Betty Komarek
A trained educator, botanist, and manager of prescribed burns and co-founder of Birdsong Nature Center, a model of biodiversity and environmental stewardship in the red hills of southwest Georgia.
Category Archives: Activism
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Adriana Patricia Quintero Úsuga
Colombian human rights activist
Karen Milward
One of Victoria, Australia’s leading Aboriginal consultants, she chairs Aboriginal organisations at state and national levels and is the director of a mainstream water corporation.
Karen has led the way in business and supports women to find their leadership prowess and harness their inner strength with combined empowerment through culture and sisterhood. Karen demonstrates impartiality and kindness in all that she does. She has shown incredible tenacity while operating under sometimes difficult conditions to deliver cultural awareness and immersive experiences for the non-Aboriginal sector.
Karen has recently co-developed and delivered an intensive, one-of-a-kind First Nations women’s leadership program called ECHO – Empowering Connections, Healing Ourselves that went through rigorous co-design with Victorian First Nations women of all ages and from all walks of life. She has diversified her reach into the Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal space and as the chair of Kinaway, took a team to Milan in early 2022 to promote First Nations fashion at the Milan fashion show. Karen believes in supporting her community and educating the broader community to understand First Nations issues.
In the 2025 King’s Birthday Honours, Karen was appointed as a Member of the Order of Australia, ‘for significant service to Indigenous advocacy, and to reconciliation’.
Eleanor Perry
Eleanor Perry went from writing whodunits with her first husband in Cleveland to writing screenplays for her second husband in New York and Hollywood.
Lillian Mary Westropp
Cleveland Municipal Court judge and cofounder of Women’s Federal Savings Bank
Clara E Westropp
Cofounder of Women’s Federal Savings Bank in Cleveland
Constance Mather Price
Cleveland socialite active in civic affairs, sports, and theater throughout her life.
Gertrude van Rensselaer Wickham
American journalist and local historian
Marion E Murdock
Marion E. Murdock served with Florence Buck as co-pastor of Unity Chapel (Unitarian Society of Cleveland) from 1893 to 1899.
Claire A Walters
Claire A Walters was, for 41 years, a teacher and psychologist in the Cleveland public school system whose life work was the rehabilitation of underprivileged children.
Born in Cleveland to Phillip and Mary (Whelan) Walters, Claire graduated from Central High School in 1893 and Cleveland Normal School in 1897. She began her career by teaching at Fowler, Barkwill, Brownell and Eagle public schools. Continuing her own education, Walters graduated from the Vineland (NJ) Training School in 1912.
In 1922 Walters was appointed psychologist in the bureau of attendance for the Cleveland School Board and was responsible for examining difficult children. Never married, Walters devoted herself to her students and was often successful in helping them overcome such hardships as broken homes and poverty. For 25 years she taught at the Boys School, originally located at Clinton and W. 29th St., and was renowned for her ability to handle truants and anti-social boys.
Walters was also a psychologist and child study and placement worker for the Cuyahoga County Juvenile Court from its founding in 1902. In 1912 she began work in Juvenile Delinquency child study. She served on the board of education for 30 years, doing special work with problem children.
Walters helped organize the first detention home and school which opened in Cleveland in 1908. She also helped establish a playground at Forest and Woodland Avenues.
Walters lived in Cleveland. Services were held at the Wade Memorial Chapel in LAKE VIEW CEMETERY.