information about the state government, and held in the office of the Secretary of State, more accessible. In 1995, she launched the internet-based Information Network of Arkansas, and also reduced the cost of photocopies of information held in the Secretary of State's offices from 80c per page to 25c per page. She attempted to boost the number of people voting in elections through programs such as "Honor a Vet with a Vote", designed to raise awareness "that voting is a precious right", and Mock Election, a program for high schools students which won an award offered by Time Magazine/National Association of State Boards of Education. During 2000, she visited all counties of Arkansas to encourage participation in the federal census, after estimates that around 42,000 residents of Arkansas were omitted from the 1990 US census, resulting in a loss of $280,000,000 in federal funding. Priest also served as president of the National Association of Secretaries of State, and chaired a committee of the association which investigated possible election reforms at the national level, and made 15 recommendations intended to avoid the voting problems of the 2000 US presidential election. Within Arkansas, Priest also wanted to change the method of tracking ballots, so that they would no longer be linked to individual voters. However, the proposed electoral reforms foundered due to a downturn in the economy, and Priest was reported as saying, "Unless there's a real uprising on the part of the people in this country who will call their congressmen and senators and say, "Elections are important to us and democracy comes at a price, and we're willing to pay that price – do something!" then I'm not sure, running into budgets now, that anything's going to get done."
After her governmental position for Arkansas ended, Priest worked at the Downtown Little Rock Partnership from 2003 to 2015 as an executive director. In the late 2010s, Priest became a bookkeeper for a plumbing company run by her son.


Judyann Elder

Judyann Elder (born Judith Ann Johnson; August 18, 1948) is an American actress, director, and writer.
Elder played Nadine Waters on the FOX sitcom "Martin". She also played Harriette Winslow on CBS' "Family Matters" for the remaining eight episodes of its ninth and final season after the departure of Jo Marie Payton. Elder is also a veteran of the stage who has appeared in scores of theatrical productions throughout the United States and Europe.
Early life and career.
Born in Cleveland, Elder is the daughter of Edward T. Johnson, PhD. and Camille Johnson (née Russell). Elder attended Shaker Heights High School and graduated from Emerson College in Boston as the first recipient of the Carol Burnett Award in the Performing Arts. Elder began her professional career in off-Broadway in New York as "Judyann Jonsson". A founding member and resident actor with the Tony Award-winning Negro Ensemble Company, she originated roles in the premier productions of "The Song of the Lusitanian Bogey", "Daddy Goodness", "Kongi's Harvest", and "God is a (Guess What?)".
In 1969, she played the role of Russell B. Parker's young love interest in Lonne Elder III's "Ceremonies in Dark Old Men" and toured with the company to London and Rome. She married the play's Pulitzer Prize nominated author early that same year, thus changing her name to Judyann Elder. Elder and her husband moved to Los Angeles soon after, where she broadened her career to include roles on screen. She made guest star roles in series such as "The Streets of San Francisco", "Sanford and Son", "Wonder Woman", and "The White Shadow". In 1976, Elder made her Broadway debut at the Ambassador Theatre as Coretta King opposite Billy Dee Williams in "I Have a Dream" directed by Robert Greenwald. She subsequently portrayed the role of Bernette Wilson in the television mini-series "A Woman Called Moses" starring Cicely Tyson. Several roles on screen followed including "Forget Paris" with Billy Crystal, "The Players Club" directed by Ice Cube, and "Seven Pounds" with Will Smith.
In the 1991–92 season of TV's "Murphy Brown" starring Candice Bergen, Elder portrayed Murphy Brown's obstetrician, Dr. Barton. Her recurring role culminated with the historic season finale where Dr. Barton delivered Murphy Brown's baby. She played Gina's mother, Nadine Waters, on "Martin" (1992—97), starring Martin Lawrence; Gina was played by Tisha Campbell. In 1998, she replaced Jo Marie Payton as Harriette Winslow in the last episodes of the popular show "Family Matters".
Elder has frequently returned to the stage and last appeared at Arkansas Rep as Rose in August Wilson's "Fences". She also has many theatre directorial credits including: "The Book of the Crazy African" (Skylight Theatre), "The Meeting" (Inner City Cultural Center, LA and New Federal Theatre, NY), "Ceremonies in Dark Old Men" (Beverly Canon Theatre), and "A Private Act" (Robey Theatre Company). Her direction of Matthew Lopez' "The Whipping Man" starring Charlie Robinson at the Skirball Cultural Center for LA Theatre Works radio series was broadcast nationally in 2016. Elder is an alumna of the American Film Institute's Directing Workshop for Women where she produced and directed the short film, "Behind God's Back", based on an Alice Walker short story and starring Beau Bridges. She is also the recipient of a Screenwriting Fellowship with Walt Disney Studios. In 2005, Elder was honored with an NAACP Trailblazer Award. Elder is also a 2010 recipient of a Distinguished Alumni Award from Emerson College.
Personal life.
Elder has been married twice. Her first marriage was to actor and playwright Lonne Elder III from 1969 to 1994, with whom she had two children, including actor Christian E. Elder. Elder has been married to her second husband, actor John Cothran Jr. since 1997. Elder is a breast cancer survivor; and former legislative ambassador for the American Cancer Society. Elder resides in Los Angeles, California.


