Name: Anna Schuleit

Age: 32

Job: Painter and installation artist

Location: Brooklyn, New York

Famous words: "The last thing I want to do is make mental patients feel violated for having suffered from an uncontrollable illness."

German-born artist Anna Schuleit went from anonymous to Einstein virtually overnight, thanks to a call from the MacArthur Foundation announcing that she'd won a 2006 "Genius" grant for $500,000. Schuleit, one of the youngest recipients of the prize, focuses on turning unexpected places-from hospitals to small islands-into oversize "canvases" for her work. While constructing Habeas Corpus, she wired an abandoned mental hospital to play the music of Bach and asked former patients to tell their stories; for Bloom, she carpeted the Massachusetts Mental Health Center with an arrangement of 28,000 flowers. Currently a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute at Harvard University, Schuleit uses her art to celebrate those who are often overlooked.

Q: Your artistic style is pretty unique- what do you call it?

A: There's a field called oral history, where people tell the stories of their lives in their own words. What I'd like to be is a collector of visual history, where people draw what they remember of their life experiences.

Q: Habeas Corpus was a 28-minute musical installation at a former mental hospital. How did it work?

A: The idea was to make the building "sing," to turn an abandoned structure into an instrument by filling the hollows and voids inside the building with voices, as you would use the hollows inside a guitar or violin. I chose a recording of Bach's Magnificat, played through strategically located speakers, making it seem as though the music poured through windows and doors.

Q: Why the interest in mental illness?

A: There's this quote, "The degree of civilization of a nation can be measured by the way it treats its weakest citizens." I've always been drawn to telling the stories of those citizens.

Q: $500,000 is a lot of cash! Has it changed your approach as an artist?

A: As a visual artist, there are many ways to stay afloat. You can take another job, which I have a million times, or you can try to make your work the money-earning source. If I'd signed on with a gallery, it would have been easier, but I also would never have been able to go "underwater" for long stretches of time, when I needed to work without any outside input. I was more or less penniless-making $10,000 or $11,000 a year, which is about poverty level in New York state.

Q: Tell us about your next project, in Boston Harbor.

A: It takes place on an island that's uninhabited, but like an old piece of leather, it's marked by layers of previous human use. The installation uses glass and reflective surfaces to tell the story of the island's former residents- about the absence of these people and what marks they made on the land that are still visible today.

To learn more about Schuleit's work, log on to anna-schuleit.com. For information on how to apply for a grant through the MacArthur Foundation, log on to www.macfound.org.

Piously, I was saving myself until marriage. I was always into books instead of boys. I carried no less than a 3.5 GPA. Though I was too tall for most of the guys still dealing with their own issues of pseudo-masculinity, I was waiting until I found the person who would love me and all my quirks forever before sharing myself intimately. It just didn't happen that way. Instead, a mentor at my school exploited my innocence and preyed on a broken young girl who—at some point—lost her way.

The circumstances which moved me from my mom's house to my dad and stepmom's apartment during my senior year left me bitter, angry, and hopeless. My mom had remarried and moved away while I was away at a summer college program at Syracuse University. I was no longer welcome in the home I had grown up in. My life, as I knew it, had ended. I would be living with my dad—whom I had only been visiting on weekends since junior high school.

Having lived away from my father since he and my mother divorced twelve years earlier, I was completely unaccustomed to him and he to me. As we struggled to reconnect with one another, I fell further into feelings of isolation and depression. Sometimes he'd lock me out of the apartment for coming home from school too late. Other times he'd simply come and go without speaking to me at all. When I was there, I spent time in my room, alone. I kept my grades up, but I just wanted to go back home to my mom. We struggled. I was afraid of him. Our disagreements turned into verbal abuse and physical violence.

I began spending hours away from my home trying to escape my life. At 17, I was college bound but still had a certain emptiness since I felt my parents had all but abandoned me.

On Saturdays, I would ride around with my best friend—who was two years younger than me and had no license. I began looking outside of my family for acceptance. That's when I met "him."

He wasn't impressive on the eyes. Yet, he was always nice to me. For a while, he called me his little sister. At the time, I had a crush on his friend—a guy who was five years older than me and had no business talking to me romantically—and he often joked about "hooking us up." I thought he was my friend.

One evening, my dad and I were at odds. He called me a "ho" after seeing a pair of jeans I wore because they were tight and tattered. I usually deflected his comments knowing he didn't mean them. This time, though, his words cut deeply. I was a virgin. For him not to see me for who I was hurt me immensely.

Over time, I had grown to care less and less about myself. My hopes to meet someone who would cherish me for a lifetime had started to fade. Nothing in my life was a fairytale, and I just stopped expecting it to be.

I called him on the phone and asked him to pick me up. I wanted to go get ice cream or just watch some TV in a place with peace and quiet.

His words to me were jarring. Solemn. Curt.

"It's one o'clock in the morning. If I come get you, you know what we are going to do, right?"

"Shit." All I could think was "shit." What I said was calm and my version of mature.

"Yeah, that's cool. Please just come get me. I need to get out of here." He knew all about my family life as I had shared my personal issues with him weeks before.

In that moment, I chose between my abusive father and the man who seemed like my friend but I now knew wasn't.

He picked me up in minutes. I was scared. I wanted to tell him that I didn't want to do anything. But, I felt like I had no choice because I had already gotten in the car. He did what he said he would do by coming to rescue me. Now I owed him, I thought.

We got to an apartment building about 10 minutes away. We walked upstairs quietly. He knocked on the door a few times and I surveyed the parking lot. I recognized the man who answered from school events. He recognized me too. He was shirtless and wearing pajama pants. It was like he knew what was happening. He opened the door, walked away, and returned to bed like this was something he had done before. I later found out it was.

I sat on the couch with my abuser. We made small talk. The TV was on and they were selling rotisseries on the late night infomercials. There was no love between us. There was no chemistry. There was nothing. I wanted apple pie and ice cream. But, more than anything, I wanted to go home and see my mom there waiting for me.

He began touching my body and was immediately disappointed that I didn't have a reaction to him. He seemed almost offended. He never kissed me. He told me what to do and I did it. He told me to undress and lie down. We moved to the floor as I kept my eyes locked on the television through the legs of the glass coffee table. I noticed the infomercial had twenty eight minutes left. It had a timer on the screen counting down how long viewers had before the $29.99 installment plan deal would end.

As I laid there losing my innocence, all I could do was think: I thought about what my best friend would say. I thought about my dad. I thought about my mom. I lost myself in my thoughts. But, I said nothing. I barely moved. I didn't know what else to do.

When he was done, I got dressed. The infomercial still had 13 minutes left. He drove me back to my dad's and talked in the car with me for a while before saying goodbye. We talked about sports and college. He said he wanted to take me places. He wanted to book hotel rooms, wine and dine me, and buy me things. It was like he was my friend again.

Having been disappointed by the first man in my life, I wanted to believe him. But I just didn't. I was smart enough to know what he was doing. And I was disappointed in myself for falling for it in the first place. I was overcome with guilt and shame for having been naïve. I had always prided myself on being strong. I just wasn't strong enough this time.

I actually didn't believe the rape really happened until I felt pain and bleeding the next day. When people began chatting about me at school, rumors emerged that he had a previous intimate relationship with another girl. I wasn't a one-time offense for him.

I continued to struggle with depression even after leaving my dad's and becoming homeless. My best friend's mom let me crash on their couch for a while until I convinced my mother that I needed her help. Soon after, she found me a place to stay with her friend until I finished the school year. I stopped talking to my abuser. I knew what happened was wrong but I couldn't find the words to explain why.

What followed was years of me struggling to come to terms with the coercive rape I experienced. I told myself it was my fault for giving him permission to rape me. I blamed myself for not waiting just a few months longer when I met the man who would become my husband.

At almost thirty and a mother of a baby girl, I recognized that I would never be able to teach her to love herself if I didn't find a way to love all of me too. I realized that as a legal adult, he was the abuser. I learned that, at seventeen, I was incapable of consenting. And, I found out that I wasn't alone. Many women experience sexual coercion or unwanted sexual intercourse and are unaware of any crime. It isn't because we want the sexual advances, assault, or abuse. In some cases—like mine—we are too ashamed to call it by its name.

It was after reading Janet Mock's 2011 story that I decided to share my story as well. I wanted to tell young women that it isn't their fault if they have been sexually abused. Acquaintance rape is not rare. My abuser positioned himself in my life as a friend for months before the abuse happened. I was able to break away from the isolating people and structures that helped my abuser target me, but not all sexual abuse victims have that chance. Even worse, many young women are raped by family members, making it even more difficult to expose the crime when it happens.

My story does not blame anyone else besides my abuser for his actions. I see it happen all too often in other stories of sexual assault that non-victims completely miss the point. This propensity toward victim-shaming and parent-blaming just underscores how rape culture in this country functions to protect men who exploit others sexually. Not only is it sickening, it makes young people and women (and men) less likely to report their rape or assault.

I have since mended my relationship with my mother and father. My mom and I are best friends. While my father recently passed on, he and I also reconnected over the years. I wouldn't be the person I am today without both of their contributions to my life.

Sadly, young girls, especially young girls of color, are particularly susceptible to these types of predatory actions because of social stigmas associated with women's bodies and sexuality. Environmental conditions make young women of color prime prey for men seeking to sexually abuse us. Stereotypes pegging women as "sluts" because of their clothing or body type often leave us vulnerable to exploitation and abuse. Then, when women are violated, many–like me–choose not to share it for fear of public shaming. This only subverts social change for improved women's rights and continues the vicious cycle of abuse in our communities.

I didn't know I was raped. Now I do. I am moving forward blamelessly, honestly, and freely because I know truth is what I deserve.

This article originally appeared in the print version of Marie Claire.

Editor's Note: The efforts of the YPJ are remarkable but Marie Claire does not condone the use of child soldiers in any capacity. This article has been edited to reflect that.

There's a group of 7,500 soldiers who have been fighting an incalculably dangerous war for two years. They fight despite daily threats of injury and death. They fight with weapons that are bigger and heavier than they are against a relentless enemy. And yet they continue to fight.

They are the YPJ (pronounced Yuh-Pah-Juh) or the Women's Protection Unit, an all-women, all-volunteer Kurdish military faction in Syria that formed in 2012 to defend the Kurdish population against the deadly attacks lead by Syrian President, Bashar al-Assad, the al-Nusra Front (an al-Qaeda affiliate), and ISIS.

In a recent BBC article, the YPJ, and their male counterpart unit, the YPG, were deemed "extraordinarily successful" in the battle to squash the growing ISIS militant force, despite limited means. The Washington Post has also weighed in on the importance and impact of the YPJ, suggesting the forces could be an effective ally to the West. Both the YPJ and YPG have also been credited with helping the U.S.-assisted effort to evacuate thousands of Yazidi refugees stranded on Mount Sinjar after ISIS invaded their towns.

Photographer Erin Trieb recently spent a week documenting members of the YPJ at several military posts in Northeastern Syria and along the Syrian-Kurdish border. She recalled to us an incident that occurred during her time there: "One morning, I heard two loud blasts, one followed by another. I asked my translator, Rama, what it was and she said, 'That's just the YPJ and ISIS saying good morning to each other.'"

So who are these women who confront some of the world's most notorious and lethal groups and why have so few in the West heard of them? We asked Trieb to share with us her experience (and photographs) of the YPJ and the harrowing words these women fighters wanted the rest of the world to hear.

Evin Ahmed, 26. Photographed at a YPJ checkpoint-base, on the outskirts of Rabia, Kurdistan, on Aug. 7, 2014.

"We have to be free from the Syrian government," says YPJ member, Evin Ahmed, 26, (pictured above). She continues, "We need to control the area ourselves without depending on them. They can't protect us from [ISIS], we have to protect us [and] we defend everyone…no matter what race or religion they are."

Ahmed, like many of the YPJ, is fiercely loyal to her fellow-soldiers. She insists, "I love being a YPJ soldier, I love the other soldiers, we are closer than sisters. This is the only life for me. I can't imagine living any other way." This sentiment, says Trieb, is echoed by all members of the YPJ, who live by a code of honesty, morals, and justice. "Their motto is 'Haval' or 'friendship'," explains Trieb, "and is of utmost importance to them. They treat each other (and treated me) with a sense of solidarity and sisterhood. They address each other as Haval, and when they spoke to me, they would call me 'Haval Erin'. It enforces a constant sense of belonging and support."

Several of the women, like General Zelal, 33, (pictured below) one of the leaders of YPJ, expanded upon the idea of the independence the group brings women of the region: "I don't want to get married or have children or be in the house all day. I want to be free. If I couldn't be a YPJ I think my spirit would die. Being a YPJ soldier means being free—this is what it means to truly be free."

"There is a sense among the women," says Trieb, "that the YPJ is in itself a feminist movement, even if it is not their main mission. They want 'equality' between women and men, and a part of why they joined was to develop and advance the perceptions about women in their culture—they can be strong and be leaders."

General Zelal, 33. Photographed at a YPJ checkpoint-base, on the outskirts of Rabia, Kurdistan, on Aug. 7, 2014.

Sa-el Morad, 20, (pictured below), shared with Trieb that she enlisted in order to prove that, "we can do all the same things that men can do; that women can do everything; that there's nothing impossible for us. When I was at home," she recalled, "all the men just thought that the women are just cleaning the house and not going outside. But when I joined the YPJ everything changed. I showed all of them that I can hold a weapon, that I can fight in the clashes, that I can do everything that they thought was impossible for women. Now, the men back home changed their opinions about me and other women. Now they see that we are their equals, and that we have the same abilities, maybe sometimes more than them. They understand we are strong and that we can do everything they can."

According to Trieb, the women are indeed seen as just as strong, disciplined, and committed as their male counterparts. They endure many months and levels of rigorous training in weaponry and tactical maneuvers before they are even allowed to fight. They are also wholly celebrated by their community, which Trieb notes is unexpected in a part of the world where women are often seen as inferior to men.

To some in the region, they are seen as potentially more of a threat to ISIS than male soldiers. As Trieb recalls, "The saying among many Syrian Kurds is that ISIS is more terrified of being killed by women because if they are, they will not go to heaven."

Sa-el Morad, 20. Photographed at a YPJ training base near Derek City, Syria, Aug. 20, 2014.

Zevin Botan, 20. Photographed at a YPJ checkpoint-base, on the outskirts of Rabia, Kurdistan, on Aug. 7, 2014.

YPJ solider, Narlene, 20. Photographed at a YPJ checkpoint-base, on the outskirts of Rabia, Kurdistan, on Aug. 7, 2014.

