Like many other amazing women entertainers of the twentieth-century, Marlene Dietrich was beautiful, charismatic and willful.

She began reinventing herself from the age of about 11, when she created the name Marlene (pronounced mar-lay-na) from parts of her two given names Marie and Magdalene.

Guest blog post by Clara Freeman.

“Don’t let the sun go down on your dreams, unless you choose to be a star.”

An editor sent this in a return envelope, with a rejected contest submission piece I’d entered when I was a newbie freelance writer.

Margaret Heffernan is an entrepreneur, Chief Executive and author. She was born in Texas, raised in Holland and educated at Cambridge University.

She worked in BBC Radio for five years where she wrote, directed, produced and commissioned dozens of documentaries and dramas.

Here are 14 provocative quotes from her TEDGlobal 2012 talk:

Yipppeeee!!! TED is getting closer to achieving gender parity on its world stages: more than 40% of the speakers at TEDGlobal 2012 are/were women.

I watched the conference livestream (sometimes from my TEDxBed) thanks to TEDLive, the next best way of experiencing a TED conference without actually being there. In fact, in some ways, it's better.