An absolutely brilliant scholar and caring educator, Dr. Ora Strickland is a Professor of Nursing in the Department of Family and Community Nursing at Emory University. She is also co-principal investigator for the Emory Site of the Women’s Health Initiative. Blessed with brains and beauty to match, she is a dynamic woman.

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Wangari Muta Maathai, Kenya – Born in Nyeri, Kenya in 1940 Sister Maathai became the first Black African woman in Africa to hold a Ph.D. This trailblazer founded the Green Belt movement in Kenya that was responsible for planting more than 10 million trees to prevent soil erosion and provide firewood for cooking stoves. A brilliant and thoughtful leader, she was known to put her love of the people of Kenya above her personal needs. The mother of three children, her husband divorced her in the 1980s, complaining that she was “too educated, too strong, too successful, too stubborn and too hard to control.” (quote from Encyclopedia of World Biography, 1999, Gale Group.)

Ms. Maathai became the first African women to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Peace in 2004.