Top ten influential women

Susan Rice: American Foreign Policy Advisor and United States Ambassador to the United Nations under President Obama. Rice served as a foreign policy aides to presidential candidates, Michael Dukakis, John Kerry and Barack Obama. She served as the assistant secretary of state under former president Bill Clinton.

Michelle Obama: first lady of the United States. Before becoming the first lady, Mrs. Obama worked for one of the largest and oldest law firms in the world. She was also a community organizer, teacher and university administrator.

Cristina Fernandez: is the first elected female president of Argentina. Before becoming president, Fernandez served as the Deputy of Argentina, two terms as senator and later became first lady when her husband became president in 2003.

Sonia Sotomayor: an associate Supreme Court Justice. She attained a seat on the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York in 1991. Sotomayor was nominated to serve on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. In 2009, she was nominated by President Obama to serve on the Supreme Court.

Condoleezza Rice: is a professor, diplomat and author. She is most notable for her position as Secretary of State for the United States during the second George W. Bush administration. She was the first African-American woman to hold the position and the second African-American.

Hillary Clinton: current Secretary of State for United States. She is better known for her first stint in Washington as first lady from 1993-2001. Clinton made history when she became a front-runner for the democratic nomination in the 2008 presidential election.

Carol Bartz: CEO and president of Yahoo!. She was previously the chairman and CEO of Autodesk, the world’s largest producer of design software for the architecture and construction industries. She is also a vocal advocate of getting young girls involved in math and science.

Oprah Winfrey: television host and arguably the most prominent philanthropist in the world. Winfrey is one of the few black billionaires in the world. She is believed to be one the richest women of the 20th century.

Serena Williams: ranked the number one women’s tennis player in the world by the Women’s Tennis Association. Williams has held this ranking five times.

Lady Dhyana Ziegler: professor of journalism at Florida A&M. In June 2009, Ziegler was named a Genius Laureate in the newly released book by the American Biographical Center entitled, 500 Greatest Geniuses of the 21st Century. Before coming to FAMU, Zeigler Ziegler spent 14 years at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville. She joined the FAMU faculty in 1997 as the Garth Reeves Eminent Scholar in the School of Journalism and Graphic Communication.