Chido Govera is a young Zimbabwean woman who is making an impact in the rural areas of Africa, India, and Columbia by teaching women and orphans how to cultivate mushrooms. Born in 1988, she grew up as an orphan and started taking responsibility for herself, her little brother and her blind grandmother. She had no support from friends or relatives. After going through numerous physical abuses from close families, she vowed to take responsibility for the lives of other orphans around her, and work to save and protect them from the kind of abuses she went through as a child. When she was ten, she had an opportunity to escape the life of poverty by getting married to a man 30 years older than she was but she refused. The supposed man was a brother to two women who shopped in the United States of America and came back to…

Born in Ethiopia and raised in Kenya and the United States, Mimi Alemayehou is a development and finance professional. She attended St. Austins Academy, then moved to St. Austins Academy secondary school, Nairobi, Kenya, and Drew College Preparatory School, San Francisco, California, USA. She obtained her bachelor’s degree from West Texas A & M University, Texas, in the USA, and a Masters degree in International Business and International Law & Development from Tufts University Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Medford, Massachusetts, USA Alemayehou is currently the Managing Director of Black Rhino Group, an investment consulting firm focused on promoting greater efficiencies in African infrastructure development. She is also the Executive Advisor and Chair of Blackstone, one of the world’s leading investment and advisory firms. In 2010, Alemayehou was nominated Executive Vice President of OPIC by President Barack Obama and unanimously confirmed by a full US Senate. As Vice…

Recent years have recorded more women venturing into male-dominated territories and making significant impacts in those fields. The story of Shanti Devi is a daring one that will serve as an inspiration to women while reiterating that nothing is impossible to do if only you believe. At the outskirts of Delhi, is situated the Sanjay Gandhi Transport Nagar Depot, a home for trucks, where over 70,000 trucks are packed. Covering an area of more than 75 acres and is reportedly the largest trucking stopover point in Asia. There Shanti Devi and her husband Bahadur make their livelihood, she is over 70 and the first woman mechanic in India. She was an apprentice under a man called Mistri who taught her how to change tires, fix punctures and make minor engine repairs. Devi’s first marriage was a shipwreck her husband was a drunk and a gambler, who used all her money…

Saloni Malhotra is one of India’s valuable women who has taken steps to build India, especially the rural parts in their own little way. She was just 23 when she made a decision to abandon a beautiful and comfortable life in Delhi for struggles to make an impact in a rural area called Tamil Nadu in Chennai. Saloni is a graduate of B. Tech from the University of Carmel convent in Delhi. While her parent wanted her to take up her MBA she had her heart on something she found very impactful not to her but to the society. During her school days in Pune, she had a roommate who lived in rural areas all her life and has never seen a computer before. And that was her reason for wanting to study computer science. Saloni thought of the unbelievable experience and she wondered what darkness the rural people suffered,…

Maria Teresa Ruiz is a South American, born in Santiago de Chile on September 24, 1946. She is a born academician and her heart beat towards her work is amazing and worthy of emulation. In 1975, she obtained a PhD in Astrophysical Sciences from Princeton University, making her the first woman to study astronomy at the University of Chile. Professor Maria reveres her scholarly goals and she wears her job like a dress. She is a trailblazer and a goal getter with a great impact on the academic space of Chile. In 1997, she was named National Science Prize after discovering the first “coffee dwarf”, stellar objects that do not have independent light. This discovery opened the understanding of many individuals in the academic field. On this account, she was recognized and her fame traveled amongst other scientists in Chile. After her work on physical sciences, Professor Maria received an…

Shriti Vadera, Baroness Vadera was born in Uganda, East Africa, to an Indian family on June 23, 1962. Her family owned and operated a small tea plantation until 1972, when they were exiled from Uganda, following President Idi Amin’s expulsion of Ugandan Asians from the country. Her family fled to India. A determined young lady, Vadera, at the age of only five, insisted that her family find the money to pay the school fees of her caregiver, who could not at the time afford to pay them herself. At 14 she went on hunger strike demanding to be sent to school in England. The family later relocated to the UK, where she studied at Northwood College before proceeding to gain her degree in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at Somerville College, Oxford. After her education, Vadera worked for 14 years at UBS Warburg as an investment banker; her job at UBS…

La June Montgomery Tabron is the president and CEO of The W.K. Kellogg Foundation (WKKF), one of the largest philanthropic foundations in the United States. The first African American to head the foundation in its 83 year history, Tabron 54, is a native of Detroit, United States. She was raised in a family of ten children in inner-city Detroit, and studied at the University of Michigan graduating with a business degree in business administration. She also has a Master’s degree in business administration from the Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University Tabron has a long history with the W.K. Kellogg Foundation (WKKF), having started her career there at the age of 24. She began as a financial controller and rose in the ranks of the company within a time span of 26 years, into her current role as the president and CEO in January 01, 2014. It is…