Clementine de Vere

Clementine de Vere (20 December 1888–31 March 1973), also known by her stage name Ionia, was the most influential female magician in the first half of the 20th century. A British magician and illusionist she was also known as Clementine Weedon and Princess Clementine Eristavi Tchitcherine, she was a British citizen, although she was born in Belgium and lived in France for a long period. She performed with the stage name "Ionia - the Enchantress" or the "Goddess of Mystery".
Early years.
Born in Brussels in Belgium, Clementine de Vere was the eighth child of the British-born illusionist Herbert Shakespeare Gardiner Williams (1843-1931), a popular conjurer and magician who took the stage name Charles de Vere, and his wife Julia de Vere (née Ferrett, 1852–1916), who performed the first Oriental magic act under the name "Okita". He opened a magic shop in London in 1873, and a magic shop/factory in Brussels in 1878. One of Clementine de Vere's sisters was the French actress Elise de Vère (1879-1917), who starred in the silent film "Miss de Vère (English Jig)". The family moved to Paris in 1892 where Charles de Vere opened another magic shop which he ran until about 1909, assisted by his sons. Here Clementine de Vere was said to have been influenced by the artists of the Folies Bergère. On 5 May 1904 aged only 15 1/2 she married the American circus artist and tamer Herman Weedon (actually: Herman Armond Wirtheim, 1876–1959) from the Bostock Circus.
In June 1904 the newly married couple travelled to New York as Weedon had a commitment on Coney Island. Clementine accompanied him in the following years on his professional travels in Europe and the United States. From her marriage with Weedon she had a son, Frank H. Weedon (1907-1984), who later was known under the name Frank Wirtheim Tchitcherine. In 1909 Clementine de Vere travelled with Herman Weedon to Denmark, Russia, and Vienna. Between 1900 until 1909 her brother Camille (1885-1909) was working in the family magic business at 13, rue Saulnier in Paris until Camille died of diabetes mellitus. Charles de Vère then gave up his business and retired to Rosny-sous-Bois, where he worked on the preparation of a big show for his daughter Clementine.
Ionia.
Clementine performed as "Ionia" for several years in continental Europe before a series of performances in the United Kingdom. On 30 January 1911, she appeared on stage as "Ionia", later sometimes billed as "the Enchantress" or as the "Goddess of Mystery", in an act at the Birmingham Hippodrome in England, in a routine which required six tons of equipment and elaborate Egyptian costumes for Clementine and her male and female assistants. "Ionia" had great success and that year her act was seen in later years in Vienna, Marseilles, Lyon, Prague, and other venues. Her last contemporary mention was apparently in the March 1911 issue of the magazine "The Sphinx" the cover of which showed a photograph de Vère. The text in this issue dealt with her appearance in Manchester.
"Ionia" was contracted to perform in America, but did not due to the sudden closing of Broadway's Folies Bergere of New York. This theatre was opened in the spring of 1911 and closed in October of the same year because of financial difficulties. Clementine de Vere had a contract with this theatre and after its closure could not find suitable employment. In 1912 Clementine spends most of the year performing in Vienna at the KaiserGarten and at the Ronacher theatres.
Some of the last recorded appearances of Clementine de Vere as "Ionia" were in Vienna, at the Ronacher Theatre. By 1914 Charles de Vere was disappointed that his daughter had not continued her elaborate act and tried to sell the tricks and pieces of equipment to curb the financial losses that had arisen for him.
Marriage and divorce.
She met a Russian-Georgian Prince Vladimir Eristavi Tchitcherine in Austria in 1913 and married him on 21 June 1919 in Paris, after her first marriage had been dissolved on 23 June 1917. The Prince took Clementine to Russia. This is a postscript from her father's letter from 1928,
Her father's statement is correct, but her materials were not magic. Clementine had given up magic years before when she met Tchitcherine. She was not performing magic in Russia. In the 1920s Clementine de Vere lived temporarily with her second husband in Washington, D.C. and later in Paris. On 26 October 1928, this second marriage too was dissolved, but Clementine de Vere retained the title of Princess, which she had received by the marriage. She lived in France for the rest of her life and was buried with her parents in Batignolles Cemetery in Paris, after her death in 1973.
Her performing career was relatively short, lasting just five years total. From 1908 until mid 1910 Clementine's act featured trained animals. Her magic act was constructed by her father Charles de Vere in 1909 and debuted in September 1910 in Marseilles. "Ionia's" act was spectacular, filling the stage with illusions. Her act was advertised with beautiful posters which many collectors consider to be some of the most artistic posters of magic's "Golden Age". Of the 22 known posters for "Ionia" produced by Moody Brothers of Birmingham, only eleven have survived and are now considered expensive collectibles.


