Women In Public Service (audio)

Edna Buchanan was heralded as the best police-beat reporter in the United States and one of the nation’s first female crime journalists, when she wrote for the Miami newspapers. She won a Pulitzer Prize in 1986 for general reporting. A high school graduate who worked wiring switchboards at a New Jersey Western Electric factory when she decided to take a creative writing course at night. She visited Miami on vacation, fell in love with the city, and immediately moved there. Buchanan soon landed a $45-a-week job as a society reporter at the Miami Beach Sun, and won local awards for her writing. She became a reporter for The Herald covering the crime scene in Miami where her tireless fact gathering has chronicled thousands of violent deaths over the three decades, creating compelling tales of killers, drug dealers, heroic police officers, and brave citizens. This legendary reporter earned the Pulitzer Prize in 1986 for her vivid descriptions of one of the most frightening and fascinating cities on the Amer

Dr. Alice Rivlin, an economist and former cabinet officer, is a nationally recognized expert on fiscal and monetary policy. She earned her doctorate at Harvard, and later served as Assistant Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare during the administration of President Lyndon Johnson. She was the founding director of the Congressional Budget Office, heading the body from 1975 to 1983. On leaving the CBO, she was the recipient of a MacArthur Foundation Prize Fellowship, the so-called "genius grant." Rivlin later served in the cabinet of President Clinton as Director of the Office of Management and Budget. In 1998, when the city of Washington, D.C. was $700 million in debt, Congress took over its finances and President Clinton appointed Rivlin to oversee a rescue effort. She skillfully chaired the Financial Responsibility and Management Assistance Authority, saving the city from bankruptcy. In the 1990s, she also served as Vice Chair of the Federal Reserve. More recently, she was a member of President Obama

Sandra Day O'Connor was the first woman ever to be appointed to the United States Supreme Court. Yet when she first graduated with honors from Stanford University Law School, third in her class, the only job she was offered by a law firm was to work as a legal secretary. She found work as a deputy county attorney in California, before moving to Arizona, where she opened her own law firm. She was elected to the Arizona legislature and became majority leader of the Arizona Senate. She served as Attorney General of the State of Arizona and was elected Superior Court Judge in Phoenix. In 1981, President Reagan appointed her to the U.S. Supreme Court. In 2006, she retired from the Court after 25 years of distinguished service.

Today, Diane Sawyer is known to millions as the host of the daily evening newscast ABC World News, but she long been familiar to American television audiences through her decade as the host of the same network's Good Morning America program, and for her previous career at CBS News. Sawyer grew up in Louisville, Kentucky and attended Wellesley College, assisted by a scholarship she had won as America's Junior Miss. After graduation, she returned to Louisville, where she began her broadcasting career with the local ABC affiliate. She was hired as a White House aide to President Richard Nixon. She remained at the White House during the administration of Gerald Ford, and later assisted former President Nixon with the writing of his memoirs, as well as the preparation for his historic series of television interviews with British broadcaster David Frost. She joined CBS News as a political correspondent in 1978 and was soon named co-anchor of the CBS Morning News. Sawyer left CBS for ABC News in 1

Arlene Violet is the former Attorney General of the State of Rhode Island, who was an energetic, outspoken, no nonsense "protector of citizen's rights." A former nun in the Sisters of Mercy religious order for 23 years, she entered the convent at age 18, and taught at an inner-city parochial school. Violet moved into a low-income high-crime housing project, where she "earned her degree in street smarts." Her "vow to serve those in need" and her frustration with the legal system, led her to enroll at Boston College Law School. She completed her studies and, while still a nun, practiced as a public interest trial attorney. In 1984, Violet successfully ran for political office, stating that she was "determined to crack down on organized crime in Providence and hard-core juvenile criminals." She soon earned more than 50 public service awards and a "60 Minutes" television salute as the first woman in American history elected to the post of State Attorney General. Violet currently is a practicing attorney and, fro

