Joanne Rowling (born 1965), who goes by the pen name J.K. Rowling, is a British author and screenwriter best known for her seven-book Harry Potter children's book series. She wrote the first installment of the Harry Potter series while her life was at rock bottom. Her mother’s death was a traumatic event for her, and her exceptionally short-lived marriage had just collapsed. She was out of work, a single mother battling severe clinical depression — contemplating suicide at one point — and trying to raise a child on state welfare benefits. She was, in her own words, “as poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain, without being homeless,” feeling like an epic failure at every level, and living hand to mouth without a hint of a light at the end of the tunnel.
For Rowling, diving into her world of writing was the only way to divert her focus from the barrage of misfortunes that threatened to crush her spirit. On some level, she knew that channeling her drive into the one thing that kept her going – that kept her dreaming – might also have been the thing that literally kept her alive.
It took Rowling five long and trying years of writing and a parade of rejections from a dozen different publishers, but the aspiring author persevered — and ultimately triumphed. Published by Bloomsbury in June 1997, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone exploded almost instantly into a global sensation. Seven sequels later, the Harry Potter series has broken record after record, selling 450 million copies in 78 languages worldwide, spawning eight blockbuster film adaptations, and inspiring a generation of young readers from around the world.
Rowling went from being on welfare to being a multi-millionaire in five years — and perhaps most inspiring of all has been what she’s done with her newfound wealth. Rowling never forgot where she came from, and has donated hundreds of millions of dollars to charities as a result, actively supporting over a dozen organizations, and establishing her own children’s foundation, Lumos, in 2005.

Shirley Chisholm (1924-2005) became the first African-American congresswoman in 1968. Four years later, she became the first major-party black candidate to make a bid for the U.S. presidency. She was originally a schoolteacher.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg (b. 1933) is a U.S. Supreme Court justice, the second woman to be appointed to the position. 
Ruth Ginsburg was born in Brooklyn, New York. Her older sister died when she was a baby, and her mother, one of her biggest sources of encouragement, died shortly before Ginsburg graduated from high school. She then earned her bachelor's degree at Cornell University, and became a wife and mother before starting law school at Harvard, where she was one of the nine women in a class of 500—and also full time caregiver to her small daughter and cancer-patient husband, Marty (“The only young man I dated that cared that I had a brain.”) The women were chided by the law school's dean for taking the places of qualified males. But Ginsburg pressed on and excelled academically, eventually becoming the first female member of the prestigious Harvard Law Review. Following her husband to New York, she transferred to Columbia Law School, where she graduated tied for first in her class and then became a professor at Rutgers Law School and Columbia Law School, teaching civil procedure as one of the few women in her field. Ginsburg spent a considerable part of her legal career as an advocate for the advancement of gender equality and women's rights, winning multiple victories arguing before the Supreme Court. After advocating as a volunteer lawyer for the ACLU in the 1970s. She was appointed as a Judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, where she served until her appointment to the Supreme Court in 1993....where she serves to this day.

Sarah Moore Grimké (1792–1873) and Angelina Emily Grimké (1805–1879), known as the Grimké sisters, were writers, orators, and educators—the first American female advocates of abolition and women's rights. Breaking from the southern slaveholding family they were born into, they chose to become Quakers, where, as women, they were allowed to speak out against slavery and for equal rights.

Edith Piaf (1915 – 1963) was a French singer, songwriter, cabaret performer and film actress noted as France's national chanteuse and one of the country's widely known international stars.

Dr. Virginia Apgar (1909 – 1974) was an American obstetrical anesthesiologist, best known as the inventor of the Apgar score, a way to quickly assess the health of a newborn child immediately after birth. Her method of rating babies helped lower infant mortality rates and still saves lives today. 

Nanyehi or Nancy Ward (1738–1822) was a Beloved Woman of the Cherokee, which means that she was allowed to sit in councils and to make decisions, along with the chiefs and other Beloved Women. She believed in peaceful coexistence with the European Americans and helped her people as peace negotiator and ambassador. She also introduced them to farming and dairy production bringing substantial changes to the Cherokee society.

Dolores del Río (1904— 1983) was a Mexican actress, who became the first Latin American Hollywood star. Her starred in silent films as well as sound films, in which she worked hard to perfect her English.  As her Hollywood fame began to decline, she moved back to Mexico where she became an important fixture of the Golden Age of Mexican cinema, which was now in full force. Throughout her long career, which also included radio, television, and theatre, she was admired internationally as a cinematic icon, the face of an Hispanic femme fetal. 

Sadie McCallum (born 2006) is an inventor and advocate. She has Cerebral Palsy and has been inventing methods to help overcome mobility challenges. I have been following Sadie's story for awhile now. She's got a great brain and a wonderful heart to make life easier for herself and others. She's a groundbreaking girl for sure, one to watch! (Also, Claire, her younger sister, is her best friend and faithful assistant...she's very special too.)

