Loretta Lynch
U.S. attorney general
U.S. attorney general
As Dawn M. Blackman Sr. tells the story, “I was a city girl … I did not know a thing about gardening. Then, in 2003, I started gardening with 10 neighborhood children.” That project, started in her 50s, grew into Randolph Street Community Garden.
Harriett Jenkins did her part to diversify NASA as the assistant administrator for equal opportunity programs from 1974 to 1992.
Kimberly Bryant founded Black Girls Code in 2011 to create pathways that she didn’t have in the 1970s, and that she didn’t see for her own daughter decades later.
Tap dancer Dormeshia had a well-established career as a dancer from a young age, making her Broadway debut in the musical revue Black and Blue when she was just 13.
Estella Mims Pyfrom was 72 when, in 2009, she founded Estella’s Brilliant Bus with $900,000 of her retirement savings. The mobile learning lab was equipped with more than a dozen computers and travels to underserved and under-resourced Florida communities, providing residents with access to technology and education.
Blues and jazz singer Etta James experienced early success, but is also known for a major comeback later in her life.
“When I won the Booker Prize in 2019 for my novel Girl, Woman, Other, I became an ‘overnight success’ – after forty years working professionally in the arts.”
She collaborated with her husband, an electronics technician, to design and create the first closed-circuit television security system, changing home security for generations to come.
American first lady, lawyer, bestselling author and producer