Trieb reveals that the YPJ are also very concerned with America's perception of them, "worrying that [Americans] think we're terrorists". The YPJ soldiers would ask Trieb 'What do they Americans think of us?'. "The truth is," says Trieb, "most of the West hasn't heard of the YPJ. It was really hard to have to tell them that. Because for them, they've been fighting this war every day for almost three years, so they were shocked to hear that most Americans don't know they exist."

It is difficult to say exactly why the force is largely unknown to Americans and many western nations, though it may in part be due to the dwindling number of Western media in Syria. Historically, Trieb explains, the "YPJ has been closed off to being covered by Western media, partly in fear of how they will be portrayed in the West...." The YPJ (and YPG) have been closely linked to another Kurdish fighting force known as the Kurdistan Worker's Party or the PKK and the U.S. State Department, N.A.T.O., and the European Union have all designated the PKK a terrorist group, mainly due to its violent three-decade (1984-2013), struggle for autonomy from the Turkish State (a N.A.T.O. member). Although some have pointed out the success of the PKK in stopping ISIS, the tag still stands.

For now, the YPJ has no backing from western nations, relying mainly on their community to provide funding and supplies.

Nonetheless, the women remain committed to the YPJ and its mission and are dedicated to protecting their people. They are not at all obligated to stay, says Trieb, and all who join, remain out of loyalty. In fact, none of them sign contracts (as with most militaries) and they can leave whenever they choose. Since the YPJ exists on a volunteer basis, many of the women are also unpaid and even when supporters offer them payment in return for their service, "they will refuse the gift or donate it to the YPJ," Trieb notes.

The YPJ operates in two-week rotations on the front lines. Small groups are stationed at various observation posts all along the border of Rabia to keep the area secured, explains Trieb. Some live in abandoned Iraqi army buildings, which, as one might imagine, are run down and lack any luxuries. Often, ISIS snipers are just 500 feet away, ready to shoot. Trieb, who made these photographs using the dilapidating building walls as backdrops, remembers having to duck and run between YPJ buildings to avoid possible enemy fire.

Mizguin Ronahi. Photographed at a YPJ checkpoint-base, on the outskirts of Rabia, Kurdistan, on Aug. 7, 2014.

Yet even under such intense conditions, the YPJ are always "staged and ready for conflict," Trieb says. She continues, "Some of the had their own personal cars parked outside the building so that they could quite literally 'drive' into conflict, should it erupt. They are fearless," says Trieb, "though they might not say they are. They consider fear and then they go forward anyway."

Avinar Kolcer, 26. Photographed at a YPJ checkpoint-base, on the outskirts of Rabia, Kurdistan, on Aug. 7, 2014.

Evin Sadak, 20. Photographed at a YPJ training base near Derek City, Syria, Aug. 20, 2014.

Shavin Bachouk, 26. Photographed at a YPJ checkpoint-base, on the outskirts of Rabia, Kurdistan, on Aug. 7, 2014.

Hasrat Sahad, 23. Photographed at a YPJ checkpoint-base, on the outskirts of Rabia, Kurdistan, on Aug. 7, 2014.

In recent weeks, the YPJ has come under increased attack. Several of the women photographed by Trieb have been injured and some have been captured by ISIS.

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Anti-trafficking activist Somaly Mam in front of the Royal Palace in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, in August of this year.

It's a cloudy morning in Cambodia's capital, Phnom Penh, and Somaly Mam sits with a dozen young women at her home—a walled retreat from the swarm of motorbikes and rickshaws outside. Mam, famous in the nonprofit world for rescuing girls from brothels, has helped free the young women sitting around her kitchen table. Six of them are now in college; the others have become activists like Mam. They refer to her as their mother. Eating spicy soup and rice, they joke like family. "They are crazy," Mam says.

I'm here to speak to Mam about the recent allegations that have compromised her reputation and career. I asked her to agree to be interviewed with no subject off-limits. Mam has claimed for years that she herself was sold into a brothel in her youth. She has hobnobbed on the world stage with Hillary Clinton, Susan Sarandon, and Sheryl Sandberg of Facebook and Lean In fame.

This past May, Mam's life imploded after a Newsweek report left the impression that she had fabricated her life story and had encouraged a girl in her care to lie that she had been trafficked. The backlash was swift. Executives at the Somaly Mam Foundation announced her resignation. Headlines around the world labeled her a liar and a fraud, an example of the most cynical charity practices.

Amid the chaos, the young activists Mam has reared quit their jobs at the foundation in solidarity. Several of them now live with Mam. She says she told them not to quit, but to keep their jobs and collect the pay. Around her kitchen table, a palpable "us versus them" mentality prevails.

Srey Pich Loch, 23, says there was no way she could have stayed with the foundation after Mam left. "We have this life because of our mom," she says.

"And when you have no food?" Mam shoots back.

The scandal interests me because I have known and corresponded with Mam and the foundation for several years, having written about her and young women she has helped through her work. While in Cambodia, I investigated the claims against Mam and spoke to people cited in the Newsweek piece, three of whom said their views were misrepresented. One of the three, identified in Newsweek as a woman, is, in fact, a man. I also interviewed Mam's daughter Mam Sothearoath (nicknamed Nieng), who spoke publicly to me for the first time about a controversy surrounding her own past.

Of course, people can change the stories they tell. Contradictory statements, by their very nature, don't prove which version is the more accurate one. And some people may have a vested interest in Mam's redemption. Nevertheless, taken as a whole, my findings raise questions about the picture Newsweek painted of Somaly Mam. When contacted, Newsweek said it stands by its story, and the reporter had no comment.

"I didn't lie," Mam says when I ask about the allegations. So why did she remain silent? The global news cycle demands responses, I tell her. "I was not silent. I had so many lives to fix," she says, referring to the girls in her care. As the crisis grew, Mam says, she needed to reassure them. "For me, it's not about fighting with everyone," she says. "My priority was the girls. That's not silence."

Her words reveal a cultural chasm. In the West—where media savvy is part of the drill of being famous—it was assumed that, because Mam had become an international figure, she had lawyers or public relations gurus at her disposal to manage her message. Her silence for months, then, was taken as confirmation of the truth of the claims against her.

Living a world away in Cambodia, one of the poorest places on earth, Mam had a different perspective. "I didn't need a lawyer. Lawyers are all about money. You can kill people and have a lawyer, and if you're rich, you can go free," she says. "I did nothing wrong. My heart is my lawyer."

In Phnom Penh's Old Market, Mam walks with several young women she has helped at her centers over the years

TRIBAL ROOTS

In her 2005 memoir, The Road of Lost Innocence, Mam says she was born in 1970 or 1971 in a mountain tribe in Cambodia, where the women went bare-breasted and the men wore loincloths. Her parents disappeared during the Khmer Rouge era, when as many as 2 million people were executed or starved to death. Mam was left with a grandmother, who also vanished. When Mam was 9 or 10, a man who called himself "Grandfather" took her to a village along the Mekong River, she says in the book, and she became his domestic slave. She was eventually adopted by a couple who sent her to school. But Grandfather loomed, her memoir says, selling her virginity to a man when she was about 12, and later selling her to a brothel in Phnom Penh.

When she was around 21, a Frenchman named Pierre Legros helped her leave the trade. The two married in 1993 and three years later started a charity called AFESIP (a French acronym for "Acting for Women in Distressing Situations") to provide shelters for girls. Cambodia was a hot spot for sex trafficking then, and remains so today, according to the U.S. State Department. Mam and Legros later divorced, but Mam continued her work, launching the Somaly Mam Foundation in the U.S. in 2007. The foundation funded AFESIP, which ran the shelters.

In the weeks before the Newsweek story, Mam says, her foundation hired the law firm Goodwin Procter to investigate her life, as the foundation knew the story was coming. She didn't resist the probe because, she says, "I have nothing to hide." Within a week after the story came out, according to Mam, foundation executives, who declined to comment for this story, asked her to sign a letter saying she had "created and exaggerated stories about my life that were not true." The letter also said she had been a prostitute—but not that she had been forced into prostitution. "I did not sign," she says. "I have not lied. They wanted me to say sorry. I'm not sorry for my life." Soon after, the foundation cut its funding to AFESIP, which runs centers that Mam says house 170 girls.

I step away from the kitchen table to speak with Mam's daughter Nieng, who attends college in Cambodia. Mam has said that Nieng—today a raven-haired 21-year-old fashion student—was kidnapped and raped in 2006 by suspected traffickers before being found near the Thailand border. Newsweek said sources dispute those claims. Among them is Mam's ex-husband, Legros, who told the magazine Nieng wasn't kidnapped but had run away with a boyfriend.

Making her first public statement on the matter, Nieng tells me she was kidnapped. "I did not go with a boyfriend," she says. Rather, she was tricked by a young man from outside the school, she says, and driven to the town of Battambang near the Thai border. She was 14 at the time. "I didn't have many friends. I thought he was my friend," she says, speaking softly. "I didn't know much about the world." Her memories of the incident beyond that are foggy, she says, because she believes she was drugged. She says she is speaking up now because she doesn't think it's fair for people to use her own past to attack her mother. "We are two different lives," she says.

A legal adviser to AFESIP at the time, Emmanuel Colineau confirmed Nieng's disappearance and said Mam worked with the police in the search for her daughter. Colineau, now an aid worker in Iraq, says he "sincerely believes" Mam didn't fabricate the kidnapping story.

Mam, sitting along the Tonle Sap River, says she has "nothing to hide."

CHILDHOOD REVISITED

Sitting beneath a mango tree in the rural village of Thlok Chrov, a man named Thorng Ruon describes his memories of Mam as a girl, calling her a "silent and sad child." Thorng, now a commune chief, or head of several villages, recalls Mam attending school for a few years, then disappearing before graduation. His recollections are important because they mirror what Mam herself has said about her childhood—and contradict the Newsweek report. The passage in which he was cited described Mam as a happy, popular child.

In the same village, I meet with Thou Soy, the director of Mam's childhood school, who is also named in the passage characterizing Mam's childhood. He tells me the article wrongly said Mam graduated from high school: "No one knows more clearly than me," he says. "I was the director." He says Mam completed three years—fifth, sixth, and seventh grades, or secondary school at the time—and did not go to high school, but vanished. He disputes that Mam had a happy childhood and says she regularly missed class because she had troubles at home and needed to go to the river to catch fish to eat. Today, Thou is retired and works as a security guard at an AFESIP property.

Across the province, I visit Pen Chhun Heng. Identified as a woman in Newsweek, he is a man. Commune chief Thorng confirmed there was only one person named Pen Chhun Heng in the village. Pen was described as saying that Mam wasn't adopted as a child, as Mam has claimed. Pen disputes saying that. "I told the press she was adopted," he says. The story also described him as a cousin of Mam's mother, which he says isn't the case. He says he knew Mam's adoptive father but did not know Mam or her personal history, beyond the fact that she was adopted.

None of the three villagers had seen Newsweek. In rural pockets of Cambodia, people aren't in tune with the media world. People live in homes of sticks and tin, and the red-dirt roads are an obstacle course of potholes, chickens, dogs, and the occasional horse-drawn cart. Money goes to food or to monks at Buddhist pagodas that dot the countryside, guarded by multiheaded serpents. Pen, confused about journalism, asks, "Will I get arrested for talking to a journalist?"

Of the other two villagers cited in Newsweek, one couldn't be located; the other, I was told, was ill. Mam maintains she did not finish school. "If I graduated from high school, I will give you my house," she says.

In another allegation, Newsweek said a young woman confessed that she had lied about being sold to a brothel as a girl in a late-1990s documentary after Mam coached her to do so. The magazine said the girl wasn't trafficked, and that her parents put her in Mam's care only because the family was poor. I reviewed documents from an independent aid group stating that the girl had been sold by her mother to a broker for $100 in 1997, then rescued and transferred to Mam for care. That group, Khmer Development of Freedom Organization, has confirmed the documents' authenticity. (The documents did not specify what the broker did with the girl after buying her.)

Mam denies coaching the girl to lie. The journalist who made the film, Claude Sempere, says he does not believe Mam coached the girl. He says he plucked the girl and several others for filming from a group of children, and that "it's completely mad" to suggest the girl's interview was fake. The young woman, now married, couldn't be located. Mam says she lives in a Phnom Penh suburb but declined to put me in touch. The reason, she says: The young woman has problems at home because her husband hadn't known she had been trafficked until the news coverage came out.

Mam with Diane von Furstenberg in Washington, D.C., in 2009

UNCERTAIN FUTURE

I ask Mam to explain why her personal history seems jumbled and contradictory—there have been discrepancies in her own telling of the details. Mam acknowledges scrambling facts. Her explanation: "I was enslaved since I was a child." When a person is raped and abused for years, Mam says, dates and memories blur. "I was a domestic slave, then I was in a brothel. How do you count? So I was in the brothel two years, 20 years, 20 days? I was a slave."

I also ask about a Newsweek assertion that she admitted falsely claiming on a 2012 United Nations panel that eight girls were killed after an army raid on one of her shelters in 2004. Mam says she did not make false claims, but rather, spoke unclearly, as English is not her first language. She says there was a raid on a shelter by men in military uniform, although perhaps not servicemen, and she learned later that eight girls died after being taken from her facility.

One of the more horrifying aspects of the Mam controversy involves a woman named Long Pros, also known as Somana Long. Was her eye gouged by a pimp, leaving it infected and swollen, as she maintains? Or did she have an eye tumor removed by a doctor, as Newsweek says? Like many claims in this story, it comes down to one person's word against another's.

Newsweek said a doctor named Pok Thorn operated on a tumor when Long was 13, and that medical records show her eye before and after surgery. In Phnom Penh, I stop by Pok's eye clinic. As soon as I introduce myself, Pok threatens to call the police. Shouting, he says he has no medical records in the Long case and has not shown records to other journalists. Asked if he had removed a tumor, he says, "How could I remember these details? I have lots of patients. I can't remember one patient."

I also travel to Takeo Eye Hospital, where Pok worked when Long was 13, back in 2005. Program director Te Serey Bonn, also cited in Newsweek, says he remembers Long and recalls a tumor behind the eye. He says there are no medical records. AFESIP records show Long's father admitted her to one of its centers in December 2005, citing poor conditions at home. Mam says it is typical for parents to deny that children have been in brothels, as it is shameful for the family and community.

I ask Long to talk to me about her eye injury. She says she is telling the truth, and that the allegations made her feel as if she had "died again." She says she had nothing to gain from making up her story. "If I am not a prostitute, what is the reason that I should say that I was?" she asks.

