Aimee Allison, founder of She the People, a national network that elevates women of color leaders and voters as part of a new progressive political and cultural era.

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Akwaeke Emezi is the first non-binary transgender author to be nominated for The Women’s Prize for Fiction in 2019.

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Janice Bryant Howroyd is the first black woman to run a billion-dollar business as the founder and CEO of Act 1 Group, Inc. in 1978.

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Luvvie Ajayi is the executive director of The Red Pump Project, a non-profit she co-founded in 2009 that empowers and educates women and girls of color about HIV/AIDS to help eliminate the stigma associated with the epidemic.

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Miriam E. Benjamin invented and patented the gong and signal chair for hotels in 1888, a precursor to call button for flight attendants.

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Ava DuVernay became the first black woman to direct a $100 million film, A Wrinkle in Time in 2017.

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Alma Thomas was the first black woman to have a solo exhibition at The Whitney Museum in 1971 when she was in her 80s. She graduated from art school in 1924.

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Ellen Elgin invented a “clothes wringer” for washing machines in 1882 and sold the patent because she thought no one would use it if it were known she was a black woman.

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Noraly Beyer was the first black news anchor in the Netherlands; NOS, the Dutch BBC, from 1985 to 2008.

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Irene Morgan Kiklaldy in July 1944 refused to give up her bus seat to a white person in Virginia. She was arrested, convicted, and appealed. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in her favor. She received a Presidential Citizens medal from President Bill Clinton in 2001.

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