2011: Sylvia Ann Hewlett, Economist and founding President of the Center for Work-Life Policy

Sylvia Ann Hewlett is an economist and the founding president of the Center for Work-Life Policy (CWLP), a Manhattan-based think tank where she chairs the "Hidden Brain Drain," a task force of 60 global companies committed to global talent innovation. She also directs the Gender and Policy Program at the School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Century Association and the World Economic Forum Council on Women’s Empowerment.

Hewlett is the author of eight Harvard Business Review articles and ten critically acclaimed nonfiction books including When the Bough Breaks (Basic Books, winner of a Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Book Prize), Off-Ramps and On-Ramps (Harvard Business School Press, named as one of the best business books of 2007 by Amazon.com), Top Talent: Keeping Performance Up When Business Is Down (Harvard Business Press) and Winning the War for Talent in Emerging Markets: Why Women Are the Solution (Harvard Business Press, forthcoming 2011). Her writings have appeared in the New York Times, the Financial Times, Foreign Affairs, and the International Herald Tribune and she is a featured blogger on Harvard Business Online.

Hewlett is the founder of Sylvia Ann Hewlett Associates LLC, a boutique consultancy. In 2009 Sylvia Ann Hewlett Associates formed an alliance with Booz & Company focused on helping organizations leverage top talent across the divides of culture, gender and generation.

Dr. Hewlett has taught at Cambridge, Columbia and Princeton universities and held fellowships at the Institute for Public Policy Research in London and the Center for the Study of Values in Public Life at Harvard. In the 1980s she become the first woman to head up the Economic Policy Council-a think tank composed of 125 business and labor leaders.

Hewlett is a well-known speaker on the international stage. She has keynoted International Women's Day at the IMF, given the featured address at Pfizer's Emerging Markets Leadership Summit in Dubai, and spoken at the White House with co-author Cornel West. She is a frequent guest on TV and radio, appearing on Oprah, NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, Charlie Rose, ABC World News Tonight, The Today Show, The View, BBC World News and Talk of the Nation-and she has been lampooned on Saturday Night Live.

A Kennedy Scholar and graduate of Cambridge University, Hewlett earned her PhD in economics at London University.

2010: Dana Dakin (Founder / CEO, Board Member)

In 2003, to officially celebrate her sixtieth birthday and the beginning of the "return" phase of her life, Dana Dakin headed to Ghana with a list of bootstrapped names to "adopt" a village. On the initial trip she was taken to Pokuase, within the outside northern perimeter of the capital Accra, where she pitched the concept of microlending to small groups of women. She engendered enough interest to return in six months, with funding that came from the sale of her second car.

Today, WomensTrust in the village of Pokuase is thriving, with more than 1000 women in the loan program and repayment rates consistently above 90 percent. Additional funding is directed toward such pressing needs as scholarships for girls and healthcare. The 501c(3) organization (with NGO status in Ghana) has become a viable community-based partnership in the village and is a model that can be replicated.

Dana’s career is in the investment business, where she has been a pioneer in marketing consulting to institutional investment firms, both on the trading side as well as for leading money management organizations. Her experience began on Wall Street with a research project at the NYSE that led to negotiated commissions. In 1971, she joined what became Callan Associates, a top pension consulting firm. With a five-year inside perspective on evaluating money managers, she formed Dakin Partners in 1976, the first firm to creatively package institutional investment organizations. She has worked on some of the great launches in the business, and has authored a summary of the essentials of investment marketing in Five for the Road. She also co-produced the eight-part PBS series "Beyond Wall Street: The Art of Investing" with a companion book published by John Wiley..

She was educated at Scripps College, where she graduated with a B.A. in 1964. Her concentration was in international relations, with an honor's thesis on Pan-Africanism. She was a member of the college’s Board of Trustees for nine years. Other board commitments over the year include Alumnae Resources in San Francisco, NH Writers' Project and the Women's Fund of New Hampshire. Her office, based in a converted volunteer fire house in Wilmot Flat, New Hampshire, has been featured on HGTV.