Mam stands by Long. In explaining why, Mam describes the first time she met her. The girl was eating a meal at one of her shelters, away from the other girls. "Her eye was bleeding," Mam says. "She opened her mouth, and there was blood in the rice." She says Long looked dirty and "demeaned," and the other girls were afraid of her. "I told her, 'You're so beautiful,'" Mam says. "She said no one had ever told her that." Mam adds, "If a girl needs help, I help her."

A media storm followed the publication of Newsweek's story on Mam. It was assumed that, because Mam had become an international figure, she had lawyers or PR gurus to manage her message. Her silence was taken as confirmation of the claims against her. "We've been through so many things in life. I tell [my girls], you can get through this."

Today, Mam's future is uncertain. A FOR SALE sign hangs outside her house. Money is tight since she split with the foundation. At home with the young activists who live with her, she says, nodding to the group, "I cannot let myself get angry. If I get angry, they get a thousand times more angry." She adds, "We've been through so many things in life. I tell them, you can get through this."

Mam says a number of people have been supportive. One is designer Diane von Furstenberg. In an e-mail, von Furstenberg said Mam "has channeled her own sufferings by helping thousands of girls who needed help." On the scandal, she said, "I was deeply disturbed to hear the accusations against her. I do not know the details, but I do know that many people who witnessed her work were inspired and impressed. I will therefore prefer to only focus on the good she does."

In Mam's kitchen, the conversation turns to a criticism that gets the activists most riled: that it is exploitation to use the stories of girls to raise awareness of trafficking. The young women strongly disagree. They have told their own stories. They say it helps people understand the problem, and helps victims heal.

"If the girls want to talk about their story, they can," Mam says. "I don't tell anyone they have to do it. I have told my own story. Mine is enough." She pauses and adds, "Why do we need to be silent? We were silent in the brothel. Why be silent now? Enough." —Sun Narin and Melissa Bykofsky contributed to this report

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Photos by Luc Forsythe

U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) celebrates her election at a rally in New York City, November 2010.

Since joining theSenate in 2009, Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) has been a fearless advocate for women. She's fought against sexual assault both in the military and on college campuses, called on Congress to help close the gender pay gap, and advocated for better policies to support working women and families. Now, she's turning her attention to getting women involved—a powerful message delivered in her new memoir, Off the Sidelines: Raise Your Voice, Change the World (Ballantine).

THE 11 THINGS WE LEARNED DURING OUR INTERVIEW WITH KIRSTEN GILLIBRAND:

MARIE CLAIRE: What inspired this book?

KIRSTEN GILLIBRAND: I wanted to make a heartfelt request for women to participate. I think women's views, values, and priorities are missing in the national and local debate, and I think if we heard more of them, it would make a difference. It's not just that I want women to run for office; I also want them to be active in their community—in every sphere, because their life experiences are really relevant to all levels of decision making.

MC: In the book you liken your call to action to the Rosie the Riveter campaign. How are the two related?

KG: Rosie the Riveter was such a good image for me because it was an iconic advertising campaign in World War II. By the end of the war, six million women entered the workplace, and that forever changed our U.S. economy and women's roles in it. So I feel like we need a similar call to action that assures women how powerful and important their voices are and let them know that if they usetheir voices, outcomes will be better. Imagine if six million more women were voting today, that aren't voting. If six million more women were holding their elected leaders accountable, that are not holding them accountable today—six million more women at decision making tables all across the country. That would be a really powerful thing.

MC: What lessons do you hope women glean from your personal struggles?

KG: We learn by hearing how someone got from A to B. I thought if I told stories about the challenges I've faced, my book would resonate more. I hope women who read my book see their own lives within my life, their own challenges through my challenges. Then maybe they'll get some guidance or realize they're not alone—we all juggle the same things, and we all struggle with not being perfect at everything, and that's OK.

MC: You've been part of efforts to draw attention to some of the impediments in the workplace, including raising the minimum wage and addressing the fact that women still only make 77¢ to the man's dollar. Sometimes it gets framed as a "women's issue," but as you point out, it is interconnected with our economy. Why is that such a hard connection for people to make?

KG: Well, fundamentally, they shouldn't be "women's issues"—they're issues that affect everyone. Eight out of 10 families have women in the workplace. So being concerned about whether women are receiving fair pay for their work and whether they're getting supported when they need it is highly relevant to all Americans. The discussion about finding balance and raising your family and putting food on the table at the same time is a universal challenge, and if we're not supporting women in the workplace, then we're not doing our jobs. So I think if all of us could, on some level, rise up and be heard on why creating a better workplace for all parents and all working women is so important, we'll have a stronger economy and a stronger workforce.

MC: What is the current landscape for women in D.C.?

KG: Our presence and power are growing. The fact that we have 20 women in the Senate is helpful, but having only 18 percent in the House is not enough—Congress should be 51 percent female. Women bring a problem-solving approach to Washington. And Washington is broken, so it's very important to have women who are trying to reach across party lines and find common ground.

MC: You led a crusade against rape in the military. Where does that stand, and how did you feel when your version of the bill, which would have removed the chain of command from prosecuting sexual assaults, didn't pass?

KG: The issue became so important to me because of the stories of women and men who went through hell to not only survive, but to try to get some measure of justice. It was very crushing not to get the votes that we needed, but the victims and the survivors themselves are the ones who drive me to never give up. So we're going to keep fighting. I am going to have a meeting with President Obama in the very near future to again advocate why this is a change he should make.

MC: During that time you were very publicly on opposing sides of the issue with another fellow Senator, Claire McCaskill. How did you feel about that?

KG: To have a handful of democrats that didn't support the reform was personally challenging. I greatly respect Claire and all the women senators. Claire and I are now working together on sexual assault on college campuses and we're trying to create real accountability on that landscape.

MC: What can you tell us about your new initiative to increase S.T.E.M. [Science, Technology, Engineering and Math] education for women? Why is that something that you thought was important to take on right now?

KG: If we want all of our workforce, all of our great minds, focused on solving all the problems we need solved, we need to have more women interested in S.T.E.M. So I support legislation that can hopefully help teachers inspire young girls in their grade school years and to teach them why being good at math and science can help people, because that's what girls want to do—more often than not, they want to have an impact on the community, and if you're good at these subjects, you can actually accomplish that.

MC: Hillary Clinton, who wrote the foreword in your book, has played a pivotal role in your life. What has she meant to you?

KG: Hillary has always been one of my best role models and mentors. She was the one who got me off the sidelines! When she gave that speech in China [at the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women in 1995], not only did she inspire me when she said, "Women's rights are human rights and human rights are women's rights," but the fact that she was so bold in delivering that message from a stage in Beijing really blew me away. At that moment, I said, "I have to get involved in politics."

MC: We have to ask: how do you feel about Hillary and her prospects for 2016?

KG: I think she's the most qualified candidate in the country. I think she will make an extraordinary president. So I'm very hopeful that she will run and that she will be our next president. And I will do everything in my power to help her.

MC: What guidance would you offer to young women today?

KG: I think being exactly yourself is really important. Women need to have the confidence to be who they want to be and know that they're different and that's a good thing. We all do our best—no one's ever going to get it perfectly right—but all of these fights are worth fighting, win or lose. If my book can turn even one woman into an advocate on the issues she cares about, then I've accomplished my goal.

Gillibrand's memoir, 'Off the Sidelines', will be published this month.

...AND 20 MORE THINGS WE LEARNED FROM KIRSTEN GILLIBRAND'S MEMOIR

1. She went by the name Tina until her early professional life, when she was told, "Your real name has more gravitas."

2. She's been friends with actress Connie Britton since they went to China during their days at Dartmouth.

3. As a Girl Scout, she "had to earn every badge and sell the most cookies."

4. Her first car was an AMC Pacer.

5. Her father nicknamed her Foghorn and Loudmouth for her tenacity at debate.

6. She had a fake ID at 15.

7. She chose UCLA for law school to follow her first boyfriend—who ended up not going.

8. She was turned down for six jobs, including at the Ford Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation, before Andrew Cuomo hired her as special counsel at HUD.

9. She played soccer, tennis, and squash in school, has run two marathons, and plays on the congressional women's softball team.

10. When she spoke at the House of Justice in Harlem, Rev. Al Sharpton called her "Reverend Kirsten Gillibrand."

11. Her husband proposed in Central Park with a ring he'd hidden inside a snowball.

12. Her law firm, Boies, Schiller & Flexner, didn't have a maternity leave policy, so she wrote one.

13. A big believer in transparency, she posts her earmark requests and public meetings online in the Sunlight Report.

14. She made her staff read The Secret in preparation for passing the 9/11 health-care bill.

15. She has a "huge girl crush" on Tina Fey.

16. She was among the first to see Gabby Giffords, a close friend, in the Tucson, Arizona, hospital after Giffords was shot.

17. She's allergic to cats.

18. When the positive thinker ran for office in 2010 and set a fundraising goal of $3 million in the first quarter, she made her computer password "3M1stQ."

19. She's been every clothing size from 4 to 16.

20. When appointed as New York senator and called "Tracy Flick" in the press, she didn't consider it a compliment. When fighting against how the military handled rape and Senator Bob Corker (R-TN) called her a "honey badger," she did.

1. The Advocate

Jessica Jackley, 36 Cofounder, Kiva.org

As the brain trust behind the online microfinance juggernaut, Jackley is responsible for $600 million in loans, some as small as $25, to more than 1.3 million women in 77 countries. The goal: Help them launch or preserve their small businesses. "Small, discrete steps taken today can lead to surprising and great things later," she says.

2. The Matchmaker

Rachel Chong, 32

Founder and CEO, Catchafire

The former UBS investment banker launched the eHarmony-like service, which pairs skilled volunteers with groups around the country in need of pro bono services.

3. The Icebreaker Extraordinaire

Jennifer Lee, 42

Writer and codirector, Disney's Frozen

The genius behind the highest-grossing animated film ever ($1.3 billion and counting) is also the first woman to helm a billion-dollar-box-office flick.

4. The Valley Firebrand

Gina Bianchini, 42

Founder and CEO, Mightybell

The straight-shooting veteran social-networking entrepreneur cofounded LeanIn.org with pal Sheryl Sandberg. Her latest venture, Mightybell, creates specialized online networks for, say, teachers or small-business owners and is the platform of choice for Lean In "circles" around the country.

5. The Night Owl

Amanda de Cadenet, 42

Host, Undone with @AmandadeCadenet

The former actress parlayed a cozy online chat show featuring celeb pals like Gwyneth Paltrow into a fledgling talk show, which debuted on Lifetime in late July. Since Chelsea Handler decamped for Netflix, de Cadenet is the lone female late-night host on all of network and cable television.

6. The Scene-Stealer

Leah Meyerhoff, 30

Founder, Film Fatales

Frustrated by the lack of mentorship among women in Hollywood, this indie filmmaker organized her own network for female filmmakers, based in New York, to help one another secure financing, recruit talent, and learn negotiating skills.

7. The Highflier

Amelia Rose Earhart, 31

President, Fly with Amelia Foundation Bearing the name of her hero (no relation), this former weather forecaster embarked on her own round-the-world flight this summer to raise funds to help put teenage girls through flight school.

8/9. The Media Mavericks

Glynnis Macnicol, 39

Rachel Sklar, 41

Cofounders, TheLi.st

Credit where it's due: Sklar cofounded Change the Ratio, which works to seat more women on panels and in pundit chairs. She and journalism pal MacNicol cofounded TheLi.st, an invite-only listserv for female influentials in media and tech. The goal: Land more women in prominent jobs so they can pay it forward.

10. The Equalizer

Angela Benton, 33

Founder and CEO, NewMe Accelerator

The mastermind behind one of the nation's only online startup accelerators—boot camp for entrepreneurs—targets minority and female founders, who have historically had a tougher time scoring mentors and investors.

11. The Visionary

Pam Grossman, 33

Director, Visual Trends for Getty Images

Grossman was instrumental in Getty Images' groundbreaking partnership with Sheryl Sandberg's Lean In to create and sell images of working women that are more reflective of the culture and workforce.

12. The Negotiator

Kelli Masters, 41

Founder, KMM Sports

The former Miss Oklahoma is the first woman to represent a first-round NFL draft pick (Gerald McCoy, Tampa Bay Buccaneers). There are few boys' clubs as ferociously exclusive as the business of sports agents. Masters is making her mark with eight NFL players and counting.

13. The Game Changer

Elizabeth Sampat, 32

Video game designer

An outspoken advocate of women in gaming, the designer of titles like Nineteen and Deadbolt contends that women are overlooked by recruiters at game companies based on the dated stereotype that women don't play, when, in fact, nearly half of all gamers are women.

14. The Grassroots Operative

Lindsay Zizumbo, 31

Founding member, Real Women Run

Not a single woman in Utah holds a congressional seat or statewide elected office, which is partly why the state ranks 49th of 50 for women in politics. (Only Louisiana is worse.) Three years ago, Zizumbo cofounded this nonpartisan organization, which produces workshops for prospective female candidates on the ins and outs of running for office.

15. The Local Disrupter

Kesha Cash, 37

Founder, partner, and director of investments, Impact America

How to transform underprivileged communities? Nurture their entrepreneurs. That's the idea behind Cash's private investment firm that funds early-stage businesses run by minority entrepreneurs in low-income neighborhoods. The upside: They must have a social or environmental mission.

16. The Life Coach

Jenni Luke, 41

CEO, Step Up Luke helms this national organization, which pairs at-risk teen girls around the U.S. with professional mentors for after-school and weekend programs in an effort to empower the girls and prepare them for both college and careers.

17. The Rainmaker

Ari Horie, 41

Founder and CEO, Women's Startup Lab

As founder of this Silicon Valley accelerator, Horie and her team provide professional coaching, mentorship, and capital to women-led ventures, which are notoriously underfunded in macho tech circles.

18. The Digital Defender

Vivian Graubard, 25

Adviser, White House Office of Science and Technology Policy

Graubard was a key force behind innovative anti-human-trafficking initiatives backed by the White House that leverage open-source data to help victims.

19. The Action Hero

Kim Woozy, 30

Founder, MAHFIA

The snowboarder turned video producer founded MAHFIA, a Web channel devoted to women's action sports. Her credo: "You can't be what you can't see."

20. The Thought Leader

Katie Orenstein, 45

Founder and CEO, The OpEd Project

The author and journalist is on a mission to recruit female writers and experts to contribute more to mainstream TV, print, and online news outlets, where women are underrepresented as columnists and pundits.

