Oprah Gail Winfrey (born January 29, 1954) is an American television host, actress, producer, and philanthropist, best known for her self-titled, multi-award winning talk show, which became the highest-rated program of its kind in history.

She has been ranked the richest African American of the 20th century, the greatest black philanthropist in American history, and was once the world's only black billionaire. 

Karen Bass has traveled the world to explore and capture footage from every environment across the earth.

She says: "My ultimate filming experience - filming Bonobos for Pygmy Chimp – The Last Great Ape, in the depths of the Congo rainforest. When you look into their eyes you know instinctively that they are our closest living relatives. The real privilege was to get to know them and their individual personalities.

As a producer, Julie Burstein builds places to talk (brilliantly) about creative work.

Her book Spark: How Creativity Works, shares what she knows, and  traces the roots of some of the twenty-first century's most influential and creative thinkers, including Joyce Carol Oates, Yo-Yo Ma, David Milch, Isabel Allende, and Joshua Redman. 

Regina E. Dugan is the 19th Director of Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). She was appointed to that position on July 20, 2009. She is the first female director of DARPA.

She directed a portfolio of DARPA programs including the Dog’s Nose program, which focused on the development of an advanced, field-portable system for detecting the explosive content of land mines.

Materials scientist Ainissa Ramirez lives for figuring out new ways to control metals and shape them into materials that can be put to practical use — for instance, in the ever-shrinking smart phones.

Her research on shape memory alloys — so-called “smart materials” — and on a solder that can be manipulated into place with a magnetic field has kept her busy during her time in Yale’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.