Christa McAuliffe (September 2, 1948 – January 28, 1986) was an American teacher from Concord, New Hampshire, and one of seven crew members killed in the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster.
She received her bachelor's degree in education and history from Framingham State College in 1970, and a Master of Arts from Bowie State University in 1978. She took a teaching post as a social studies teacher at Concord High School in New Hampshire in 1982.
Susan Solomon (born 1956 in Chicago) is an atmospheric chemist working for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Solomon was one of the first to propose chlorofluorocarbons as the cause of the Antarctic ozone hole.
Solomon is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the European Academy of Sciences, and the Academy of Sciences of France.
Solomon began her interest in science as a child watching The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau. In high school she placed third in a national science fair, with a project that measured the percent of oxygen in a gas mixture.
Wendy Sue Kopp (born June 29, 1967) is the founder and president of Teach For America (TFA), the national teaching corps.
Kopp attended high school at Highland Park High School in Dallas, Texas and later was an undergraduate in the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University. She received her Bachelor of Arts degree from Princeton in 1989 and was a member of Princeton's Business Today.
Shortly after graduation from Princeton, Kopp founded Teach For America.
Helen Adams Keller (June 27, 1880–June 1, 1968) was an American author, political activist, and lecturer. She was the first deafblind person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree. The story of how Keller's teacher, Anne Sullivan, broke through the isolation imposed by a near complete lack of language, allowing the girl to blossom as she learned to communicate, has become known worldwide through the dramatic depictions of the play and film The Miracle Worker.
A prolific author, Keller was well traveled, and was outspoken in her opposition to war. A member of the Socialist Party USA and the Wobblies, she campaigned for women's suffrage, workers' rights, and socialism, as well as many other leftist causes.
Joan Ganz Cooney (born November 30, 1929) is an American television producer. She is one of the founders of the Children's Television Workshop (now known as Sesame Workshop), and the organization famous for the creation of the children's television show Sesame Street. Cooney received her B.A. degree in education from the University of Arizona in 1951.
Cooney was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in 1998, and the Television Hall of Fame.
She has been married to Peter G. Peterson, former U.S. Secretary of Commerce, since April 1980. Unable to have children of her own, she became a stepmother to Peterson's five children. She lives in New York City.