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Photos Courtesy of the Subjects/Getty Images/Chad Rachman/Nam-Chi Van

In just overthree years, more than 2.9 million Syrians (three-quarters are women and children) have been driven from their homeland because of the country's internal conflict. So when English author Neil Gaiman asked Marchesa's Georgina Chapman to accompany him on a two-day trip to Jordan to collaborate on a storytelling project, she didn't hesitate in saying yes. In May, along with the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR), they traveled to two camps—Zaatari, home to more than 80,000 refugees, and Azraq, established this spring—to record video footage of the work that UNHCR and its partners are doing, from distributing food and water to providing health care and schooling. "It can be hard to identify with those affected by humanitarian injustices overseas—but they are just like us," Chapman says. "They feel love, loss, trauma, tragedy, and hope exactly the same way we do." A particularly affecting moment was seeing children at a play center. "Two weeks prior, they were drawing images of bloodshed and weapons," she recalls. "Now they are drawing hearts and flowers. The resilience of the human spirit filled me with optimism." Chapman plans a return trip to Jordan to document more stories from the camps: "They speak to the very core of who we are as humans. It's about our sense of family, home, safety, and identity."

Georgina recounts her trip to the Syrian refugee camps in Jordon.

DAY 1 – 13 MAY 2014

I'm here in Jordan with the UNHCR, the United Nations Refugee Agency, writer Neil Gaiman, and my husband Harvey Weinstein. Our purpose is to raise awareness for the Syrian refugees. The more-than-three-year Syria Crisis has driven millions of women, children and families from their homes to escape violence, death and destruction. In Jordan alone, nearly 1 in every 10 people is a Syrian refugee. As such, I don't know what to expect on my first day here. I don't have any preconceived ideas coming into this mission because it's so foreign to anything I've ever experienced, or imagined experiencing.

Just after dawn we headed to Zaatari refugee camp. What struck me most is how normal life seems—how incredible and self-sufficient everyone is. They've built this sort of city in the middle of the desert, and it's full of vibrant people who are setting up enterprises like baklava stalls, beauty salons, grocers, clothes shops, and little restaurants. There's an amazing spirit, which I find so enlightening.

But at the same time, amidst all the bustle, I remembered the undercurrent of terrible sadness that people are working through. Every family we encountered has a heartbreaking story of horror. I heard stories of parents digging their children out of rubble, of fathers taking bullets in their backs while trying to save their families, and of those searching for their disappeared loved ones. The lives of these people have been so damaged, and these children have been so traumatized. This reality struck me when Neil and I visited a classroom of young adults being taught English. One of the men in the classroom suddenly started crying while speaking about his brother, who had been lost trying to enter Jordan. There was also a university student who had been working to get his doctorate in archaeology before the crisis began. This felt so tangible to me—that it could have been me at that age, trying to get my degree with a bright future full of possibilities lying ahead. In this moment I realized that while these young men and women are now in a safe haven, they are living in a terrible state of limbo; they can't settle yet they can't leave, they can't work and they can't really continue their studies. Their future is utterly uncertain, and this must make it so difficult to be hopeful. Yet despite that, there is this amazing sense of resilience in the camp because there is such strength in the people.

A refugee boy in front of a transitional shelter in Azraq. The units were specifically designed to address housing concerns in Zaatari.

Chapman and Neil Gaiman (far right) help a family collect water.

A view of the Zaatari camp, which houses more than 80,000 refugees.

Marchesa's Georgina Chapman (right) speaks with a Jordanian UNHCR staff member.

DAY 2 – 14 MAY 2014

Today was very different. When Neil, Harvey, and I first turned up at Azraq camp, we were a bit shocked at the difference from yesterday's camp. Azraq only opened very recently and compared to the bustling life and activity of Zaatari it felt eerily quiet, and the barren and rocky desert landscape felt less hospitable. Thankfully, that quickly changed once we started meeting the refugees who now live here, all very recent arrivals.

We met one family of around 30 brothers, cousins, wives and children who had literally crossed the border into Jordan hours before. They kindly agreed to share their stories with us. The men recounted not just their journey to the camp, but also talked of their experiences back in Syria. They had been displaced inside Syria for nearly three years, moving from village to village to avoid the fighting, and their stories were raw and shocking. They talked about having no option but to eat dogs, cats and leaves to survive. They talked about walking through body parts while crossing the border, and about nearby families who were shot and killed on the road out. It was very surreal and yet very real at the same time. I cannot imagine what they are thinking or what they are feeling. I think one of the wives felt angry that her family is in this situation. It was a very heavy-hearted morning.

In the afternoon, the mood shifted. We went to a children's play center in the camp and the children were incredible. We learned that just two weeks prior, they were drawing images of bloodshed and weapons. But now, in this safe space, they are drawing hearts and flowers and are laughing. It was unbelievable to see first hand the resilience of the human spirit. It filled me with such a sense of optimism, but also of real concern for the children of Syria, this potential lost generation who has witnessed such horrors and whose lives, education, family units, and childhood memories have been so broken. And yet, we can all do something to help safeguard their chance of a promising future. This is such a compelling part of UNHCR's work.

Before we left Azraq, we met a man whose story impacted me greatly. He recounted his life in Syria, where his village had been torn apart by the oppressors. The violence he spoke of was truly unfathomable: he had witnessed grotesque forms of torture and barbaric killings. His experiences with those in uniform were those of horror and fear. As he continued his story, he spoke of crossing the border from Syria into Jordan. He mentioned that when he saw the Jordanian army, his immediate instinct was one of terror. But as he spoke of the army taking his bags, and giving him food, water, and shelter, he broke down into tears of gratitude and relief. What struck me most in that moment is that the kindness of the human spirit brought him to tears, not the atrocities he had experienced in Syria. This was one of the most moving parts of this trip so far.

Despite the darkness of so many of the stories we have heard and the unbelievable loss and pain, Neil, Harvey, and I are inspired by the strength and courage of the human spirit and the generosity of heart that somehow still exists inside the refugee families. Despite having next to nothing, they are doing all that they can to provide for themselves so they are not a burden. It is impossible for them to restart their lives totally on their own and they need the support of UNHCR. But the UNHCR can't do it alone either, as it is drastically underfunded. It desperately needs our support to continue providing lifesaving care and assistance to Syrian refugees.

Syrian refugee Um Murad, the sole breadwinner in her family, runs a successful beauty salon and wedding dress rental business in Zaatari.

Food for thought: Bread is distributed daily to each refugee family.

For more information/how you can help: www.unhcr.org/neilandgeorgina

Photos via Getty Images/UNHCR/Kalpesh Lathigra/Jordi Matas

Who: Sarah Kunst
Age: 28
What She Does: Investor board member at Venture for America
Why She's Successful: "My age levels the playing field. People who never normally talk to me—like the CEO of a Fortune 500 company—ask to pick my brain about what Snapchat is or how Tinder works. It's a cool advantage."

Credits: Coat, $3,545, Opening Ceremony; (212) 219-2688. Top, $69, Ann Taylor; anntaylor.com. Skirt, $1,590, Akris; akris.ch for stores. Necklace, $195, Jennifer Fisher; jenniferfisher jewelry.com. Pink-gold ring, $1,350, Bulgari; (800) BVLGARI. Double-band ring, $175, Campbell; shopbop.com.

Who: Brooke Lampley
Age: 34
What She Does: SVP, head of Impressionist and modern art at Christie's
Why She's Successful: "I spend half my time traveling, at least a day or two a week. I can be in London for an auction, then off to Milwaukee to see a collection, then straight to Los Angeles to meet with a client. Then I'll take a red-eye to New York so I can be back in the office by morning."

Credits: Top, $250, White House Black Market; whbm.com. Skirt, $545, Boss; (800) HUGOBOSS. Sunglasses, $435, Céline; celine.com for stores. Bracelet, $275, Campbell; latestrevival. com. Stacked rings, $22.90 for five, Express; express.com. Band ring, $575, David Yurman; (212) 752-4255. Earrings, necklace & ring on left hand, Lampley's own.

Who: Marti Adams
Age: 30
What She Does: First deputy press secretary for NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio
Why She's Successful: "The first thing I do each morning is grab my BlackBerry to check for breaking news. I've definitely had those early mornings when my hair is still wet and I'm getting a phone call from the mayor. I have to read everything before I see him."

Credits: Jacket, $179, Ann Taylor; anntaylor.com. Top (worn as dress), $1,290, Derek Lam at Barneys New York; (212) 826-8900. Turtleneck, price upon request, Derek Lam; (212) 493-4454. Earrings, her own; (212) 752-4255. Gold cuff, $195, Miansai; miansai.com. Textured bracelet, $39.50, Ann Taylor; anntaylor.com. Wraparound ring, $350, snake ring, $770, Zoe Chicco; bloomingdales.com. Shoes, $625, Christian Louboutin; christianlouboutin.com. Ring on left hand, Adams' own.

Who: Mallory Blair and Bianca Caampued
Age: 26 and 30
What They Do: Founders of Small Girls PR (which counts Meetup, AOL, and Lulu among its clients)
Why They Are Successful: "I chose this career because it's a natural extension of my personality. I would be doing this even if I weren't being paid to do it."—Blair (Left) "Our social life and work life are one and the same. We're in-the-know with the 20-something Millennials our clients are trying to reach." —Caampued

Credits on Blair: (left): Sweater, $525, Band of Outsiders at Neiman Marcus; (888) 888-4757. Shirt, $69, Ann Taylor; anntaylor.com. Skirt, $795, Band of Outsiders; (212) 965-1313. Socks, $6.50, Hue; hue.com. Shoes, $775, Emporio Armani; armani.com.

Credits on Caampued: Jacket, $348, Ann Taylor; anntaylor.com. Top (worn as dress), $695, MM6 Maison Martin Margiela; (646) 781-7852. Pointed ring, $369, flat ring, $515, Meadowlark; meadowlark jewellery.com. Double-band ring, $1,425, Selin Kent; roseark.com. Boots, $850, Alexander Wang; (212) 977-9683.

Who: Morgan Murphy
Age: 32
What She Does: Writer and producer of CBS' 2 BROKE GIRLS
Why She's Successful: "Jimmy Kimmel, one of my first bosses, threw me into the fire at a young age and forced me to pitch my jokes to a room full of older men. Now I'm not afraid to try out new things—that's the only way you're going to prove yourself."

Credits: Jacket, $2,540, Miu Miu; miumiu.com for stores. Jersey, $20, vintage from LTV Salvaged and Upcycled Goods; (718) 858-4906. Pants, $98, Ann Taylor; anntaylor.com. Shoes, $625, Christian Louboutin; Christian louboutin.com.

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Women CEO's Get the Job Done Better Than Men...and Here's Why
5 Secrets from the Highest Paid Women
Success Secrets of 30-Something Moguls

Photos via Steven Brahms

Who: Christy Turlington Burns, Founder, Every Mother Counts

Day Jobs: Model, entrepreneur.

Driving Force: Every two minutes, a woman dies from complications during pregnancy or childbirth. That's 289,000 women worldwide every year, but Christy Turlington Burns, 45, focuses on a more hopeful number: 98 percent of those deaths are preventable.

Eureka Moment: Her interest in maternal health is deeply personal. After delivering her first child in 2003, she suffered a postpartum hemorrhage. "What was a manageable complication for me could likely be deadly for women in the developing world, which is crazy, because it's so preventable," she says. "I want every mother to have the same chance as I did."

Proof Positive: Since 2010, her nonprofit, Every Mother Counts, has given more than $1.4 million in grants to clinics and care providers across the globe, including a program in Malawi that is bringing solar power to 40 rural health clinics, and another in Haiti that trains midwives. "Many women are left for dead when things go wrong," Turlington Burns says. "Having someone there can literally make the difference between life and death."

Get Involved: everymothercounts.org

Related: 19 Other Women Who Are Changing the World

Photo via Peter Hapak

Who: Dina Habib Powell, President, Goldman Sachs Foundation

The Numbers: Led by Dina Habib Powell, 10,000 Women has provided business education to female entrepreneurs in 43 countries since 2008 (and hit the 10,000 mark last December), with impressive results: Within three years, 82 percent of graduates increased revenues and 71 percent created jobs.

Success Story: In 2007, Ayodeji Megbope of Lagos, Nigeria, opened a catering business called No Left Overs in her kitchen with just $8 in seed capital. But she struggled to turn a profit in a country where 92 percent of the population lives on less than $2 a day. Now Megbope—a graduate of the initiative—owns a restaurant that employs more than 40 workers, and mentors fellow female entrepreneurs.

Ripple Effect: The financial lifting of many boats is just one positive by-product; women who might once have deferred to their husbands now have a hand in making family decisions as breadwinners. "I watch women, often amidst vast political and social uncertainty, get up every day and find ways forward for themselves and for their families—and, ultimately, for their societies," says Powell, 41. "That's the return on investment we're looking for."

Upping the Ante: Powell recently took things to the next level by partnering with the World Bank Group to give 100,000 female-owned small and medium-size businesses around the world access to some $600 million in capital.

Get Involved: goldmansachs.com/citizenship/10000women

Related: 19 Other Women Who Are Changing the World

Photo via Peter Hapak

Who: Shakira, Founder, Barefoot Foundation

Day Job: Singer.

If You Build It: A newly opened hilltop school in Cartagena, Colombia, is a gleaming monument to modern education: a three-and-a-half-acre campus equipped with state-of-the art computers and sports facilities. "I don't know if there are many schools like it in America," says Shakira, 37, the school's founder. Many of its 1,700 students are refugees in their own country, who lacked access to clean water, electricity, and, of course, any real prospect of getting out. "In countries like mine, kids who are born poor, die poor—unless people do something about it," she says.

Extra Credit: The new K–12 public school offers all of that free of charge, but what's amazing is that it's not unique: It's one of six opened by Shakira's Pies Descalzos ("barefoot," in English) Foundation, which she created at 18 when she made her first million. She has also helped open 25 early-childhood centers, while recruiting an impressive roster of supporters, including billionaires (such as Carlos Slim) and heads of state (including President Barack Obama).

Credo: "I'm not embarrassed to ask for money for education—we cannot see it as a luxury. It is a birthright that belongs to every human being."

Get Involved: fundacionpiesdescalzos.com/en to donate

Related: 19 Other Women Who Are Changing the World

Photo via Jason Merritt/Getty Images Entertainment

Who: Alicia Keys, Cofounder, Keep a Child Alive

Day Job: Singer-songwriter.

Wake-Up Call: Twelve years ago, near the end of her first world tour, Alicia Keys, now 33, found herself in a room full of South African teens. Some were infected with HIV; others had family who were affected. "I felt like I was looking at my own reflection," she recalls. "They were around my age, going through life just like me—looking for love, but wondering how they could continue. There was no way I could leave and pretend like I never saw it or act like I wasn't changed. I remember feeling like, If I were them, I would wish someone would speak up for me about what's going on."

