Gretchen Steidle Wallace's inspiration for her work with women in developing countries first stirred in her as a child when her military family was transferred to the Philippines, where she discovered the difficulties of poverty.

She graduated in 1996 with BA in foreign affairs from the University of Virginia, where she attended as a Jefferson Scholar. From 1996-1999 she worked in international project finance for PMD International, Inc. a boutique investment banking firm specializing in infrastructure development in poor countries.

She returned for her MBA (2001) at the Tuck School at Dartmouth College, where she helped to found Tuck's Allwin Initiative for Corporate Citizenship. After Tuck, she joined Ashoka: Innovators for the Public, an international non-profit organization advancing the profession of social entrepreneurship.

Fatema or Fatima Mernissi (Arabic: ????? ???????) is a Moroccan feminist writer and sociologist.

Mernissi was born into a middle-class family in Fez in 1940. She received her primary education in a school established by the nationalist movement, and secondary level education in an all-girls school funded by the French protectorate.

In 1957, she studied political science at the Sorbonne and at Brandeis University, where she earned her doctorate. She returned to work at the Mohammed V University and taught at the Faculté des Lettres between 1974 and 1981 on subjects such as methodology, family sociology and psychosociology. She has become noted internationally mainly as an Islamic feminist.

As an Islamic feminist, Mernissi is largely concerned with Islam and women's roles in it, analyzing the historical development of Islamic thought and its modern manifestation.

Sabine Kuegler (born December 25, 1972 in Patan, Nepal) is a German author. She has written several books, two of which have been translated into English.

These two books are related to her uncommon childhood: from age 7 to age 17 she lived with her parents and two siblings in the jungle of West Papua, with the remote tribe of the Fayu.

Her parents were the first whites to live with the newly discovered tribe of about 400 people, who still hunted with bow and arrow, ate snakes, insects and worms, and practiced inter-tribal warfare and revenge killings.

The Kueglers were there to study the tribe's language and to evangelize, under assignment of the Wycliffe Bible Translators. Her mother, trained as a nurse, performed midwife duties with the tribe.

Umm Kulthum (circa 1900-February 3, 1975).

Various spellings include Om Koultoum, Om Kalthoum, Oumme Kalsoum, Umm Kolthoum and Ümmü Gülsüm . She was an Egyptian singer, songwriter, and actress. Born in Tamay ez-Zahayra village that belongs to El Senbellawein, she is known as the Star of the East (kawkab el-sharq).

More than three decades after her death, she is still recognized as one of the Arab world's most famous and distinguished singers of the 20th century. Umm Kulthum is widely regarded as the greatest female singer in Arab music history.

Umm Kulthum was born in Tamay ez-Zahayra village in El Senbellawein, Dakahlia Governorate, Egypt, in Dakahlia, in the Nile Delta, near the Mediterranean Sea.

Here she is performing live:

Azar Nafisi (Persian: ??? ?????), born ca. 1947, is an Iranian academic and bestselling writer who has resided in the United States since 1997 when she emigrated from Iran. Her field is English language literature.

Nafisi's 2003 book Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books has been translated into 32 languages. It was on the New York Times Bestseller list for 117 weeks, and has won numerous literary awards, including the 2004 Non-fiction Book of the Year Award from Booksense, and the Europe based Persian Golden Lioness Award for literature.

The book also led to controversy about Nafisi's alleged connections to neoconservatism and colonialism.

She published an autobiography, Things I've been silent about: memories of a prodigal daughter (2008), focusing on the impact on her throughout her life of her relations with her parents (her mother peevish and cold, her father affectionate and companionate) and of decades of political upheaval in Iran, including the father's incarceration under the Shah on trumped-up charges of financial irregularities.