2009: Mary Ellen Iskenderian, President and CEO, Women’s World Bank

Mary Ellen Iskenderian is President and CEO of Women’s World Banking (WWB), the world’s largest network of microfinance institutions and banks. Ms. Iskenderian leads the WWB global team, based in New York, in providing hands-on technical services and strategic support to more than 50 top-performing microfinance institutions and banks in 30 countries in Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe, Latin America and the Middle East. WWB’s network members consistently rate among the top three microfinance institutions in their countries and more than 75% of their clients are poor women entrepreneurs.

Ms. Iskenderian, who joined WWB in 2006, has more than 20 years of experience in building global financial systems throughout the developing world. Ms. Iskenderian is a leading voice for women’s leadership and participation in microfinance, and a strong advocate for the role of capital markets in the sector. She has spoken widely on microfinance at Harvard, Yale, Stanford, and Wharton and at numerous industry and banking forums including the Clinton Global Initiative Annual Meeting; the Council on Foreign Relations and the ResponsAbility Microfinance Conference in Zurich, Switzerland. She was recently profiled in Forbes magazine and the Wall Street Journal is frequently quoted in the media, including Newsweek, Time, BBC News, and Voice of America.

Prior to WWB, Ms. Iskenderian worked for 17 years in senior management at the International Finance Corporation, the private sector arm of the World Bank, where her numerous leadership positions included Director of Partnership Development, Director of the Global Financial Markets Portfolio and Director of the South Asia Regional Department. Previously, she worked for the investment bank, Lehman Brothers.

Ms. Iskenderian currently sits on the advisory boards of the Dignity Fund and Kiva and the Board of Directors for ASA Foundation. She is a member of the Women’s Leadership Board of Harvard University and the Council on Foreign Relations. Before joining WWB, she was a director on many corporate boards, including ShoreCap International, an important equity and loan fund for microfinance. She holds an MBA from the Yale School of Organization and Management and a Bachelor of Science in International Economics from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service.

2008: Nell Merlino, President and Chief Executive Officer, Count Me In for Women's Economic Independence

Nell Merlino is founder, President and CEO of Count Me In for Women's Economic Independence, the leading national not-for-profit provider of on-line business loans and resources for women to grow their micro businesses into $million enterprises.

Throughout her career, Nell has been motivating millions of people to take action. She is the creative force behind Take Our Daughters to Work Day, which she designed and produced for the Ms. Foundation for Women in 1993. In ten years, over 71 million Americans have participated in the day.

As the driving force behind Count Me In's goal to getting 1 million women entrepreneurs to a $million in revenue by 2010, Nell has energized and engaged stakeholders in making this vision a reality. In 2005, Count Me In launched the Make Mine a $Million Business™ Program with founding partner OPEN from American Express SM provides money, mentoring and marketing opportunities for women entrepreneurs to grow their businesses to $million. Count Me In is supported by American Express, AIG, Google, MetLife, QVC, Cisco Systems, Intuit along with family foundations and thousands of generous individuals, who are behind women entrepreneurial success. The strategy of moving women from micro to millions builds on Count Me In's five year experience of helping thousands of women in all 50 states.

Merlino is also the founder and President of Strategy Communication Action, Ltd. (SCA) in New York City, a firm specializing in the creation of public education campaigns that motivate people to act. Prior to founding Count Me In and SCA, Merlino worked in two state governments, was an advance woman in presidential politics, a union organizer and a Fulbright Scholar.

For her work on behalf of women and girls, she is recognized in the books, Remarkable Women of the Twentieth Century: 100 Portraits of Achievement and Laws of the Bandit Queens. In April 2004, Nell received the Matrix Award for Achievement from New York Women in Communications. She has also received the Forbes magazine Trailblazer Award in 2000, and was awarded the 1994 Fulbright Award for Outstanding Achievement.

Merlino lives in Manhattan with her husband, Gary Conger.

2007: Dr. Isobel Coleman, Senior Fellow, Council on Foreign Relations

At the time she received this award, Dr. Isobel Coleman was senior fellow for U.S. foreign policy at the Council on Foreign Relations and director of the Council's Women and Foreign Policy program. Her area of expertise was the Middle East.