Proof Positive: Her foundation, Keep a Child Alive, has raised about $25 million to provide more than 300,000 people in Africa and India with access to lifesaving drugs, nutritious food, and care. "Seeing a child who was only predicted to live to age 2, and now they're 15 … wow," Keys says.

Affecting Moment: At an AIDS conference in the U.S.—where infection rates remain disturbingly high, especially among black women—Keys met Kym, who had contracted the virus from her husband. He'd been too ashamed to seek medical help, or even to tell her he had the disease. "They could have still had a relationship, and he could have not exposed her," says Keys. Instead, Kym learned she'd been infected just before he died. Last year, Keys helped launch the Empowered campaign to encourage women to get tested and, if necessary, treated. Says Keys, "This is not a death sentence. We can beat this thing."

Get Involved:keepachildalive.org or donate here

Related: 19 Other Women Who Are Changing the World

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Who: Rachel Lloyd, Founder and CEO, Girls Educational and Mentoring Services (GEMS)

Why She Had to Act: In 2006, Rachel Lloyd asked the police for help rescuing a 12-year-old named Yesenia who was being kept, drugged, and abused by a pimp in Harlem. Their response? If she's 12, she's old enough to walk out by herself. Shocking? A common attitude, says Lloyd. "Rather than being seen as victims," she says, "[girls in the sex industry] are seen as willing participants in their own abuse."

Proof Positive: GEMS provides services like counseling, legal assistance, and housing to domestic trafficking victims, helping more than 350 girls and young women leave the sex trade each year. "It's all the baby steps, the one-day-at-a-time decisions, and persistence despite the pain, that lead women [out of the life] and into getting their diploma, their first apartment, their first job," says Lloyd, 39. "You have to be there cheering them on every single step."

The Big Picture: In 2008, she lobbied New York state to pass the Safe Harbor for Exploited Children Act, which treats children in the sex trade as victims rather than criminals and provides social services instead of punishing them in juvenile detention. Eleven additional states have since passed this law. "It's about perception," Lloyd says. "These girls are victims, and they'll become survivors if we as a society value them."

Get Involved: gems-girls.org or donate here

Related: 19 Other Women Who Are Changing the World

Photo via Peter Hapak

Who: Nancy Lublin, CEO, Do Something

Instant Gratification: Nancy Lublin has never been content with the status quo. "I see a problem," the 43-year-old self-described "serial social entrepreneur" says, "and I ask: What's the most immediate hands-on thing I can do?"

You May Know Her From: Her first hands-on thing was Dress for Success, a nonprofit that has provided professional clothes and career counseling to more than 700,000 disadvantaged women worldwide.

Next! Six years later, in 2002, she took on a new challenge: turning then-failing nonprofit Do Something into a pioneering, 2.5-million-member-strong youth organization to help young social entrepreneurs, ages 13 to 25, take action on causes they care about.

Success Story: Sixteen-year-old Emily-Anne Rigal, who was ruthlessly bullied in her Virginia high school, used a $500 seed grant from DoSomething.org to start WeStopHate.org, which aims to stop bullying by helping teens raise their self-esteem through social media campaigns. "Teens really care," Lublin says. "We give them ways to turn caring into making an impact."

New Genius Idea: Crisis Text Line, which gives teens access to free emotional support and real-time information from trained specialists via text, is what she came up with after receiving numerous harrowing texts for help from her organization's members. "It got to a point where I said, 'We can't just keep triaging; we have to address this.'" And so, of course, she did.

Get Involved: dosomething.org or donate here

Related: 19 Other Women Who Are Changing the World

Photo via Peter Hapak

Who: Jennifer Hudson, Cofounder, The Julian D. King Gift Foundation

Day Jobs: Singer, actress.

How She Got Here: In October 2008, less than two years after a breakout performance in Dreamgirls won Jennifer Hudson an Oscar and made her a hero in her hometown of Chicago, Hudson's mother, brother, and 7-year-old nephew, Julian King, were murdered. The shooter was her brother-in-law; the crime scene was her childhood home. It was the kind of tragedy that could have hardened someone. Not Hudson.

Passion Project: With her sister, Julia—Julian's mother and the only other surviving member of her family—she founded a nonprofit named for Julian that distributes school supplies on his birthday (and gifts at Christmastime), turning the day on which their grief is most searing into a day of grace, love—and healing. "We used to dread it," she says, "but now we count down the days and look forward to it because we find joy giving to others."

Family Ties: The foundation is also a tribute to her late mother, a church secretary, whom Hudson talked to on the phone every day. "My mother used to always tell me, 'Jenny, the thing I love about you is you always find the positive in things, no matter how negative they may be,'" says the 33-year-old. "Every day, I hear her voice in my head. I know that she's smiling down on her girls and she's proud of us." How could she not be?

Get Involved: juliandkinggiftfoundation.com or donate here

Related: 19 Other Women Who Are Changing the World

Photo via Peter Hapak

Who: Jennifer Ganer, Board Member, Save the Children

Day Job: Actress.

Backstory: As a first-grader in West Virginia, Jennifer Garner was friends with a set of twins who came from a poor family. "When I went to second grade, they stayed in first grade, and when I went to fourth grade, they disappeared," says the 42-year-old. "I just kept thinking, What happened to those kids?"

Driving Force: Rural poverty is an issue that doesn't get much play on the gala circuit, but that's what makes her devotion to the issue so remarkable. "Once you become a mom, you realize that everyone loves their children the same amount," says Garner, who is featured in the forthcoming PBS documentary series A Path Appears. "So if these moms in Arkansas or Mississippi love their kids as much as I love my kids, how is it fair that they don't have the help they need to make their kids' lives as good as they can be?"

Success Story: With Save the Children, Garner has helped bring books, toys, and early-childhood development training to families across the country. On a trip to California's Central Valley—one of the poorest regions in the U.S.—Garner visited a nonverbal 11-month-old who was given a rubber ball. The boy, who'd never seen a ball before, began flapping his arms and babbling at his mother, who, with gentle encouragement, started talking with her baby for the first time. "It was like a light flicked on," Garner recalls. "As brick-by-brick as this work is, it can change a kid's life."

Get Involved:
savethechildren.org/jen

Related: 19 Other Women Who Are Changing the World

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Who: Gabrielle Giffords, Cofounder, Americans for Responsible Solutions (ARS)

Driving Force: Even more than her own experience of being shot in Arizona in 2011, stories like that of Sarah Engle—whose ex-boyfriend raped, shot, and left her for dead (he also killed her mom) in 2008, using a gun he'd obtained despite a restraining order Engle had against him—motivate Gabrielle Giffords, 44, to work to rein in gun violence, which kills 32 Americans every day.

Credo: "The question for Gabby is always: How do you take something bad and turn it into a positive?" says her husband, Mark Kelly. "And for her, the answer is always: Press ahead." Which is why she, along with Kelly, launched ARS in 2013 to advocate for gun laws that even gun owners—like them—could support.

The Big Picture: They've recently committed to protecting women, who are eight times more likely to die as a result of domestic violence if a gun is in the home. With the Engles in mind, Giffords is pushing for legislation to prevent people with violent histories, including those with a history of domestic violence, stalking, or sexual assault, from obtaining guns. "Dangerous people with guns are a danger to women—for moms, for families, for me and you," she says. "Please join your voice with mine."

Get Involved:americansforresponsiblesolutions.org or donate here

Related: 19 Other Women Who Are Changing the World

Photo via Peter Hapak

Who: Taylor Swift, Philanthropist

Day Job: Singer-songwriter.

Passion Project: Several years ago, Taylor Swift stumbled onto a blog by Maya Thompson, a mother in Phoenix, documenting the life and death of her son Ronan, who had the childhood cancer neuroblastoma. "It absolutely devastated me," recalls the 24-year-old. "She had to watch her 3-year-old die and was able to do nothing about it. I woke up in the middle of the night with a verse about his story."

Hit Parade: Swift's hit song "Ronan" is heartbreakingly beautiful—a gift to Thompson and all grieving parents—and, because Swift chose to donate her royalties to cancer charities, an important fundraising vehicle. It was also the spark that prompted Swift to devote herself to a head-spinning array of causes.

Proof Positive: She's given well over a million dollars to disaster-relief efforts and $4 million to create a music-education center at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville, Tennessee, which gives children a chance to try out musical instruments, often for the first time. (When the center was low on guitars, she dropped by with 13.)

Extra Credit: Swift engages in acts of everyday kindness you can't put a price on. She makes frequent, impromptu visits to children's hospitals on tour, spending hours talking with patients about music and life and love. "It makes me feel like I'm contributing to this world that has given me so much, but has taken so much from other people," she says. "Acknowledging that is important to me."

Get Involved: CountryMusicHallofFame.com

Related: 19 Other Women Who Are Changing the World

Photo via Peter Hapak

Who: Tammy Tibbetts, Cofounder and President, She's the First,

Passion Project: In 2009, Tibbetts founded She's the First, a nonprofit that sponsors girls' education in developing countries, enabling them to become the first in their families to graduate from secondary school.

Proof Positive: She's since awarded more than 900 scholarships to 368 girls in 10 countries, thanks in large part to fundraising efforts by some 400,000 members of the 100-plus chapters on high school and college campuses across the U.S. "It's not me changing the world," insists Tibbetts, 28, herself the first in her family to finish college. "It's the thousands of members of the She's the First community who realize that even small contributions can have a huge impact and who are not afraid to be the ones to take the first step."

Affecting Moment: The course of 20-year-old Maheshwari's life had been set from birth. An untouchable, India's lowest caste, she was assumed to have no chance of completing high school—no one in her family ever had. But, for what amounted to $4.38 a day in scholarships, Maheshwari did finish high school and is now studying biotechnology and genetics at a university in Bangalore, with plans to attend medical school—a far more hopeful fate than marrying, having children young, and never improving her lot in life.

The Vision: "Hopefully in my lifetime, there won't be a need for She's the First," Tibbetts says, "because all girls will have access to education."

Get Involved: shesthefirst.org or donate here

Related: 19 Other Women Who Are Changing the World

Photo via Peter Hapak

Who: Cecile Richards, President, Planned Parenthood Federation of America and Planned Parenthood Action Fund

Rapid Response: Seconds after the Supreme Court's June 30 decision to allow some private corporations, like Hobby Lobby, to not cover contraceptives in employee health plans for religious reasons, Cecile Richards, 57, took to Twitter, tweeting both rebuttals ("No coincidence: all 3 women on #SCOTUS dissented. For women, only controversy about birth control is that we're still fighting for it") and messages of hope ("Worried your employer might cut your birth control coverage? Text 'birthcontrol' to 69866 and we'll help you find a solution").

Driving Force: "A lot of my drive involves wanting my daughters—and my son—to have opportunities," Richards says. "Any movement to drive women's issues and women's rights backward simply cannot happen on our watch."

The Numbers: Twenty percent of women in the U.S. have visited Planned Parenthood. Collectively, these centers prevent an estimated 515,000 unintended pregnancies annually and provide more than a million women with services like breast exams and Pap smears.

Backstory: Richards herself visited Planned Parenthood for the first time as a college student and calls the experience an awakening. It "was the one place where you could ask questions—and folks would talk to you—without guilt," she told The Nation. "No matter how much things change, some things are immutable: The need for basic sexual education will never go away."

Get Involved: plannedparenthood.org or donate here: ppaction.org

Related: 19 Other Women Who Are Changing the World

Photo via Peter Hapak

Who: Frida Giannini, Cofounder, Chime for Change

Day Job: Gucci creative director.

Eureka Moment: Ever heard the best ideas come when you're in the shower? That's where Frida Giannini, 41, had one hell of a brainstorm. She was humming the 1984 song "Do They Know It's Christmas?"—whose proceeds went to famine relief in Africa—when she came up with Chime for Change, a global campaign to revolutionize women's education, justice, and health.

Driving Forces: "Discrimination and violence against women are not things that are happening in just, say, Afghanistan," Giannini says. "They are happening everywhere." And that's where Chime wants to be, from training teachers in gender equality in Northern Cyprus to conducting leadership training for female business owners in Mexico.

Friends With Benefits: She enlisted Gucci and recruited friends Beyoncé and Salma Hayek Pinault as cofounders. She also signed on with crowdfunding pioneer Catapult to fund 300-plus projects in 81 countries, making anyone a philanthropist with the click of a mouse. "These issues have always existed," she says. "But we are living in a moment [when] the Internet can play a role in bringing important attention to them."

Get Involved: chimeforchange.org

Related: 19 Other Women Who Are Changing the World

Photo via Peter Hapak

Who: Olivia Wilde, Cofounder, Conscious Commerce

Day Job: Actress.

Driving Force: In the Kolkata, India, slum of Kalighat, prostitution is a family business—passed on from mothers, themselves sometimes born into sex slavery, to their unwitting daughters, who can be forced to take up the trade as early as age 13. Even children who are spared live in unspeakable conditions, sleeping in the same rooms where their mothers see clients. It's the kind of thing that can be so depressing that it's hard to know where to begin, which is what makes 30-year-old Olivia Wilde's Conscious Commerce so inspiring.

Griping for Good: "I don't mean to sound ungrateful to the people who give money to charities," Wilde says. "But I yearn for a better way, a more consistent way, to give." It's an odd sentiment coming from someone who spends as much time as Wilde does raising money, most prominently as a board member of Artists for Peace and Justice, which focuses on education, health care, and the arts in Haiti. But it's also fitting that Wilde—who was born to journalist parents and whose big sister is a civil rights lawyer—would raise her voice against the philanthropic status quo. It's a system, she says, "where people think: I'm going to live my life and not really think about the developing world, and then on Christmas, I'll cut a check."

The Big Idea: Wilde launched Conscious Commerce with her friend Barbara Burchfield. Last October, the pair hooked up with Anthropologie and designer Yoana Baraschi to create and sell a tea dress, donating $100,000 in proceeds to New Light, which works to keep Kolkata girls from being forced into the sex trade.

The Big Picture: "There's a certain amount of cynicism connected to philanthropy," Wilde says. "But I'm optimistic. I want to show people not to lose hope."

Get Involved: consciousco.co or donate to Shining Hope for Communities or New Light

Related: 19 Other Women Who Are Changing the World

Photo via Peter Hapak

Who: Melinda Gates, Cochair, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation

Why She's Hooked: When Melinda Gates traveled to Niger in the summer of 2012, she met a mother of five who had walked nearly 10 miles to get birth control. "Having access to contraceptives was very important in giving me the power to lead the life I wanted," says Gates, 50. "When I talk to women in poor countries, they tell me contraceptives would do the same for them."

