Articles in Category: Profiles & Bios

Nellie Tayloe Ross (Politician/First Woman U.S. state Governor)

Nellie_Tayloe_RossNellie Tayloe Ross (November 29, 1876–December 19, 1977) was an American politician, the 14th Governor of Wyoming from 1925 to 1927, and director of the United States Mint from 1933-1953.

She was the first woman to serve as governor of a U.S. state.

To date, she remains the only woman to have served as governor of Wyoming. She was a staunch supporter of prohibition during the 1920s.

Dr. Eva Andersson-Dubin (Former Model/Physician/Cancer Survivor)

evadubinA former Ford model who continued working to pay her way through medical school, Dr. Eva Dubin earned her bachelor’s degree with honors from Ostraboschool in Sweden.

She went on to study medicine at Karolinksa Institute School of Medicine in Stockholm, and then at UCLA School of Medicine, where she received her MD.

She completed her medical residency at Lenox Hill Hospital and is currently a physician at NBC’s medical clinic in New York.

Joy Harjo (Poet/Musician/Author)

Joy_HarjoJoy Harjo (born Tulsa, Oklahoma, May 9, 1951) is an American poet, musician, and author of Native American Canadian ancestry.

Known primarily as a poet, Harjo has also taught at the college level, played alto saxophone with a band called Poetic Justice, edited literary journals, and written screenplays.

She is a member of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation of Oklahoma and is of Cherokee descent. She is a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa.

In 1995, Harjo received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Native Writers' Circle of the Americas.

Penélope Cruz (Actress)

Penelope_CruzPenélope Cruz Sánchez (born April 28, 1974), better known as Penélope Cruz, is a Spanish actress. Signed by an agent at age 15, she made her acting debut at 16 on television, and her feature film debut the following year in Jamón, jamón (1992), to critical acclaim.

Her subsequent roles in the 1990s and 2000s included Open Your Eyes (1997), The Hi-Lo Country (1999), The Girl of Your Dreams (2000) and Woman on Top (2000).

Cruz achieved recognition for her lead roles in Vanilla Sky and Blow. Both films were released in 2001 and were commercially successful worldwide.

In the 2000s she has appeared in films from a wide range of genres, including the comedy Waking Up in Reno (2002), the thriller Gothika (2003), the Christmas movie Noel (2004), the action adventure Sahara (2005), the animated G-Force and the musical drama Nine.

Her most notable films to date are Volver (2006), for which she earned Golden Globe and Academy Award nominations, and Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008), for which she received an Academy Award.

Najla Al Awadhi (Parlementarian / Entrepreneur)


najlaalawadhi.jpgMs Najla Al-Awadhi is a member of the Federal National Council (the United Arab Emirates-UAE parliament). She is one of the first women in the history of the UAE to become a member of the UAE’s Parliament, and also its youngest parliamentarian.

She began her 2 year parliament term in February 2007.  She serves on  the Education, Youth, Media and Culture Committee,  and also the FNC steering committee which was set up to develop a scheme to modernize the parliament’s  practices, and overall effectiveness.

She previously served on the Foreign Affairs, Planning, Petroleum, Mineral Wealth, Agriculture and Fishery Committee

She is also the first woman from a Gulf Cooperation Country to hold a senior executive post in a state run media organization. In addition to being the first female from the UAE to launch and head a free to air satellite tv channel.

She serves as the Deputy Chief Executive Officer of Dubai Media Incorporated (DMI), a media group which operates four free-to-air satellite channels that are owned by the government of Dubai.