Dr. Coleman coauthored Strategic Foreign Assistance: Civil Society in International Security (Hoover Institution Press, 2006) and authored Paradise Beneath Her Feet: Islamic Feminism and Social Change in the Middle East (Random House, 2007). Her writings have appeared in many leading publications, including Foreign Affairs and Foreign Policy, and she was a frequent speaker at conferences and in the media. She has testified before Congress on Iraq and Afghanistan.

Prior to joining the Council, Dr. Coleman was a partner with McKinsey & Co. in New York. She holds a Ph.D. in international relations from Oxford, which she attended on a Marshall Scholarship and a BA in public policy and East Asian studies from Princeton.

2006: Rear Admiral Marsha J. Evans, U.S. Navy (retired)

During her nearly 30-year career with the Navy, Evans distinguished herself as one of only a handful of women to reach the honored rank of Rear Admiral, and gained a reputation for forging new ground for women in the military. She was the Chief of Staff at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis and she was the first woman to command a U.S. naval station (Treasure Island in the San Francisco Bay Area). She retired in 1998 as a Rear Admiral. In January 1998, Evans assumed leadership of Girl Scouts of the USA, an organization representing three million young girls. Under her leadership, Girl Scouts created cutting-edge programs in science, technology, sports, money management, and community service. Throughout Evans' tenure, Girl Scouts enjoyed a continuous increase in young membership and reached an unprecedented level of diversity as African-American, Asian and a record number of Hispanic girls discovered the organization.

From August 2002 through December 2005, Evans was the 13th President and Chief Executive Officer of the American Red Cross, the largest and one of the nation's most distinguished humanitarian aid organizations.

2005: Nancy Lublin, CEO, Do Something and Founder, Dress for Success

Nancy Lublin founded Dress for Success in 1996 with a $5,000 inheritance from her great-grandfather, Poppy Max. An immigrant from Eastern Europe, Poppy Max was a peddler who came to America with nothing and worked hard to forge a better life. Nancy wanted to honor his memory and legacy by using his hard-earned money to help other people blaze new beginnings too.

Nancy was a law student, new to New York City, so she turned to some experts for help; she founded the organization with three nuns from Spanish Harlem who each ran public service programs. Together, they built Dress for Success New York into a vibrant organization that assisted women from all over greater New York City.

When amazing women from other cities contacted Nancy about bringing Dress for Success to women in their community, Nancy finally had the chance to put her law school education to work. She trademarked the name Dress for Success, built equity in the brand, and then licensed it to these new affiliates. By fall of 1998, there were nearly 20 Dress for Success programs and Nancy left law school to be the full-time Executive Director of Dress for Success Worldwide.

After six years, assisting more than 120,000 clients, expanding the program to more than 70 cities in four countries, re-engineering the brand and collateral materials, securing a year's worth of cash in the bank, giving birth to the HSN clothing line idea, and (most importantly) selecting the ideal successor, Nancy decided to leave Dress for Success for new challenges.

At the time she received the award, Nancy was the CEO of Do Something, the ten-year old organization that provides inspiration and opportunities for young people to improve their communities: she is trying to make service cool. Nancy was recruited to re-organize and re-launch Do Something's programs, and in just 7 months she took them from $500,000 debt to 1.2 million cash-positive with a thriving staff and nearly 1 million kid-participants nationwide.

2004: Jill Ker Conway, President, Emerita Smith College

Jill Ker Conway was born in Hillston, New South Wales. The story of her early life is known to many whom have read her best-selling memoir The Road from Coorain. She is a graduate of the University of Sydney in History and English, and earned her Ph.D. in history at Harvard in 1969. Ms. Conway served as Vice President for Internal Affairs at the University of Toronto from 1973 to 1975. In 1975 she became the first woman president of Smith College and served ten years in that post. Since 1985 she has been a Visiting Scholar and Professor in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's program in Science, Technology and Society. She holds numerous honorary degrees from North American Colleges and Universities.

Ms. Conway has also been a director of a number of major American companies, including Merrill Lynch and Co., Inc., Colgate-Palmolive Co., and Nike, Inc. She also served as director of Lend Lease Corporation from 1992 to 2003 and Chairman from 2000-2003.

