2007 winners
Clara Bingham and Laura Leedy Gansler

Laura Leedy Gansler, Esq. is an attorney specializing in alternative dispute resolution and securities law. She is a former adjunct law professor at American University. After graduating from Harvard University, Gansler received a J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law. Ms. Gansler co-authored, with Clara Bingham, Class Action – The Story of Lois Jenson and the Landmark Case that Changed Sexual Harassment Law, which chronicles the first class-action sexual harassment lawsuit, Jenson v. Eveleth Mines.

Clara Bingham, a former White House correspondent for Newsweek, wrote Women on the Hill: Challenging the Culture of Congress. She has written for Talk, Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, and The Washington Monthly. She is a graduate of Harvard University. Ms. Bingham together with Ms. Gansler co-authored of the book Class Action – The Story of Lois Jenson and the Landmark Case that Changed Sexual Harassment Law.

2005 winner
Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC)

Named by President Jimmy Carter as the first woman to chair the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton came to Congress as a national figure who had been a civil rights and feminist leader, tenured professor of law, and board member of three Fortune 500 companies. Congresswoman Norton has used her background in national affairs and in law to become a leader in the House in important posts. She has served in the Democratic House leadership group and as the Democratic chair of the Women's Caucus. Her success in writing bills and getting them enacted has made her one of the most effective legislative leaders in the House. Congresswoman Norton, who taught full time before being elected, continues as a tenured professor of law at Georgetown University, teaching a course there every year. Congresswoman Norton has served on the board of the Rockefeller Foundation and the Board of Governors of the D.C. Bar Association, as well as the boards of civil rights, and other national organizations.

2003 winner
Bari Ellen Roberts

Bari Ellen-Roberts was the lead plaintiff in Roberts v. Texaco, the largest corporate discrimination suit in history. As a result of her lawsuit, in 1996 Texaco agreed to pay $176 million, including $115 million to approximately 1,400 class members, $26.1 million in raises to minority workers during the next five years, and $35 million to fund a task force to implement changes in the company’s human resource programs. She later wrote about the case in Roberts v. Texaco: A True Story of Race and Corporate America. Roberts is now president of Bari-Ellen Roberts, Inc., a management consulting firm that focuses on workplace diversity, sexual harassment, and violence.

2001 winner
Sarah Weddington

Sarah Weddington - attorney, author, and activist - has been a champion for the issues facing women and girls for more than three decades. Weddington is renowned for her role in arguing the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court case Roe v. Wade, which secured reproductive rights for women. One of the youngest attorneys ever to win a case before the nation's highest court, she changed the lives of millions of women and the face of U.S. politics. Since that time, Weddington served as assistant to President Jimmy Carter on women's issues and leadership outreach, the first female general counsel of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and a Texas state legislator. Today she writes and travels extensively, speaks on the development of leadership skills, and teaches classes at the University of Texas at Austin. In her course "Leadership in America," she reaches young people with the message that leadership begins in their neighborhoods.

1999 winner
Jane Fonda

Noted actress and activist Jane Fonda has been described as being "on the front lines for justice on behalf of everyone," including women and girls. She is the founder and chair of the Georgia Campaign for Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention, aimed at reducing teen pregnancy in Georgia - which ranks among the top 10 states in the country - and developing replicable models for community-based and statewide campaigns on teen pregnancy prevention. She also brings her compassion and energy to other organizations, including the Performing Arts Program for Youth, which she created after moving to Atlanta in the early 1990's.

1997 winner
Lani Guinier

Lani Guinier’s 1993 nomination as assistant attorney general for civil rights in the U.S. Department of Justice was withdrawn in a climate of intense controversy. Now she applies her voice and scholarship regularly to exposing sex discrimination in law schools and the country’s state of race relations. For example, in her 1997 book, Becoming Gentlemen: Women, Law School, and Institutional Change, Guinier chronicles the experiences of women attending University of Pennsylvania Law School. Guinier argues that the existing legal education program in our country serves neither the needs of current students nor the legal profession. In her work as a law professor, civil rights activist, and highly sought-after speaker, Guinier is regarded as a role model for aspiring law students, particularly young women of color. She insists that role modeling is a relationship and that role models are needed at every level of development. In 1998, Lani Guinier became the first African-American woman tenured professor in Harvard Law School’s history. She had previously been a professor of law at the University of Pennsylvania.

 

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