Maha’s career started when she noticed that people were thinking badly about Muslims and the religion of Islam. In fact, 66% of Americans admit to thinking badly about Muslims. Also, more than 80% of Americans think that Islam is sexist to women. She also noticed that many of these unkind thoughts were from lack of education. This led to her career in educating people about Islam.
Like many other Americans, growing up, Maha also thought that Islam was sexist. However, when she read the Qur’an (A Muslim religious book) she had a different view on the religion. She found that Islam was very inclusive to other religions. The best way to change someone’s views on something is to educate them.
Julia Morgan
Julia Morgan was an American architect and engineer. Julia Hunt Morgan was born on January 26th, 1872 to Charles Bill Morgan and Eliza Morgan In San Francisco. She died on February 2nd, 1957. She was one of five kids and grew up in Oakland. Eventually, she would become an awe-inspiring and under appreciated female architect and the first woman to receive an architect’s license in the state of California.
Starting in high school, Morgan expressed a big interest in architecture. She became the first woman to attend an architectural school in Paris and was also the first woman to graduate from there. When she moved back to California, she received her official architect’s license.
Morgan was most famous for her project on Sam Simeon, San Francisco for the Hearst family in 1919. The project included designing and building a pan-European styled castle, which was later to be known as the Hearst Castle. It was made of fragments of architecture from Italy and Spain. This project lasted for 25 years. Morgan’s architectural team also designed many houses, churches, cottages, schools, and many other types of buildings. Her biggest goal was always to satisfy her clients and “design buildings from the inside out.” She did so in styles anywhere from Byzantine, Italianate, Craftsman, Gothic, Romanesque, etc.
Mary C. Daly
Marcy C. Daly is an American economist. On October 1, 2018, she became the 13th President and Chief Executive Officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco (San Francisco Fed). She also works on the Federal Reserve's Federal Open Market Committee on a rotating basis. Daly started working for the San Francisco Fed in 1996. She was its Executive Vice President and Director of Research. She later became its President and CEO.
Daly was born in Ballwin, Missouri. Her father was a postal worker and her mother was a homemaker. She was a good student, but she had money problems and quit school at 15. By age 16 she was living alone, working to earn full-time pay.
Daly went on to earn a high school equivalency diploma (GED). She received a bachelor's degree from the University of Missouri-Kansas City in 1985 and a master's degree from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in 1987. She went on to earn a Ph.D in economics from the Maxwell School at Syracuse University in 1994. She also completed a post-doctoral fellowship at National Institute of Aging at Northwestern University in 1996.
Her research is in macroeconomics and labor economics. She has published work on many economic topics. Daly has also worked to increase diversity and inclusion within the Federal Reserve System and in the field of economics.
Elaine Forbes
Elaine Forbes is the Director of the Port of San Francisco. In October 2016, the mayor of San Francisco appointed her to that job. In the whole United States there are only twelve female Port Directors.
Born in San Francisco, Forbes is the great grandchild of a Port worked. Her parents met in high school but divorced when she was three. Forbes lived with her mother. She admired her mother very much because she was a hard worker. She went to public school. Forbes liked singing. She was a member of the San Francisco Girls Chorus.
Because it was the 1970s, Forbes experienced hippie culture. She participated in the Civil Rights Movement and lived in a commune in the Haight Ashbury neighborhood of the city. Because she lived in a commune, she looked forward to having her own apartment when she grew up. Her mother died when Forbes was 19.
Now Forbes lives in San Francisco’s Castro neighborhood with her partner, Angela Calvillo, and their dogs.
Forbes went to Skyline Community College and Mills College. She went to graduate school at University of California, Los Angeles to study Community and Economic Development.
Forbes had many jobs in non-profit land use and development. She was a planner for the city of Oakland, CA, USA. She then was an executive manager for the City of San Francisco’s planning department and the San Francisco International Airport. She was a policy advisor for the city of San Francisco’s budget office. In 2010 she started working at the Port of San Francisco as the Deputy Director for Finance and Administration.
Jennifer Doudna
Jennifer Anne Doudna (born February 19, 1964) is an American biochemist. Her work on CRISPR gene editing won her the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Emmanuelle Charpentier.
Doudna earned her PHD at Harvard University on 1994. She worked at Yale University with a group of scientists studying RNA.
Doudna is known for co-inventing the CRISPR-Cas9 which genetically modifies DNA. She has won medals such as the Kavi Prize, The Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences, The Gruber Genetics Prize, and the Warren Alpert Foundation Prize.
Doudna currently works as a professor at the University of California, Berkeley. Doudna teaches chemistry and molecular cell biology. She is also an investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
Tiffany Shlain
Tiffany Shlain, filmmaker and business leader, was born on April 8th, 1970.
Tiffany Shlain is most well known for making the Webby Awards, the “leading international honors for websites”. The Webby Awards take place every year and give awards to the best websites.
Shlain is on the Leadership Board for the Center on Media and Child Health at Harvard’s Children’s Hospital in Boston. Besides being a business leader, Shlain’s films have won many awards, such as “The Future Starts Here”, which has been chosen for an Emmy award. Her signature style of filmmaking includes lots of vibrant action shots and animations. She engages her audience with bright and vivid images, thought-provoking keynotes, and humorous observations.
Tiffany has received rewards for her films from many organizations, including Steven Spielberg’s Righteous Person’s Foundation. Shlain also gives convincing speeches that encourage people to think about where we are in the world in terms of connection and technology. There were over 11,000 broadcasts in the world of 50/50 thinking the Past, Present, and Future of Women + Power, which were all brought together to an online discussion in which Shlain talked about supporting gender equality. She also has been the closing speaker for TED Women and TED MED. The Webby Awards will continue even after Shlain’s death.
Ruth Asawa
Ruth Asawa (January 27, 1926 – August 5, 2013) was an American sculptor.