Ms. Conway is the author of several best-selling books: The Road from Coorain, published in 1989; Written By Herself, an anthology of American women's autobiography published in 1992; True North, the second installment of her memoirs, spanning her life from 1960 when she left her native Australia to 1975 when she accepted the presidency of Smith College; and When Memory Speaks - Reflections on Autobiography. Ms. Conway has also edited three anthologies of women's autobiography from around the world, the most recent being In Her Own Words, published by Vintage Books. Her latest books include a mystery novel written in collaboration with Elizabeth Kennan under the pseudonym, Clare Munnings, titled Overnight Float, Norton, 2000, and A Woman's Education, Knopf, 2001, the third installment of her memoir picking up in 1975 when she began as the first woman president of Smith College.

2003: Janet Tiebout Hanson, President and CEO, Milestone Capital Management and Founder, 85 Broads

Janet Hanson joined the Fixed Income Division of Goldman Sachs in 1977, became a Vice President in 1981, and was named the first woman Sales Manager in the firm's history in 1986. Following her 14-year career with Goldman Sachs, Janet founded Milestone Capital Management in 1994 - an investment management company which in 2003 managed over $2 billion in assets for institutional clients. At that time, of the $2.3 trillion money market fund assets managed in the United States, Milestone Capital remained the only woman owned firm in the country to specialize exclusively in the management of institutional money market funds.

In 1999, Janet founded 85 Broads, a global, online network of current and former Goldman Sachs women professionals which has grown to over 3,000 members worldwide. This first-of-its-kind network has become the success model for other business alumnae networks and was cited as a "Best Practices" organization in a landmark three-year study conducted by Catalyst entitled "WOMEN IN FINANCIAL SERVICES: The Word on the Street." Another of her initiatives is Broad2Broad - an innovative, network-based co-mentoring program for women MBAs at leading graduate business schools.

Janet received her M.B.A. in Finance from Columbia University Graduate School of Business and her B.A. from Wheaton College in Massachusetts, where she graduated cum laude with a major in Government. She has served on a number of boards, including The Women's Commission for Refugee Women and Children, and The Johnnie Walker Keep Walking Fund. She has also been an Advisor of The White House Project. Janet was featured as one of the "pioneers" among top women business leaders and entrepreneurs globally in the recent Random House publication, Be Your Own Mentor. Other publications which have profiled Janet and 85 Broads include The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Business Week, Money Magazine, and Working Woman.

2002: Lynn Martin, Former Secretary of Labor, Deloitte & Touche LLP

After serving as the 21st Secretary of Labor under President George Bush, Lynn Martin was engaged in a number of activities focused on the future of the U.S. economy and the American workforce.

At the time she received the award, Ms. Martin chaired Deloitte & Touche's Council on the Advancement of Women and was an Advisor to the Firm. She was a regular panelist on Public Television's To the Contrary and appeared as a guest commentator on the economy on national television. Ms. Martin regularly addressed America's businesses and universities on the changing global economic and political environment and led a task force to improve the workplace of Mitsubishi Motor Manufacturing of America.

In 2002, Ms. Martin served as a member of numerous company boards, in addition to not-for-profit Special Programs Corporation of the United Negro College Fund and The Coca-Cola Company Procurement Advisory Council.

In addition to receiving a number of honorary degrees, numerous alliances, charities, universities, and community organizations have recognized Ms. Martin for her role in highlighting and tackling workforce and social issues affecting women. During her tenure as Secretary of Labor, she focused the Department on what she believes is a revolution in the workplace. Congressional passage of the administration's proposal for increased pension portability is part of her strategy to give America's working men and women the capability to be secure in today's rapidly changing global economy. The centerpiece of this strategy was her emphasis on high-skills, high-paid workforce. Ms. Martin's focus on shattering the glass ceiling was a leading Bush Administration initiative and she also focused on programs to assist displaced homemakers and open opportunities for women in non-traditional jobs.

2000: Dina Dublon, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, The Chase Manhattan Corporation

At the time she received the Isabel Benham Award, Dina Dublon was chief financial officer, responsible for financial management, acquisitions, corporate treasury and investor relations at the Chase Manhattan Corporation.