The Big Picture: Gates has turned her attention—and the immense resources of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation—to the 220 million women worldwide who lack access to family-planning resources. "[Often] women don't have a say over their own health, their bodies, or when and how many children they want to have, if they want to have any at all."

Special Talent: Whether in Nairobi or Uttar Pradesh, Gates draws women out to discuss the delicate matters of marriage, child-rearing, and entrenched cultural practices that often hinder progress in an effort to give them a sense of control over their lives.

Geeking Out: "I understand so much more about the numbers I pore over in white papers and academic articles when I talk to women about their day-to-day lives," says Gates, who adds that "data geek" is a term of endearment in her house. "It's important to remember that behind every data point is a daughter, a mother, a sister—a person with hopes and dreams."

Get Involved: gatesfoundation.org

Related: 19 Other Women Who Are Changing the World

Photo via Peter Hapak

Who: Eva Longoria, Founder, Eva Longoria Foundation, and Cofounder, Eva's Hero's

Day Job: Actress.

Pomp and Circumstance: Recently, Eva Longoria, 39, presided over a graduation ceremony of sorts: presenting diplomas to parents in Compton, California, who'd passed a nine-week course on improving their children's education.

The Big Picture: It's all part of Longoria's plan to close the education gap plaguing Latinas, and for those who participate, it is life-changing: 90 percent of kids with parents who finish the program graduate from high school. Many of the parents themselves never made it through grade school.

Proof Positive: "I talked to a parent with a third-grade education who was crying because she had never had a certificate in her life," Longoria recalls. "Now she's taking a class at a community college—and that model behavior can be emulated by her daughter: If Mom can do it, I can do it, too."

Extra Credit: She has advocated for immigration reform and children with special needs; started a political action committee; and created a program that provides training, mentoring, and seed capital to Latina business owners. "The people I want to help most are women," she says, "because they are the center of our societies."

Get Involved: evalongoriafoundation.org/donate or donate to Padres Contra El Cancer, Eva Longoria Foundation, or Eva's Heroes

Related: 19 Other Women Who Are Changing the World

Photo via Peter Hapak

Who: Kimberly Bryant, Founder, Black Girls Code

Backstory: When electrical engineer Kimberly Bryant's daughter Kai was entering middle school, she told her mother she wanted to be a video game tester when she grew up. Bryant's reply? "I said, 'You know, you can be the one who actually makes the games.'" When Bryant, 47, signed Kai up for a summer program at Stanford University that teaches kids how to code, she discovered her daughter was the only African-American, and one of just a handful of girls, enrolled. "I just knew how lonely and isolated she would feel," Bryant says.

The Reboot: In 2011, she launched Black Girls Code, dedicated to closing the digital divide for girls of color. The organization, which now has chapters in seven U.S. cities as well as one in Johannesburg, South Africa, has taught more than 3,000 girls ages 7 to 17 skills like robotics, video game design, app development, and computer programming.

The Vision: By 2040, Bryant hopes to have reached 1 million girls. "This is an issue that is holding us back, not just as women, but also as Americans, because there's so much talent here that we haven't cultivated," she says. "We want to keep driving the needle forward."

Success Stories: One Black Girls Coder—11-year-old Charmienne Butterfield, from the Bay Area—built an app called Doll Finder, to connect people buying and selling dolls, available for download on Android devices. As for Bryant's daughter, she's now a proud member of her high school robotics team.

Get Involved: blackgirlscode.com or donate here

Related: 19 Other Women Who Are Changing the World

Photo via Peter Hapak

Who: Stephanie Schriock, President, Emily's List

Power Play: In 2011, when Elizabeth Warren, then a special assistant to President Obama, was undecided about running for Congress, she got the Stephanie Schriock treatment. Over Warren's kitchen table in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Schriock used her warmth, humor, and the promise of support from EMILY's List to persuade Warren to run. "We talked about the change that could come with her election," Schriock says. Fast-forward to today, and the now Massachusetts Senator Warren is a leading light in the Democratic Party, often mentioned as a potential contender for the Oval Office.

Money Talks: As head of EMILY's List (an acronym for the campaign saying, "Early Money Is Like Yeast"), Schriock, 41, oversees a multimillion-dollar war chest and works to unleash the barely tapped power of women as candidates at all levels.

Backstory: It wasn't an obvious idea in the 1980s, when the political action committee was founded: "There needed to be a force to get people to see that women could be candidates," she says. "EMILY's List needed to change the mind-set of the party."

The Numbers: Schriock's skills (developed as a campaign manager for Minnesota Senator Al Franken, among others) paid big dividends in the last political cycle: The organization raised $51.2 million to help elect 27 female candidates, giving women a record 18.5 percent share of Congress. "Our job is to grab our sisters by the arms and bring them through those doors—together," she has said. "Because it's not just about taking a seat: It's about taking half the table."

Get Involved: emilyslist.org or donate here

Related: 19 Other Women Who Are Changing the World

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In August 2012, Chrystal Stallworth, of Lawton, Oklahoma, packed her bags and set off for sorority rush at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa. She was the total package: 4.3 grade point average, premed, student body president of her high school, a cheerleader, and a volunteer for an organization that raises money to fight cancer. "I tried to make myself the all-around college candidate," she says. During the first round, Stallworth, now 20, visited the 16 Panhellenic sororities that participate in formal rush and loved every minute of touring the multimillion-dollar mansions and meeting the women who could be her sisters. "I was giving it my all," she says. "Trying to meet these people and be like, 'This is who I am.'"

But after the first round, she was invited back to only four houses. Other similarly qualified girls were asked back to nearly every house—more than the 12 maximum they were allowed to visit in the second round. In other words, sororities were fighting over them, while rejecting Stallworth. After the second round, she was invited back to only one house and decided to withdraw from rush. "I was really upset," Stallworth recalls. "It was probably one of the worst weeks I've ever spent at Alabama. It made me feel like, 'What am I doing here? Nobody wants me?' I felt like I didn't belong, which is hard, especially as an incoming freshman."

Weeks later, after classes had begun, Stallworth figured out what set her apart from other candidates: She's half black. "When I got on campus, I started noticing when I would see all the girls in sororities, there were no minorities, or if there were, maybe a few Asian women," Stallworth says. "I probably wouldn't have even noticed if I didn't have a best friend who is in a sorority at the University of Oklahoma. Her sorority is so diverse. … That was the point I realized, Whoa, people still do see race here."

The multimillion-dollar houses on sorority row in Tuscaloosa.

THE LAST STAND

With more than 8,600 members, the Greek system at the University of Alabama is the nation's largest. At some universities, the Greek system may be an insignificant part of life on campus, but at Alabama—where one out of every four students belongs to a Greek-letter organization—Greeks rule the school. The bonds students foster at these organizations continue long after graduation, influencing job placements and even government elections. At the time Stallworth went through rush—and since the first sorority opened at the university in 1904—only one woman who was identifiably black had ever been offered a bid, or invitation to join, during formal recruitment. Her name was Carla Ferguson, and she pledged Gamma Phi Beta in 2003. (Another woman, Christina Houston, rushed Gamma Phi Beta in 2000, but it wasn't known that she was half black until after she was accepted.) When Ferguson was admitted, Alabama's then Panhellenic Association president Heather Schacht told The Tuscaloosa News, "We've made a big step today, and hopefully it is something that we can build on." But in the years that followed, none of the 16 traditionally white sororities extended a bid to an African-American, despite the fact that 90 percent of women who rush are offered a bid and at least a handful of black women rush each year. Perhaps more black women would give it a shot, but the Greek system's all-white reputation precedes it. "During orientation, someone advised us against rushing," says Halle Lindsay, 20, a junior from Dayton, Ohio, who attends Alabama with her twin sister. "Someone told my mom sororities don't really take black girls. Everyone from around here knows that, but being from out of state, you wouldn't really know. … It was really confusing, like, just because I'm black I can't be a part of this?"

University of Alabama students (from left) Khortlan Patterson, Yardena Wolf, Katie Smith, and Caroline Bechtel, all of whom spoke out against segregation in the Greek system.

Theoretically, Alabama's sororities could claim that, other than Stallworth, none of the black women who rushed over the years were qualified. Every chapter has a minimum grade point average, and as rush can be a superficial process with pretty, popular girls getting picked first, all of the black rushees could have been deemed too unattractive or lacking the right personality. But in exclusive interviews with Marie Claire, sorority members at Alabama revealed conversations and directives that paint a much different picture, providing the first in-depth, behind-the-scenes look at a story that initially caught national attention last fall. "We were told we do not take black girls, because it would be bad for our chapter—our reputation and our status," says junior Yardena Wolf, 20, a member of Alpha Omicron Pi. "There was a list of girls who were to be dropped from rush," says senior Caroline Bechtel, 21, a member of Phi Mu. "Anyone who was a minority was automatically added to it. Sometimes they'd say things like, 'Oh, she wore an ugly dress,' but it was so obviously wrong, so obviously racism."

At Kappa Delta, the oldest and arguably most prestigious house on campus, the rushees are seated in different rooms depending on how interested the sorority is in pledging them. The best room, called Rush-to-Pledge, is reserved for rushees whom the sorority wants to give the hard sell. Kappa Delta member Kirkland Back, 22, a 2014 graduate, says that in her years in the sorority she saw only two black women ever seated there—and one was a mistake. "This past year, a black girl ended up in the Rush-to-Pledge room," Back says. "Someone messed up and seated her in the wrong spot … so you can imagine the sad hilarity of watching a bunch of really privileged white girls freaking out. They were like, 'Oh, my God, oh, my God, oh, my God! What are we going to do? She can't think we actually like her!' So they were like, 'Nobody talk to her. … She's gotta know that she's not welcome. She's gotta know this isn't going to work out.'" "It's not that we've never had black girls come through rush," says Melanie Gotz, 22, a 2014 Alabama graduate and member of Alpha Gamma Delta. "I would see them in the first round, and then they all disappeared. I just figured they didn't make the grades. Until this year, I didn't realize that they were being automatically dropped after the first round. I feel really naïve now—I didn't really think racism existed in such a blatant way anymore." (When asked to respond to the allegations, national officials for each of the sororities cited their policies opposing discrimination based on race, religion, or ethnic background.) Years later, the sting of rejection black women experience remains. Melody Twilley Zeidan, now 30, was cut from every sorority at Alabama during rush in 2000 and 2001, even though she graduated from one of the state's best schools and was part of the university's honors program. "It's been 14 years, and I would like to say I look back and say, 'Sororities? Oh, that's silly,' but it still hurts to think people didn't want to get to know me because of my skin tone," she says.

Melanie Gotz, a 2014 Alabama graduate, tried to get her house, Alpha Gamma Delta, to invite a black woman to join.

In September 2013, the long-held, unofficial practice of barring black women from traditionally white sororities finally began to change, thanks to a group of sorority women who spoke out in favor of integration. Their actions proved unpopular with many of their sorority sisters, but in daring to reveal the secret practices that have allowed the Greek system at Alabama to remain segregated for more than a century, Wolf, Bechtel, Back, Gotz, and others sparked a march on campus of more than 100 students who carried a banner that read, "The Final Stand in the Schoolhouse Door"—a nod to former Alabama Governor George Wallace's 1963 "Stand in the Schoolhouse Door." That "final stand" helped usher in informal rush, during which the university boasted that 21 black women joined white sororities. "I remember saying, 'This is wrong. Why are we sticking to all of these traditions?'" Bechtel says. "We're an awesome group of women, so I just thought, Why don't we try doing something different? Why are we adhering to the legacy of what the Greek system is?"

Kappa Delta member Kirkland Back, a 2014 Alabama graduate, called out her sorority for not offering a bid to a black woman.

CHANGING TIDE

THE UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA is a poignant setting for this story. Fifty-one years ago, Gov. Wallace stood in the doorway of the university's Foster Auditorium in an attempt to stop two black students, Vivian Malone and James Hood, from enrolling. And although the university's sororities (and its fraternities, which remain overwhelmingly segregated) have undoubtedly been slower to integrate than much of the rest of the nation, a lack of diversity in the Greek system is hardly just an Alabama problem. The first Greek organizations were founded in the late 1700s, when universities were largely open only to wealthy, white, male students. "Historically, white Greek-letter organizations were formed on the basis of exclusion," explains Matthew Hughey, an associate professor in the department of sociology and an adjunct in the Africana Studies Institute at the University of Connecticut. "They mirrored the demographics of their institutions. Not only did they mirror them, they amplified them, so only the cream of the crop, the elite of the elite got in." As colleges began to welcome less-privileged white students and minorities, Greek organizations, most of which had official "whites-only" policies, offered members "protection against would-be social climbers," Hughey says, adding that some retained "whites-only" clauses in their constitutions until the 1960s and '70s.

Halle Lindsay, left, and Chrystal Stallworth, pictured in their dorm room. Lindsay is now a member of Alpha Gamma Delta but continues to live in the dorms, and Stallworth dropped out of rush in August 2012 after having been cut from nearly every house.

There is no official tally of the number of minorities in historically white Greek organizations. The umbrella groups that operate most chapters—the nation's 5,975 fraternities are governed by the North-American Interfraternity Conference and 3,127 sororities by the National Panhellenic Conference (both are based in Indianapolis)—have little incentive to record numbers that would make them look bad, and universities typically take a hands-off approach to Greek organizations, claiming they have little control over what goes on inside the houses. But they do have an incentive to promote diversity. Under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, programs and activities that receive federal financial assistance are prohibited from discriminating on the basis of race, color, and national origin. Though Alabama's Greek organizations don't directly receive public funds, because their houses sit on university-owned land, one could make a case that the university is not fulfilling its Title VI obligations. But despite knowing there were no black members in the traditionally white houses and knowing African-Americans make up 12 percent of the Alabama student body, the administration did not spur the Greek system to integrate—students did.

Last August, an incoming freshman named Kennedi Cobb, who carried a 4.3 grade point average in high school and was class salutatorian, decided to rush. What made Cobb (who declined to be interviewed for this story) especially well-qualified was that she is from Tuscaloosa (local women are often favored during rush), and her step-grandfather, John England Jr., is on the university's board of trustees. (For what it's worth, Cobb also happens to be gorgeous.) If a black woman ever stood a chance at joining a sorority at Alabama, it was her. The Greek system was buzzing—would this be the year for integration?