Anne Kauffman

Anne Kauffman is an American director known primarily for her work on new plays, mainly in the New York area. She is a founding member of the theater group The Civilians.
Early life and education.
Kauffman received her undergraduate degree from Stanford University and her MFA from the graduate directing program at UCSD.
Kauffman has said: "I'm attracted to plays that need the theater and belong only to the theater...I've always been very interested in writers who have a kind of mystery to them--something that makes me work a little hard and is compelling and mysterious...trying to get at the world from a slightly odd angle...I do love working with a playwright more than once."
Career.
Kauffman directed "The Thugs" by Adam Bock Off-Broadway at the Soho Rep in 2006. She received the 2007 Obie Award for direction for this production.
Kauffman directed Amy Herzog's "Belleville" Off-Broadway at the New York Theatre Workshop in 2013. The reviewer for "Time Magazine" wrote : "She [Kauffman] serves the play wonderfully, with a light but firm hand, for a tense, almost breathtaking hour and a half." She also directed "Belleville" at the Steppenwolf Theatre, Chicago, in 2013. The reviewer of the Chicago production noted "Kauffmann's tense, adroit, nuanced, deftly cast production..." She directed Amy Herzog's "Mary Jane" Off-Broadway at the New York Theatre Workshop in Sept. 2017. Jesse Green, in his review for "The New York Times", noted "Ms. Kauffman’s ideally detailed direction."
Past Off-Broadway productions include "Maple and Vine" by Jordan Harrison (2011) and Pulitzer Prize finalist play "Detroit" by Lisa D'Amour (2012) at Playwrights Horizons;. "Stunning" by David Adjmi (2009) and "Slowgirl" by Greg Pierce (2012) at LCT3 ; "You'd Better Sit Down: Tales From My Parents' Divorce" (Written with The Civilians) at The Flea Theater (2012); "This Wide Night" by Chloe Moss by Naked Angels Theater Company (2010); "Sixty Miles to Silver Lake" by Dan Le Franc at Soho Rep (2009); "Have You Seen Steve Steven" by Ann Marie Healy with 13P (2007); "God's Ear" by Jenny Schwartz at The Vineyard and New Georges (2007); and "The Ladies" by Anne Washburn at the Cherry Lane Theater and Dixon Place (2004).
In 2016, she directed "Smokefall" by Noah Haidle with Zachary Quinto at the Off-Broadway Lucille Lortel Theatre in an MCC production; she had previously directed the play at the South Coast Repertory, and the Goodman Theatre in 2013. She directed "The Nether" by Jennifer Haley in 2015 for MCC. She directed "Marjorie Prime" by Jordan Harrison at Playwrights Horizons in 2015. This was the second time that Kauffman and Harrison worked together. In 2014 she directed the Off-Broadway production of "You Got Older" by Clare Barron at HERE. She directed "Sundown, Yellow Moon" by Rachel Bonds, which premiered Off-Broadway at the WP Theater in a co-production by Ars Nova and WP in 2017. Ben Brantley, in his review for "The New York Times", noted the " beautifully acted production...directed with probing sensitivity by Anne Kauffman."