Ms. Dublon joined Chemical's capital markets group as a management trainee in the trading floor in 1981. She has since served in many capacities, including investor relations, planning, and head of asset liability management. In 1989, Ms. Dublon was promoted to senior vice president of Corporate Finance, with responsibility for corporate mergers and acquisitions, debt and equity financings. In 1993, she became a senior banker in the Financial Institutions Division; in 1994, she was named corporate treasurer and, in 1996 following the merger with Chase, she was promoted to executive vice president, Corporate Planning. Prior to joining Chemical, Ms Dublon worked at the Harvard Business School and at Bank Hapoalim in Israel.

In 2000, Ms. Dublon was a director of The Hartford Financial Services Group, Inc., Hartford, CT and govWorks.com, New York. She served on Carnegie Mellon's Graduate School of Industrial Administration's Council on Finance and the advisory board of St. John's Graduate School of Business.

Ms. Dublon was born in Brazil. She holds a B.A. in economics and mathematics from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and an M.S. from the Graduate School of Industrial Administration at Carnegie Mellon University.

1999: Dorothy Q. Thomas, Founder, Human Rights Watch Women's Rights Division

Dorothy Q. Thomas is the founding director of the Human Rights Watch Women's Rights Division. She is a 1998 MacArthur Foundation Fellow for her work in documenting and opposing violence against women. In addition to receiving several other awards and serving on advisory boards, she is the author of several articles and reports on human rights. (www.gbn.com)

1998: Linda Fairstein, Manhattan District Attorney's Office, Head of Sex Crimes Unit and Noted Author

Linda joined the Manhattan District Attorney's Office in 1972, and was Head of the Sex Crimes Unit from 1976 to the time she received this award. Linda holds a BA from Vassar College. Linda is active in human-rights and legal organizations and is a Fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers.

As an author, Linda's credentials, both fiction and non, include: Sexual Violence, Final Jeopardy, Likely to Die, Cold Hit, The Dead House, The Bone Vault, The Kills, and most recently, Entombed.

1997: Faye Wattleton, President, Center for Advancement of Women, Former President, Planned Parenthood

At the time she received this award, Faye was President of the Center for Advancement of Women and had held this position since 1995. She has also worked for Planned Parenthood, the Montgomery County Combined Public Health District, and the Miami Valley Hospital School of Nursing. She holds a BS from Ohio State and a MS from Columbia. Faye is also the author of the 1986 publication "How To Talk to Your Child About Sexuality" and the 1996 work, "Life on the Line".

1996: Sheila Wellington, Former President, Catalyst

At the time she received the award, Sheila was President of Catalyst. Under Sheila's leadership, Catalyst became the definitive authority on professional women's issues, from the glass ceiling to childcare. Catalyst's mission was "to enable women to achieve their full professional potential and to help employers capitalize fully on women's talents and abilities." Catalyst has provided leadership, groundbreaking research, and an unyielding commitment to women in business. It has helped to give answers to firms struggling with the questions surrounding retention and promotion of talented women.

1995: Elinor C Guggenheimer, Founder, New York Women's Agenda

Since 1948, Elly has founded many women's forums and day care councils. In 1992, she founded the New York Women's Agenda. "NYWA is passionate about the obligation to speak out and influence policy and programs that affect the lives of women and families in New York City." (www.nywa.org/aboutnywa.html)

1994: Heidi Hartman, Founder, Institute for Women's Policy Research

Heidi Hartman is a MacArthur Foundation award winner (the so-called 'Genius Awards') and founder of her own think tank in Washington, D.C., Institute for Women's Policy Research. In 1994, Hartman's firm concentrated on issues vital to women and children and routinely published white papers on a wide range of issues from health and welfare to women and economics. She is an economist with a B.A. from Swarthmore College and M. Phil and PhD degrees from Yale University, all in economics. Heidi has delivered Congressional testimony and participated in briefings on numerous issues including comparable worth, family and medical leave, and child care.

1993: Marie O'Brien, Ms. Foundation for Women