Sister Rosetta Tharpe (1915-1973) was an American singer, songwriter, guitarist, and recording artist. She was the first great recording star of gospel music and among the first gospel musicians to appeal to rhythm-and-blues and rock-and-roll audiences, later being referred to as "the original soul sister" and "the Godmother of rock and roll".
She was among the first popular recording artists to use heavy distortion on her electric guitar, heralding the rise of electric blues. 🎸

Through the 1940s, she was the hottest act on stage with a guitar. She became a model for Little Richard, Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins, and Jerry Lee Lewis. Johnny Cash called her his favorite singer and biggest inspiration and Chuck Berry said his career was “one long Sister Rosetta Tharpe impersonation.” Her guitar technique also had a profound influence on the development of British blues in the 1960s (in particular, Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, and Keith Richards.) 🎸 

She is one of the most influential artists of the 20th century—the founding mother who gave rock’s founding fathers the idea. 🎸

Anna May Wong (January 3, 1905 – February 3, 1961) was an American actress. She is considered to be the first Chinese American movie star and also the first Asian American actress to gain international recognition. Her long and varied career spanned silent film, sound film, television, stage and radio.

Sylvia Plath (1932-1963) American poet, novelist and short story writer

Janet Collins (1917-2003) was the first black prima ballerina to perform with the Metropolitan Opera Ballet in New York City.

Ruth Asawa (1926-2013) American artist known for her abstract wire sculptures, many of which were displayed suspended as mobiles. She later turned to large public projects and community activism.she first leaned about art making in the Japanese interment camps in California where her family was placed during WWII.

Yayoi Kusama (b. 1929) is a Japanese conceptual artist who has suffered with a hallucinatory mental illness since she was six years old. This never stopped her from creating...in fact, it helped her. Now, nearly she still makes her polka-dotted sculptures and installations in her studio near the psychiatric hospital in Japan, where she has been in residence for forty years. She is currently considered one of the world’s biggest art stars.

Josephine Baker Singer, Dancer, Civil Rights Activist, French Resistance spy (1906-1975)

Carol Burnett Carol Burnett (b. 1933) first female host of a TV variety show (which continued for 11 years)

Gertrude Stein (1874-1946) was an American novelist , poet, critic, playwright, and art collector who became an important patron to many great modern artists in Paris in the 1920s (including Picasso and Matisse.) The literary salon she hosted in her home included other expat writers in Paris such as Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald, coining the phrase “the Lost Generation,” which they would come to be known.

Althea Gibson (1927 – 2003) was an American tennis player and professional golfer. She became the first black athlete to break through the color line of international tennis.  In 1956, she became the first person of color to win a Gram Slam title. The following year, she won both Wimbledon and the US Nationals, and won both again the following year.  In all, she won 11 Grand Slam tournaments, including six doubles titles, In the early 1960s she also became the first black player to compete on the women’s professional golf tour.

At a time when racism and prejudice were widespread in sports and in society, Gibson was often compared to Jackie Robinson. It was enormously difficult to play in professional sports if you were black, let alone a woman, but she she made history by competing not only in tennis but in the golf circuit as well.”I am honored to have followed in such great footsteps,” wrote Venus Williams. “Her accomplishments set the stage for my success, and through players like myself and Serena and many others to come, her legacy will live on.”

Björk Guðmundsdóttir (born 1965) is an Icelandic singer, songwriter, actress, record producer, and performance artist with a four-decade-long career. She released her first album at age 11.

Billie Jean King (born 1943) is an American tennis player who broke don gender barriers in sport in her push (and win!) for equal prize money.

Dolores Huerta (1930-) is an activist and labor leader who co-founded what would become the United Farm Workers. A living Civil Rights hero. 

—Nadia Comăneci (born 1961) is a Romanian gymnast who, at 14 years old, became the first woman to score a perfect 10 in an Olympic gymnastics event. She is credited with popularizing the sport around the globe...and was a HUGE inspiration to young girls in the 1970 and 80s.

Kara Walker (born 1969) is an African-American contemporary painter, silhouettist, print-maker, installation artist, and film-maker. She is best known for her room-size tableaux of black cut-paper silhouettes, mostly focusing on the Antebellum-era slave experience. 

Ursula K. Le Guin (1929-2018) was American novelist and poet, renowned for her work in science fiction and fantasy.

Elizabeth Jean Peratrovich (1911 – 1958), Tlingit nation, was an important civil rights activist; she worked on behalf of equality for Alaska Natives. In the 1940s, she was credited with advocacy that gained the passage of the territory's Anti-Discrimination Act of 1945, the first anti-discrimination law in the United States.

Mary Anning (1799 – 1847) was a fossil collector and paleontologist from Lyme Regis, Dorset in Southwest England, who became known around the world for important finds she made in marine fossil beds in the cliffs along the Jurassic Coastline. While searching for the plentiful ammonite fossils which she sold as novelty items to tourists, she began to discover larger prehistoric fossils, excavating the first Ichthyosaurus skeleton and discovering the first intact Plesiosaurus skeleton. Her findings contributed to important changes in scientific thinking about prehistoric life and the history of the Earth. She was also the true-life figure behind the nursery rhyme