An entrepreneur, advocate, and member of the Blackfoot Nation, Elouise Pepion Cobell (“Yellow Bird Woman”), fought tirelessly for government accountability and for Native Americans to have control over their own financial future. During her life, she won countless awards, founded the first Native American owned bank, and successfully won a class-action lawsuit against the U.S. Government.
Badia Masabni was an entertainer and businesswoman best known for establishing a series of influential clubs in Cairo in the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s. She is considered to be the mother of modern belly dance and is credited with launching the careers of many Egyptian artists, particularly belly dancers Samia Gamal and Taheyya Kariokka.
Gwendolyn Margaret Lizarraga, MBE was a Belizean businesswoman, women’s rights activist and politician who was the first woman elected to the British Honduras Legislative Assembly (now the Belize House of Representatives) and the first woman to serve as a government minister in British Honduras (now Belize).
Isabella Augusta, Lady Gregory was an Irish dramatist, folklorist and theatre manager who co-founded the Irish Literary Theatre and the Abbey Theatre, and wrote several short works for both companies. Lady Gregory produced several books retelling stories from Irish mythology.
Rapelang Rabana is a computer scientist, entrepreneur, and speaker who founded the learning technology company Rekindle Learning in 2013.
Wided Bouchamaoui is a Tunisian businesswoman who has been the leader of the employers union Tunisian Confederation of Industry, Trade and Handicrafts (UTICA) since 2011. UTICA was one of the four organisations to form the Tunisian National Dialogue Quartet, whose aim was to secure a transition to democracy. The Quartet won the 2015 Nobel Peace Prize.
Visonary architect Zaha Hadid challenged notions of what could be achieved in building. Described by The Guardian as the “Queen of the Curve,” her inventive designs freed architecture from its traditional focus on concrete and steel, introducing radical new ways to create spaces in harmony with their surroundings. With a foundation in painting and the utilizing progressive digital technologies, Hadid’s innovative approach helped shift the geometry of buildings toward a new aesthetic. As a woman and a Muslim, she also helped break barriers in the male-dominated world of high-profile architecture.
Before her designs were realised in actual buildings, Hadid’s architectural drawings and paintings were gaining international acclaim as she challenged the idea that a building was merely a solid mass. Her company would later coin the term Parametricism to define this signature look and feel.
Hadid’s major works include the London Aquatics Centre for the 2012 Olympics, the Broad Art Museum, Rome’s MAXXI Museum, and the Guangzhou Opera House.
Hadid was the first woman to be awarded the Pritzker Architecture Prize, in 2004, and she received the Stirling Prize, the UK’s most prestigious architectural award, in 2010 and 2011. In 2012, she was made a Dame by Queen Elizabeth II for services to architecture, and in February 2016, she became the first woman to individually receive the Royal Gold Medal from the Royal Institute of British Architects (Ray Eames and Sheila O’Donnell had previously won jointly with Charles Eames and John Tuomey respectively).
Narcisa Buencamino-De León was a Filipino businesswoman and film producer who navigated her family-owned LVN Pictures (which she co-founded in the 1930s) into a major force in post-World War II Philippine cinema, operating until 2005.
Maria Gertrudis “Tules” Barceló was a saloon owner and master gambler in Santa Fe in the Territory of New Mexico in the 1830s-1850s. She reolcated sometime after Mexican authorities fined her for operating a gambling salon for miners in the Ortiz Mountains. Barceló amassed a small fortune by capitalizing on the flow of American and Mexican traders involved with the commercial highway of the Santa Fe Trail. She became infamous in the U.S. as the Mexican “Queen of Sin” through a series of American travel writings and newspaper serials before, during, and after the Mexican-American War. These depictions, often intended to explain or justify the U.S. invasion of Mexico, presented La Tules as a madame and prostitute who symbolized the supposedly immoral nature of the local Mexican population. In addition to false assertions that she was a prostitute, many also claimed that she was having an illicit affair with New Mexico Governor Manuel Armijo. The sensational accounts were typicallyembellished, if not completely fabricated. Most of the American descriptions of Tules Barceló contradicted each other wildly in terms of her appearance and background. The only common agreement among them was that Barceló excelled at the card game monte, often winning vast piles of gold from the male customers in her saloon. Barceló died on January 17, 1852 in Santa Fe with a remarkable fortune of $10,000 and several houses.
In 1884 needleworker Thérèse de Dillmont left the embroidery school that she had started with her sister Franziska and moved to France, where she wrote her Encyclopedia of Needlework (1886) The book, which has since been translated into 17 languages, pulled together thousands of textile designs from many countries including Egypt, Bulgaria, Turkey and China. She later owned several shops in European capitals and was considered “one of the most important pioneers in the international and multicultural enterprise of hobby needlework in the late nineteenth century”.