In 2017, she directed "Marvin's Room" on Broadway for Roundabout Theatre Company, "Assassins" at Encores! Off-Center, "Mary Jane" at New York Theater Workshop, and "Hundred Days" at the Under the Radar Festival and New York Theater Workshop. In 2018, she directed "The Lucky Ones" at the Connelly Theater for Ars Nova, and "Hundred Days" at La Jolla Playhouse, where she is about to direct Lindsey Ferrentino's "The Year to Come."
Kauffman's past regional productions include "Body Awareness" by Annie Baker (2012) at the Wilma Theater; and Pulitzer Prize finalist "Becky Shaw" by Gina Gionfriddo (2009); "The Flea and the Professor" by Jordan Harrison at the Arden Theatre Company (2011); "Six Degrees of Separation" by John Guare at the Williamstown Theatre Festival (2010); "We Have Always Lived in the Castle" by Adam Bock and Todd Almond at Yale Rep (2010); "The Communist Dracula Pageant" by Anne Washburn at ART (2008); "Expecting Isabel" by Lisa Loomer and "Doubt" by John Patrick Shanley at "Asolo Repertory Theatre" (2007); "Act A Lady" by Jordan Harrison at the Humana Festival of New American Plays (2006); and "Typographer's Dream" and "Shaker Chair" by Adam Bock (2005).
She is a Sundance Program Associate, a Usual Suspect at New York Theatre Workshop, an alumna of the Soho Rep Writers and Directors Lab, a current member of Soho Rep’s Artistic Council, Lincoln Center Directors Lab, The Drama League of New York, a founding member of The Civilians, an Associate Artist with Clubbed Thumb and co-creator of the CT Directing Fellowship, and member of New Georges Kitchen Cabinet. From 2000-2006, Kauffman was on the directing faculty at NYU. Kauffman is an Executive Board Member of the SDC.
Kauffman is the Artistic Director of New York City Center's Encores! Off-Center, and was the co-Artistic Director with Jeanine Tesori for the 2018 season.
Awards and honors.
She received the 2007 Obie Award for direction of "The Thugs".
She received the 2015 Obie Award, for sustained excellence of direction.
Other awards include a Lilly Award for directing in 2010, the Alan Schneider Director Award, the Joan and Joseph Cullman award for Exceptional Creativity from Lincoln Center, 2004 Big Easy Award, and Ambie Award (for "The Children's Hour") in New Orleans.
She has received Philadelphia's Barrymore Award for Best Direction in 2010 for "Becky Shaw," and in 2012 for "Body Awareness".
"Detroit" by Lisa D'Amour was listed in the top 10 productions of 2012 by "The New York Times", "New York Magazine", "Time Magazine" and "TimeOut NY."
She was nominated for the 2015 Drama Desk Award, Outstanding Director of a Play for "You Got Older" by Clare Barron.
She was nominated for the 2011 Lucille Lortel Award, Outstanding Director for "This Wide Night" by Chloe Moss.
She was nominated for the 2013 Lucille Lortel Award, Outstanding Director for "Belleville".
She was nominated for the 2016 Lucille Lortel Award, Outstanding Director for "Marjorie Prime".
She was nominated for the 2016 Lucille Lortel Award, Outstanding Director, for Adam Bock's "A Life".
She received both the 2018 Lortel Award for Outstanding Direction of a play, and the 2018 Obie Award for Directing for "Mary Jane."


