Toni Sender’s wide-ranging quest to save the world led her from the union hall to the German Parliament (as a socialist) and finally to the United Nations. She helped found Germany’s Independent Social Democratic Party (USPD) and served in the German Parliament from 1924 to 1933. After fleeing to the United States in 1933, she joined the board of the German American Council for the Liberation of Germany from Nazism, and after 1944 she became active with the UN, retiring in 1956.

Israel Prize Laureate Professor Alice Shalvi was a leading Israeli feminist activist and scholar. Founder of the Israel Women’s Network and the Ben Gurion University English Department and longtime principal of the iconic religious feminist high school Pelech, Professor Shalvi was instrumental in advancing gender issues in Israeli education, society and politics.

Clara Lemlich Shavelson pushed union leaders to recognize the importance of women in the labor movement and sparked the famous Uprising of the 20,000 garment workers strike in 1909. She continued her activism throughout her life, organizing around women’s suffrage and leading food boycotts and rent strikes.

Vicki Shiran was an Egyptian-born Israeli social activist dedicated to feminism, anti-occupation activism, and fighting discrimination against Mizrahim in Israel, all of which she viewed as interconnected. In 1999 she helped found Ahoti, For Women in Israel, which promoted the labor rights of lower-class women in Israel, and in 1981 she led a fierce fight against the Israel Broadcasting Authority for its exclusion of Mizrahim in its telling of the history of the Israeli state.

Zionist and socialist, radical and revolutionary, Mania Shochat left behind her labor activism in Russia to come to Palestine, where she initiated the country's first collective settlement and helped to establish the Jewish defense group Ha-Shomer.

Rebecca Sieff, the daughter of a wealthy Jewish family from Manchester, England, played an active role in two central social-historical movements: the struggle for women’s rights and the Zionist movement that eventually led to the establishment of the State of Israel.

Beverly Sills was a trailblazing opera singer who, after a robust singing career at the New York City Opera Company (NYCO) and the Metropolitan Opera House, became the first female director of the NYCO, and the first female chair of the Lincoln Center board. Sills defied the odds in her career accomplishments while raising two children with disabilities and being actively involved with several charitable organizations.

Attorney Caroline Klein Simon’s long career included state office and judicial posts. She was a fierce advocate for gender and racial equality and made the first laws against real estate brokers using “blockbusting” tactics to force sales of homes.