On the evening after the first round of rush ended (two days of 20-minute "ice water teas" at each house), Alpha Gamma Delta member Gotz and her sisters were set to vote on whom to invite back. Every sorority does rush differently, and in Gotz's house, a handful of alumnae assist with rush and have a say in who makes the cut. Two hours before the vote, Gotz heard it was canceled—the alumnae had already decided which girls would return, and Cobb was not one of them. The students and alumnae filed into the chapter room to discuss the next day's events. One girl was crying, others were angry, but no one said a word. Gotz didn't even know Cobb's name, but, "I just thought, Well, hell, what do I have to lose?" she says. She raised her hand, asking the now infamous question, "Are we not going to talk about the black girl?"

Over the next two hours, Gotz says the students gave "the most beautiful, Martin Luther King Jr.–esque speeches" in favor of admitting Cobb. "Girls would stand up and be like, 'There are no black girls in sororities, but we are ready to be that house,'" Gotz says. The alumnae told the students Cobb was not asked back because of a technicality with her letter of recommendation. "It was so obvious we were being lied to," Gotz says. "But there was only so much we could do. … I asked if we could keep her another day to get things figured out. They said, 'Absolutely not.' We dropped her that day. The room was defeated. Everyone was crying."

Days later, a similar scene played out in Yardena Wolf's house, Alpha Omicron Pi, except, instead of students challenging alumnae, the students themselves were divided. During the third round of rush (two "skit days," in which rushees get to know the personality of each house), the members met to decide whether to offer a bid to any of the black rushees. Many women spoke in opposition. According to Wolf, some worried aloud that fraternities would no longer "swap" with them. (Swap is the term for when a fraternity invites a sorority to a private party.) Others said their parents would make them drop out of the house if a black girl joined. Eventually, the students voted against it. "Until then, I had no idea racism wasn't a thing of the past, and if I did, I would have thought it was people who were older," Wolf says. "Never in a million years would I have guessed it was people my own age."

One by one, each house on sorority row cut Cobb and the other black rushees. But rather than allow the status quo to persist for yet another year, some sorority women spoke out. "Our sorority has a culture of silence. We were to never speak about the fact that we didn't have any African-Americans," says Katie Smith, 20, a senior and member of Wolf's house, Alpha Omicron Pi. "I was tired of being silenced." Members of several houses were quoted anonymously in an article published by the campus newspaper, The Crimson White. CNN, The New York Times, and other outlets sent reporters to cover the story. If some of the women who spoke out had initial support in their houses, media reports—seen by their sisters as bringing shame to the sororities—put an end to that. "I was the villain in my house," says Gotz, the only student quoted by name in the Crimson White story. "It was so hard to live there. I got so many looks and didn't feel comfortable at all. I had to go home at some point to go to bed, but I avoided it as much as I could. I didn't even want to go to the bathroom, because I didn't want to see people." Wolf felt so bullied that she moved out about 10 days after rush ended, into an apartment near campus. "It was really hostile," she says. "No one wanted to talk to me. There were whispers that would stop when I walked up." After she moved out, she still attended the occasional frat party, but icy run-ins with her sisters eventually made her avoid Greek life altogether. "I'd hear snarky comments at parties, like, 'There's the girl who betrayed our sisterhood,'" Wolf says. Bechtel experienced a similarly harsh atmosphere. "I still get anxiety about walking into my sorority," she says. "Sometimes I sit in my car because I'm afraid to go in."

Ultimately, the university's administration stepped in. President Judy Bonner issued a video statement on the school's antidiscrimination stance (to drive home her point, she included photos of a recent visit she'd had with Bill Cosby). "While we will not tell any group who they must pledge, the University of Alabama will not tolerate discrimination of any kind," she said in the statement. "The chapter members are ready to move forward. The University of Alabama will support them in every way possible. We will work extremely hard to remove any barriers that they perceive. If we are going to adequately prepare our students to compete in the global society, we simply must make systemic and profound changes." Bonner (who was "not available" for an interview) mandated an informal round of rush, known as continuous open bidding, during which the houses were allowed to add members in the hope that the extra spots would go to minorities. In lieu of formal recruitment, members of the sororities reached out to people they knew to see if they'd like to join. "A lot of my friends approached me during open bidding and said, 'You'd be so great—we'd love to have you,' but they never looked my way before," says Khortlan Patterson, 20, an African-American student who eventually joined Alpha Kappa Alpha, one of three traditionally black sororities on campus. (Black sororities were formed in the early 1900s, when black students were prohibited from joining white houses. They're governed separately from the traditionally white houses by the National Pan-Hellenic Council Inc., based in Decatur, Georgia.)

A few days later, Bonner announced that the traditionally white sororities had extended 72 new bids, 11 of which went to African-Americans. Cobb accepted a bid to join Alpha Chi Omega. Wolf and Smith's house admitted two black women, and Gotz's sorority pledged one: Halle Lindsay, the junior who had been dissuaded from rushing during her freshman orientation. "They were so welcoming," Lindsay says. "I went to check out the house and left feeling like I'd fit in there no matter what race I am." Open bidding went on for the remainder of the year. By spring, university spokeswoman Cathy Andreen says there were 21 African-American sorority members. "The University of Alabama now has one of the most diverse Greek systems in the nation," Andreen says. When asked how she arrived at that conclusion, since no national count exists, Andreen said she based her claim on "our Greek Affairs staff's longtime experience and interactions with peers at other institutions, as well as feedback from the national headquarters organizations."

Nevertheless, black women make up only about 0.4 percent of Alabama's some 5,000 Panhellenic sorority members. "In 2013, we're jumping over ourselves because one black woman was accepted into a white sorority?" says the University of Connecticut's Hughey. "If that's our benchmark of progress, that's pathetic." Bechtel, whose house admitted one African-American, says not much has changed. "It's not like the floodgates opened and there are suddenly people of every color. It's still all mostly privileged white girls." Even less has changed at Back's house, Kappa Delta, one of two or three sororities that have yet to admit an African-American. Back says there was an impression among her sisters that it was unfair to offer a bid to a black woman who didn't have to jump through the same hoops everyone else did to be in the best house on campus. "They thought, I got selected to be in Kappa Delta because I was worthy, and now we're giving these girls free bids because they're tokens?" she says. "And they're like, 'That cheapens all of our membership and undermines the exclusivity of this organization.'"

Such firmly ingrained mind-sets won't change overnight, but many are seeing the opening up of the Greek system as impetus to have a larger dialogue on campus. Smith sponsored a resolution in the student government to encourage complete integration in all Greek houses. (It failed, but a similar resolution to support integration passed a month later.) Bechtel and Wolf helped start Students for Open Doors and Ethical Leadership, which brings members of campus groups together to discuss ways to further integrate. Another organization called Blend hosts weekly "Blend Days," during which students of all races eat together at a designated table in the cafeteria. (Otherwise, the tables are mostly unofficially segregated by race.) The faculty senate created a task force to draw up recommendations for increasing equality on campus. The true test of whether these initiatives are paying off, and whether the integration that came under pressure last fall will have a lasting effect, is the next round of formal sorority recruitment at Alabama. At the moment, rush is on.

The students' outcry over segregation in campus sororities made the front page of Alabama's college newspaper, The Crimson White, in September 2013.

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Photos via Victoria Hely-Hutchinson/Austin Bigoney/The Crimson White

Her neighbords had seen him wandering the area many times before—a homeless man, squatting in a building directly across from her apartment complex.

Stephanie Gilmore wasn't home here in Coolangatta, a small southern suburb of Australia's Gold Coast City, very often; her surf career kept her on the road, chasing the world's best waves, for almost eight months out of the year. It was two days after Christmas in 2010, and Gilmore had asked a friend to see a movie that night. She certainly deserved a break: Just weeks before, Gilmore had taken home the 2010 Association of Surf Professionals (ASP) world title in Puerto Rico, meaning that, at 22, she was the top female surfer on the planet for the fourth year in a row. She'd also just signed a five-year, $5 million contract with Quiksilver, making her surfing's highest-earning woman. "I was thinking, Surely this has to end," Gilmore recalls. "Life can't continue going up like this. What's going to happen?"

When her friend couldn't make the movie, Gilmore went back to her apartment complex, parked her car, and started toward the stairwell to her apartment. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a barefoot man, disheveled and dirty, kneeling down behind a short wall in the parking lot, as if he were tinkering with something in his hands. She ignored him and kept walking, but something didn't sit right—a telltale prickle on the back of her neck and sick feeling in the pit of her stomach signaled danger. Before she stepped into the dark stairwell, she turned around to make sure the man wasn't following her. There he was, just a few feet away, holding a steel rod. Their eyes met. Run upstairs! she thought. Go! But the man lunged at her, forcefully swinging the rod at her head, sending a blinding pain through her. He hit her again, breaking the bones in her left wrist and the top of her hand. By this time, Gilmore's screams had alerted others. A group of neighbors chased after the perpetrator as he raced away on a bike. Over a span of five minutes, he had altered the course of Gilmore's championship run.

Like many Australians from the Gold Coast, a surfer's paradise on the beach in Queensland known for its world-class waves, Gilmore grew up in the water. Her father, Jeff, who maintained the grounds at the nearby wildlife preserve, surfed every day, and still does. As a kid, she says, "we didn't really have a choice. He was going to take my two older sisters and me surfing, whether we liked it or not." Gilmore was naturally athletic—excelling in soccer, touch football, and field hockey—but gravitated toward surfing, and began riding waves daily at age 10. "Trying to master one of the most powerful elements on the planet can be daunting," she says. "A lot of Australians have a big respect for the ocean. You learn how to read it."

By 12, she was good enough to win local weekend contests. That year, Australian surf company Rip Curl took notice and sponsored the fledgling champ. "Anytime I would get a trophy, I was like, 'This is the best thing ever,'" she recalls. "I loved winning." Her mix of personal ambition, intense focus, and a relaxed, play-it-how-it-lays surfing style went over well with the judges. "When waves are coming, you know you're about to experience something cool, but you're also plunging into the unknown," Gilmore explains. "The wave could be perfect, or it could wipe you out. You might get pulled into a barrel, where the water curls over you and you're inside it, and you're literally in the womb of Mother Nature."

When Gilmore was 15, she walked the 200 yards from her house down to the local beach to watch a Women's World Tour event. Man, I can smash all these girls, she thought. These were her idols, the best female surfers in the world, yet she knew she was better. There was nothing else in her life that she cared about more than surfing—during her senior year, she even missed her prom to compete in Hawaii. "There were definitely times when I was like, 'Oh, I'm not going out with my friends because I want to get up early and surf,' but I just felt like I was taking a better path," she says. In 2005, at 17, she entered her first adult contest as a wild-card competitor. As she'd predicted, she did, in fact, smash the competition to take home the top prize. A year later, while her friends went off to college, Gilmore went pro, joining the Women's World Tour, where the highest-ranking professional female surfers battle it out in competitions held around the world. That year, she became the first rookie to ever win a world title.

Her achievements weren't just personal ones. As she gathered trophy after trophy, she also proved how far female surfers have come. Board-sports market research company Board-Trac found that 30 percent of the 2.9 million surfers worldwide in 2010 were women, compared with just 19 percent in 2001. "Things have really changed in the last 15 years, and rapidly in the last five," Gilmore says. "There are so many girls now. At first, I don't think the guys liked it, and women felt they had to compete against the guys to gain respect. Now, the guys and girls learn from each other. We're blossoming into our own. We love to be powerful and beautiful and strong."

When she woke up the morning after the attack, lying in a bed in the Tweed Hospital, down the road from her home, Gilmore was given good news: Her assailant, who had a history of paranoid schizophrenia, had been arrested and jailed. (In 2012, he was sentenced to four years in prison; Gilmore didn't have to testify.) But there was bad news, too. "You can't surf for six weeks," her doctor said. It was the first time in 12 years that she'd been out of the water for more than a day at a time—and the first event in the 2011 season, the Roxy Pro Gold Coast, was exactly six weeks away. She left the hospital that day with five stitches on her head and one arm in a cast. "People are injured all the time," she says. "I knew I would heal, but [my concern was] more emotional than physical."

Friends and family filled her small, ocean-view two-bedroom apartment, but Gilmore was still rattled from the attack, sleeping with the lights on and constantly double-checking that the doors were locked. After spending hours visualizing herself in the waves, she headed back into the water five weeks later, against her doctor's orders. Assuming she'd immediately be back in top form, she'd already signed up for the Roxy Pro, in nearby Burleigh Heads, Australia.

But time away had taken its toll. She tried rising on her elbows to prop herself up; her arms were still weak and her legs wobbled underneath her like jelly. She couldn't even get to her feet. "I just sat on the beach, put my board over my head, and cried," she says. "It was the first real moment of doubt that I'd ever had. I thought, Wow, I don't think I can win this year." She eventually placed fifth at the event.

When she officially fell out of contention for the world title in May after surfing in the Billabong Rio Pro in Brazil, she was relieved. "I was like, 'OK, just accept it. It's happened. I didn't win.'" With the 2011 season a wash, Gilmore tried to focus on regaining her strength. Maybe the best way to recover, she decided, would be to stop competing—to simply have fun in the water again. She traveled to places like Indonesia and Mexico with a group of six close friends, not to train, but just to surf. "I was so caught up in trying to win world titles," she says. "I'd always been so successful, and it felt so easy to just keep winning. I started to wonder, Why do I want to chase a trophy? My parents aren't crazy, driven ex-Olympians, so I wonder where this comes from. I had to reassess why I'm doing this: Because I love it. I want to do everything in my power to get that back, because it's what I'm here to do."

Still, by the end of 2011, without her usual roster of championships behind her, the press had piled on. "They were saying, 'Steph's done now. The young girls are too good; she's going to be left behind,'" Gilmore, then 23, recalls. At first she thought they might be right. But the more she watched video footage from her free-surfing trips, the more certain she was that she could make it back. "Those videos reminded me that I can still achieve whatever I put my mind to. I just needed to start fresh."

At the beginning of the 2012 season, Gilmore discovered an unexpected benefit of no longer being the reigning champion: "Everyone was expecting so much from the other girls, but not me," she says. "In 2009 and 2010, I was really relaxed. But in 2012, I was determined to put my heart and soul into everything I did."

She trained longer and harder, putting in more hours in the ocean than ever before. At each stop on the tour, she visualized how she'd approach the waves. Right off the bat, she won the first 2012 tour event and eventually qualified for the finals in Biarritz, France, on July 14.