Shannon Kershner

Shannon Johnson Kershner is the current pastor of Fourth Presbyterian Church in Chicago. Succeeding John Buchanan as Fourth's pastor, Kershner was voted to lead the congregation on March 2, 2014. She began serving the community on May 1 of that year, and gave her first sermon to the congregation on May 18. Kershner has previously worked as pastor at Black Mountain Presbyterian Church in Black Mountain, North Carolina; and for Woodhaven Presbyterian Church in Irving, Texas. She graduated from Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas with a Bachelor of Arts degree before going on to receive a Master of Divinity from Columbia Theological Seminary. While studying at Columbia, Kershner served as a Pastoral Intern in Texas and Georgia, most prominently at Central Presbyterian Church in Atlanta. Shannon has a husband named Greg Kershner, and two children, Hannah Kershner and Ryan Kershner. Greg is a Financial Advisor at Raymond James and went to Baylor University before he attended Columbia Theological Seminary. Hannah is 18 and Ryan is 15.


Nancy Meckler

Nancy Meckler is an American theatre and film director, known for her work in the United Kingdom with Shared Experience, where she was a joint artistic director alongside Polly Teale.
Theatre.
Meckler has directed a production of "I.D.". She was a member of London-based collective the Freehold Theatre Company (1969–73), where she eventually became director. The group employed devising methodology to create work, and were the first company to receive the John Whiting Award for 'new and distinctive development in dramatic writing', traditionally given to playwrights.
In 2001, Meckler directed a production of Helen Edmundson's "The Mill on the Floss" at the Ambassadors Theatre. In 2008, she directed a production of Edmundson's "War and Peace" at Hampstead Theatre.
Her production of "King Lear" at Shakespeare's Globe was filmed in 2017 and featured Kevin McNally in the title role.
Film.
Meckler directed films "Sister My Sister" (1994) and "Indian Summer" (aka "Alive & Kicking") (1996).


Carolyn Kuan

Carolyn Kuan (born 1977) is a Chinese-American conductor.
Biography.
Carolyn Kuan's family is originally from Guangzhou, China, though Kuan was born in Taipei. When she was five years old, her older brother received a piano as a birthday gift. Kuan convinced her parents to allow her to play the piano. She sang in choirs and had an appreciation for opera, and initially wanted to be an opera singer.
Kuan's middle school had an American "sister school", Northfield Mount Hermon School, where Asian students from outside of the US could study. At age 14, she traveled by herself to the US to attend Northfield Mount Hermon. Kuan subsequently studied economics (at her parents' request) and music, graduating cum laude from Smith College. At Smith College, she first conducted an orchestra. She continued her music education at the University of Illinois, where she earned a Master of Music degree, and at the Peabody Conservatory, where she earned a performance diploma. Her conducting mentors have included Gustav Meier.
In 2003, Kuan was the first woman to be awarded the Herbert von Karajan Conducting Fellowship, which resulted in a residency at the 2004 Salzburg Festival. She won the first Taki Concordia Fellowship. She began work as a conducting assistant to Marin Alsop at the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music in 2003, and continued to work regularly at Cabrillo through 2012. In 2006, Kuan became assistant conductor of the Seattle Symphony, with a contract of 2 years. In 2007, the orchestra promoted her to associate conductor.
In January 2011, the Hartford Symphony Orchestra named Kuan as its 10th music director, effective at the start of the 2012–2013 season, with an initial contract of 3 seasons. She is the first female and the first Asian-American conductor to hold the post. This appointment represents Kuan's first music directorship. In April 2015, the orchestra announced the extension of Kuan's contract for an additional six seasons, effective 1 June 2016, through May 2022. In January 2016, during a labour dispute between Hartford Symphony Orchestra musicians and management, Kuan offered to reduce her salary 'commensurate' with the pay reductions that management requested of the musicians.
Kuan released her debut album with the Naxos label in 2012, in works by various Chinese composers, featuring the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra. Her other work in contemporary music has included conducting the North American premieres of Huang Ruo's "Dr. Sun Yat-sen" at Santa Fe Opera in 2014, and of Philip Glass' and Christopher Hampton's "The Trial" at Opera Theatre of Saint Louis in June 2017.


Nathalie Palladitcheff

Nathalie Palladitcheff, born on October 13, 1967, is a French business executive who is the President of Ivanhoé Cambridge, the real estate subsidiary of the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec (CDPQ), which owns C$65 billion in real estate assets. She is based in Montreal, Canada. She succeeded Daniel Fournier as President in March 2018, having joined the firm in August 2015 as Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer.


Viola Hashe

Viola Hashe (1926-1977) was a teacher, anti-apartheid activist and trade unionist in South Africa. Hashe was also blind.
Biography.
Hashe was born in 1926 in the Orange Free State. She started working with the trade unions and joined the African National Congress (ANC) in the 1950s. She became a member of the South African Congress of Trade Unions (SACTU) in the mid-1950s. In 1956, she worked on the South African Clothing Workers Union (SACWU) where she became the first woman leader of an all-male South African union. Hashe spoke at the SACTU conference in Durban where she discussed passes for women, since women weren't allowed to hold passes.
Hashe became the first woman to be threatened with deportation under the Urban Areas Act in 1956. She had the counsel of Shulamith Muller, and the order to deport her was rescinded "barely seven hours before the order was to take effect." In 1963, Hashe was banned under the Suppression of Communism Act, 1950 and then "restricted to Roodepoort" until her death in 1977.
Hashe influenced many people who became activists or who were already working as activists. These included Bertha Gxowa, Mabel Balfour, and Mary Moodley. A branch of the African National Congress Youth League is named after Hashe.