When Amalya Lyle Kearse was appointed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, she was the first woman and only the second African American (after Thurgood Marshall) to serve on the court. Kearse was born in Vauxhall, New Jersey, where her father was a postmaster and her mother a pediatrician. A gifted student, she graduated from Wellesley College in 1959 with a degree in philosophy. She was the only black woman in her class at the University of Michigan Law School, where she was an editor of the law review. She graduated cum laude in 1962. When Kearse joined the firm of Hughes Hubbard & Reed, female attorneys were a rarity on Wall Street, and female attorneys of color were unknown, but she rose to become a partner in the firm, and her reputation reached the White House. President Jimmy Carter appointed Kearse to the Court of Appeals in 1979. She is now a senior member of the Court. Judge Kearse addressed the Academy of Achievement at its 1984 gathering in Minneapolis, Minnesota. In this

Rosalynn Carter won the lasting affection of the American public as First Lady of the United States from 1977 to 1981. Born Eleanor Rosalynn Smith, she grew up in Plains, Georgia, where the Smith and Carter families were friends as well as neighbors. She began dating Jimmy Carter, the future President, after her freshman year at Georgia Southwestern College in Americus. They were married after his graduation from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1946. Rosalynn and their children moved from post to post throughout his career in the United States Navy; when Jimmy Carter's father died in 1953, they returned to Plains to manage the family business together. Rosalynn Carter participated in her husband's campaigns for the Georgia State Senate and for Governor of Georgia. When Jimmy Carter ran for President of the United States in 1976, Rosalynn traveled independently throughout the United States on her husband's behalf. As First Lady, she took a strong interest in mental health issues. As vice chair of the Carter Center i

Mother Antonia, or Madre Antonia as she is known in Spanish, is an American-born Roman Catholic nun and activist, who resides in a Mexican maximum security prison. Born as Mary Clarke in 1926, she has lived for the past three decades in a 10’ x 10’ concrete cell at La Mesa penitentiary in Tijuana, Mexico, one of Mexico’s most notorious prisons, caring for the inmates. In the 1970s, she chose to devote her life to the Church after she had a nightmare, in 1969, that she was a prisoner at Calvary and about to be executed when Jesus appeared to her and offered to take her place. She refused his offer, touched him on the cheek and told him she would never leave him, no matter what happens to her. She had been married twice and had seven children, living in affluent Beverly Hills, but both her marriages ended in divorce. As an older, divorced woman, Clarke was banned by church rules from joining any religious order, so she went about her work on her own. She sold her home and all her possessions, and founded an ord

Rear Admiral Grace Murray Hopper (December 9, 1906 – January 1, 1992) was a pioneer in computer science, one of the first programmers of the Harvard Mark I computer, and developed the first compiler for a computer programming language. Hopper conceptualized the idea of machine-independent programming languages, which led to the development of COBOL, one of the first modern programming languages. She is credited with popularizing the term “debugging” for fixing computer glitches (motivated by an actual moth removed from the computer). Because of her accomplishments and her naval rank, she was affectionately dubbed “Amazing Grace.” Born Grace Brewster Murray, she graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Vassar in 1928 with a degree in mathematics and physics and earned her master’s degree at Yale in 1930. She earned a Ph.D. in mathematics from Yale in 1934. She was married to NYU professor Vincent Hopper from 1930 until their divorce in 1945; she never remarried. In 1943, Hopper volunteered to serve in the WAVES and was s

Susie Marshall Sharp (July 7, 1907 – March 1, 1996) was a pioneer in the legal profession, and a distinguished jurist who became the first woman in the United States to be elected chief justice of a state supreme court. In 1926, she entered law school at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill as the only woman in her class. In 1929, Sharp went into private practice with her father, James, in the firm of Sharp & Sharp. For the first 17 years of her law practice, women in North Carolina were not even allowed to serve on juries. She became the state's first woman city attorney. In 1949, Governor Scott appointed Sharp a state Superior Court judge, making her the first female judge in the history of the state. In 1962, Governor Sanford made Sharp the first female Associate Justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court. In 1974, voters gave her 74 percent of the vote to elect her Chief Justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court, the only woman in American history ever to be elected by the people of her stat