Andrea Quinn

Andrea Quinn (born 1964) is an English conductor.
Early life.
She studied at the Royal Academy of Music and in Hungary. In 1993 Quinn won the Royal Opera House’s Conduct for Dance competition, and has since then been in great demand as a ballet conductor.
Career.
She was Music Director of the Royal Ballet from 1998 to 2001 and became Music Director of New York City Ballet in 2001. She has also conducted the English National Opera.
In 2000 Quinn received a nomination for Female Artist of the Year at the Classical Brit Awards
Andrea Quinn has conducted major orchestras including the London Symphony Orchestra, the Philharmonia Orchestra, the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, the Hallé Orchestra and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra.
She has worked in Australia with the Adelaide and the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra, the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, the NRK Radio Orchestra in Oslo, the Norrköping Symphony Orchestra and orchestras in Italy, Finland, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Paris and Toledo, Ohio.
Earlier in her career she conducted the London Philharmonic Youth Orchestra, and Fulham Symphony Orchestra.


Saliha Mahmood-Ahmed

Saliha Mahmood-Ahmed (born 23 October 1987) is a British cook and winner of the BBC's MasterChef competition in 2017.
Her final menu was to prepare a three-course meal for judges John Torode and Gregg Wallace which consisted of:
Early life.
Mahmood-Ahmed was born and raised in Ickenham, Middlesex
Career.
She was educated at Beaconsfield High School for girls (Grammar School for girls) and studied Medicine at Kings College graduating in 2012. She began her career in medicine as a junior doctor working for the NHS at St Mary's Hospital specializing in gastroenterology. She has subsequently worked at Hillingdon Hospital and Watford General Hospital.
She began cooking at the age of 12 and was heavily influenced by the Kashmiri style of cooking of her maternal grandmother and mother.
Personal life.
Mahmood-Ahmed is married to Usman Ahmed since August 2013. Her husband is also a doctor specializing in Acute Medicine and they have one son Aashir (born October 2014) and a second son born in March 2020.


Renu Chakravartty

Renu Chakravartty was a leader of Communist Party of India, noted parliamentarian and educationist.
Early life.
Born in a well-off Brahmo family to Sadhan Chandra and Brahmakumari Roy, at Kolkata on 21 October 1917, she was educated at Loreto House and Victoria Institution in Kolkata and Newnham College, Cambridge. After her graduation with honours at Kolkata, she acquired a tripos in English Literature at Cambridge.
A niece of Dr. Bidhan Chandra Roy, she was inspired to take interest in political affairs by him. In 1938, she came in contact with Rajani Palme Dutt, the notable British communist, and joined the Communist Party of Great Britain. On return to India, the same year, she secured membership of the illegal Communist Party of India and plunged into active left politics.
Marriage and politics.
She married eminent journalist, Nikhil Chakravartty, in 1942. In the early forties she taught English Literature in the University of Calcutta. Along with Rani Mitra Dasgupta and Manikuntala Sen she played an important role in the formation of Mahila Atma Raksha Samiti. It later played a part in the Tebhaga movement. For the support of destitute women she was involved, along with her mother, in the Nari Seva Sangha. In 1948, when the Communist Party of India was declared illegal, she went into hiding.
She was elected to the Lok Sabha from Basirhat in 1952 and 1957, and from Barrackpore in 1962. After CPI split in 1964, she decided to remain with the older organisation, and in two successive elections in 1967 and 1971 she was defeated from the same constituency by Md. Ismail of Communist Party of India (Marxist).
Gopalkrishna Gandhi has summed up very succinctly, the era in which Renu Chakravartty served in the Indian Parliament: "The early Lok Sabhas and Rajya Sabhas more than rose to the standards of "daily assessment" set by Dr. Ambedkar, especially in MPs' stellar debating contributions. The lyrically thoughtful Nehru was matched by the rasping Kripalani. The Houses were well-served by the laser-eyed Feroze Gandhi, the fiery Bhupesh Gupta, the impassioned Hiren Mukherjee, the sedate Lakshmi Menon, the thermal Violet Alva, the acerbic Rammanohar Lohia, the excoriating Barrister Nath Pai, the striking Renu Chakravartty, the diligent Minoo Masani, the startling C.N. Annadurai, and, of course, the poetic Atal Bihari Vajpayee."
In around four decades of political life she was active in the workers’ movement, organised many strikes and was sent to jail on numerous occasions. She was a vibrant contributor to the women's movement. She was on the executive committees of many organisations.