The morning surf was stormy, but Gilmore woke up optimistic. When her biggest competition, Australian Sally Fitzgibbons, didn't make the final round, Gilmore knew the world title was hers to lose. She was nervous, but she clinched a high score on her first wave. The beach filled up with spectators. As Gilmore floated on her board in the water, looked toward the beach, and heard her score announced, she knew she'd won.

"It was like a fairy-tale story for me," she says. "One of the best days of my life." Fireworks shot off above the awards ceremony as she was handed her fifth world title. "The other titles came naturally. With this one, I turned from a surfer into an athlete. To overcome something and figure out a way to train harder, surf better, and make it work … I treasure this one most of all."

Photos via Morgan Massen/Courtesy of Roxy/Getty Images

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Game Changer: Women in Sports

Cecile(not her real name) was celebrating the 2011 New Year in the town of Fizi in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) when a group of Congolese soldiers went on a rape spree. The men, operating under the command of rebel turned Congolese military leader Lt. Col. Kibibi Mutware, assaulted Cecile, who is in her 20s (she doesn't know her exact age), and dozens of other Congolese women. This is a disturbingly regular occurrence in the DRC, torn by a war that has dragged on for two decades, and where, according to a study from the American Journal of Public Health, a woman is raped nearly every minute.

The overwhelming majority of Congolese women who are raped never see justice, in part because the cost of bringing a court case can total more than $300 in a country where most people live on less than $2 a day. Making matters worse, many of the some 2 million rape victims live in rural areas hundreds of miles from the nearest courthouse.

Cecile was almost one of them. But through the grapevine of survivors and women's rights activists, Cecile made her way to SOFEPADI (translated from the French to Women's Solidarity for Peace and Integral Development), a coalition of 40 Congolese women's rights organizations that provides medical care, counseling, and legal aid to Congolese women. There, lawyers and advocates helped gather stories from Cecile and other women attacked by Mutware and his men, and connected victims with mobile courts. Those courts—which are supported by the American Bar Association and the Open Society Foundations but are run by Congolese lawyers and judges—go to rural areas in the eastern part of the country to bring criminal cases against accused rapists.

Forty-nine women, including Cecile, testified against Mutware and 10 of his soldiers—and won. Their victory, the first against a commanding officer for rape in the DRC, resulted in a 20-year prison sentence for Mutware. Eight of the 10 soldiers were also found guilty and jailed (with sentences ranging from 10 to 20 years). The women were to receive $10,000 each in reparations, but a majority, including Cecile, haven't been paid. Coming to their aid once again, SOFEPADI is pressing the government, which is responsible for the fees because the men were in the military, to pay up.

Today, SOFEPADI continues to advocate for victims by helping to arrange trials—even though many cases don't turn out in their favor. In February, 47 of some 1,000 men, women, and children raped by soldiers over the course of 10 days in 2012 testified at a trial in the town of Minova. Of the 37 soldiers accused, only two were convicted. "Once again, the Congolese justice system has not made the dignity of victims a priority," SOFEPADI president Julienne Lusenge said in a statement at the time. All the more reason why her organization's work is of the utmost importance. And it trickles down, too. Many of the women SOFEPADI has helped have paid the service forward by forming an association of survivors. "Because of all that we endured," Cecile says, "we understand that it's important for us to help others who have been raped."

You can donate to SOFEPADI through the Nobel Women's Initiative at nobelwomensinitiative.org; be sure to specify that the donation is for SOFEPADI.

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Photo Credit: Diana Zeyneb Alhindawi

Most 17-year-olds spend their birthdays agonizing about prom dates and SAT scores. But for Pakistani activist Malala Yousafzai, turning 17 meant traveling to Nigeria to advocate for 250 missing girls. Oh, and also having the U.N. declare the Monday after her birthday World Malala Day.

Malala, who was shot by the Taliban in 2012 for wanting to go to school, has since become an advocate for educating young girls around the world. Today, she is set to push Nigerian president Goodluck Jonathan for more government action to rescue more than200 schoolgirls who were kidnapped by terror group Boko Haram.

On Sunday, she met with the missing girls' parents, who risked their lives on a 20-hour trek to meet with her. She also met with five Nigerian girls her age who had escaped their kidnappers. The other girls have not been found after 90 days in the forest.

Boko Haram released a video this week that appeared to mock the #BringBackOurGirls campaign. The group's leader said the schoolgirls would not be freed until Nigeria's government released extremists from jail.

But Malala had her own strong words for the terrorists. "[They are] misusing the name of Islam" by denying girls the right to education, she said in a BBC interview. "They should think about their own sisters and they should release those girls," she told ABC News.

She urged supporters to share messages of strength online, using the hashtag #strongerthan. "I say I am stronger than fear. I am stronger than violence...I am stronger than every kind of thing that stops me from getting an education," she told ABC.

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Fresh off of her gold medal win for the women's snowboarding halfpipe during the 2014 Olympics in Sochi, Kaitlyn Farrington stopped by the MC offices to give us the lowdown on what led up to her victory — we're talking a victory filled with death-defying, vertigo-ensuing, mid-air suspension tricks. Laid back and natural, Kaitlyn dished to the team everything from her signature snowboarding move, must-have snack, and of course, how literally, the sky is the limit.

Marie Claire: Why snowboarding and how did you initially get involved in it?

Kaitlyn Farrington: I started skiing when I was three. My older sister switched over to snowboarding and you always want to follow your older siblings so I made the switch to snowboarding when I was 11 or 12. I got into competing when I was in high school because one of my friends was on the Sun Valley snowboarding team. I used to ride with her all the time so she just said, "Kaitlyn, why don't you join the team with me, we get to ride with all these guys and have a good time, we have a crew!" I ended up joining the Sun Valley snowboarding team and started competing.

MC: What are some of your signature moves?

KF: I think one of my favorite moves is an "alley-oop backside 540", which is something I started doing a couple years ago. It's just a trick that is so fun for me to do. I think I am one of the only girls that does it so I really think it separates me from the other girls— it's one of my favorite tricks to do.

MC: Advice for girls that want to pursue a male dominated sport?

KF: For me the sky is the limit — if you want to do something, you can do it. If you put your mind at anything, if you have the passion, and if you stick with it, you can get there.

MC: Have you had any push back? Sports in general have been mainly male dominated, is there is memory where you say eff that and just go for it?

KF: When I was younger, I was a tomboy and wanted to be a part of the guys club. It was fun for me to go snowboarding. And, there are so many cute boys in snowboarding, I was like "Oh, I do it for the dudes!" which was our joke in Sun Valley. We used to say "Kaitlyn is only along because she meets at all these guys." But really it's fun—women's halfpipe snowboarding is growing so much and so quickly that it is fun to be in the mix and be somebody who is pushing a sport forward like that.

MC: Do you think that the men and women in all sports should be judged equally?

KF: In snowboarding we're all judged equally, we all get the same amount of prize money, and everything is equal. I think for every sport it should be that way because we're doing the same things the guys are—we are putting ourselves out there.

MC: So, you grew up on a ranch? I understand your father had to sell some of the cattle to fund your snowboarding competitions.

KF: I grew up on a ranch in Sun Valley and it was really fun. I was a farm girl and I used to barrel race! I used to say "Dad, I'm hurt, I hurt my knee, I hurt my wrist!" My dad would say, "put it on a list Kaitlyn." I feel like it made me stronger as a person because I was out on a ranch getting my butt kicked, getting bucked off horses and getting stepped on by horses. Also helping my dad feeding all of the farm animals even though I didn't want to, it was still something that I had to do. It definitely mad me a stronger person.

When I started snowboarding, and going to bigger contests, we started selling cows to fund my snowboarding because it was so expensive and that was our way of making it work. So we just sold cows. And now that I went to the Olympics and won the gold medal, I don't think my dad is bummed out that we had to sell the cows.

MC: Any weird superstitions or customs that you wear or do before?

KF: My friend had dreadlocks which she cut off this year. She gave me one at the beginning of the season which I call my "shreadlock." I put it in my pocket and now I just can't ride without it.

MC: What do you fuel up with?

KF: Really anything, I'm not picky about food.

MC: Anything that you missed while you were away that you're happy you came back to?

KF: I missed potato chips. We were staying at this hotel and we had cooks with us but we didn't have any potato chips. When I came back, it was the first thing I bought in the airport— I was like "I need some of these!"

More from Marie Claire:

Meet Team USA's Women's Snowboarding Team

Jamie Andersen Wins Our Hearts - We'd Tinder in the Olympic Village, Too

Snowboarder Sarka Pancochova Splits Helmet After Nasty Crash on Slopestyle Course

Balaclava-clad and armed with guitars, feminist group Pussy Riot performed a 40-second "punk prayer" in Moscow's Cathedral of Christ the Savior — an act against the oppressive Russian government that would enrage a nation and result in prison time.

Over a six month period, director Maxim Pozdorovokin went to Moscow to film the trial and conduct interviews with officials and Pussy Riot's family members. His documentary, whose premier was banned in Russia, digs deep into the lives of Pussy Riot members, often including footage of the group sitting in a glass cage throughout their trial. Vilified by the Russian press, Pozdorovokin sheds a different light on Pussy Riot — behind their brightly colored masks and behind the government's glass cage. We spoke with Pozdorovokin about the significance of Pussy Riot's acts and what they mean to Russia, human rights, and women.

Marie Claire: What's Pussy Riot's feminist agenda?

Maxim Pozdorovkin: There isn't just a feminist agenda, they also have a political agenda — they are basically trying to transform society and to come up with an alternative kind of protest strategy to make people listen, to help build a more humane and just society for their children for their friends, family, and everyone else. They were revolutionary in a very real sense of what they wanted to change, change the place where they live and for the better and since the release now, they are working on human rights programs called Justice Zone which is focused on researching prison conditions in Russia.

MC: The opening scene when member Nadia Tolokinikova explains the meaning of "Pussy Riot" to the interrogator locked me right in. She's so forward, calm, yet strikes hard with her point — it's an inspiring moment. Have you gotten the same response from viewers?

MP
: My favorite thing about the Pussy Riot movie is especially when high school age or young woman watch the film — it's incredible because they are so enamored by the confidence and the eloquence of it. Making the film, that was the main idea to let Pussy Riot speak as much as possible.

MC: What happened in Moscow with officials banning the film?

MP:I just came back from Moscow two weeks ago and the film was banned there officially by the government. It was very funny because they [Russian officials] wrote in response to the ban that "the art is supposed to fix the world" and that "Pussy Riot doesn't do anything of that nature."

MC: How was it attending the Pussy Riot trial?

MP: Being at the trial was one of the most surreal experiences of my life. I was really fortunate to be able to obtain some of the trial footage in which the camera man kept on rolling even before the trial started. When you see the girls talking among themselves, that material was such a window into what they were going through. They realized then that you could make a present tense film about what was happening and hopefully demystify some of the coverage in the west and in Russia and find a middle path that's more true.

MC: How did the Russian press cover it?

MP: The Russian press is different because [the government oversees everything], which vilified Pussy Riot and were incredibly against them, which probably played a large part in shaping an overall negative public opinion of them. Most of the liberal Moscow press and newspapers were all very much for Pussy Riot and glorified them. The Russian media sort of flips between federal media and liberal media.

MC: The channels were very anti-Pussy Riot, even the presenters was anti-Pussy Riot.

MP: One of the greatest parts that didn't make it into the film was the footage from the cathedral, and there's a freeze frame on Nadia kicking her leg up so it is a freeze frame on her crotch, and then this deep, masculine voiceover, "People what shall we do?" That is how the segment ended right before the public talk show debate that you see in the film

MC: What is your personal stance on Pussy Riot? What do you think of them?

MP: We tried to be fair to the different sides of the story and all of the varying opinions in the documentary. For me, I come from the same background as them — both in terms of interest, performance art, punk rock, radical art, and Russian avant garde, and so I feel we're a bit of the same generation. We have similar political views too — I'm interested in the idea of bringing theatre into life so in that sense I support them, but would I do it? I'm not sure, I don't think so. I know that they aren't motivated by religious reason. The more I know about something, the more I work on something, the less capable I am of making a judgment on the subject in any way, positive or negative.

MC: The charges stated that they were inappropriately clothed while performing on a church altar and that's a huge reason why they went to prison. Do you really think that is the real reason why they were sent to jail?

MP: It was this idea of a "public spanking" and making an example of them. That's when there was this mass rally against them — people were hoping that these three woman would apologize, demean themselves, cry and beg for forgiveness and then, they probably would have been let off. The fact is that Pussy Riot firmly believes they had the right to do what they . They apologized for possibly offending people, but they believed they had a right to voice their opinions. They felt the charges should have resulted with an administrative violation that deserved a fine and not charged as a hate crime, which is a greater accusation.

MC: What is the feminist atmosphere in Russian right now? I understand that Russia was one of the first European powers that gave women the right to vote.

MP: Oh yes. That's one of the interesting things about Russia is that they never had a second wave of the feminist movement and it is true that during the first years after the revolution it became the first European county where women had the right to vote. The act of abortion and reproductive health was available, and it became a lot easier for woman to divorce from their husbands. Then what became associated with the second wave of feminism, never really took place in Russia and so as a result, it remains a deeply patriarchal society

MC: What does the general public of Russia think of Pussy Riot?

MP: After the trial and after the punk performance it was overall very negative, largely because they were vilified on national television. People didn't understand the political nature and some found it to be bad taste. In Russia, and formerly socialist countries, the idea of punishing people for civil disobedience and hooliganism and giving jail sentences is very real — that was commonly practiced and they [Pussy Riot] were sentenced to two years. That wasn't a surprise really for many people.

MC: It was interesting when you interviewed the parents because one of the parents straight out said what Pussy Riot was doing was, "very bad."

MP: The film for me is very much about generational conflict as well as political conflict. Pussy Riot represents millennials—making themselves heard by any means necessary. One of the important reasons to have the parents of the Pussy Riot members there was to show this great big generational divide. Masha's mother and Katya's father were very much against what they did. By seeing how cruelly the justice system reacted to Pussy Riot, they understood the point of what their daughters were doing, which they didn't before. This is when the transformation takes place in the film.

MC: Do you think the most effective way to get things done in Russia is by a public art protest?

MP: I think it is an alternative form of protest because what they're trying to do is ultimately confuse the government because the government doesn't know how to react to these things. A lot of times the crimes are strange and confusing petty crimes but the ideological impact and political impact is massive so the whole idea behind Pussy Riot is the idea to make people think differently and provoke debate and conversation.

Get Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer on DVD from Cinedigm on February 11 on Amazon.com.

In her 2010 Ted talk, Sheryl Sandberg focused her conversation on the lack of female leaders. She mentioned "that woman are not making it the top of any profession anywhere in the world", and rattled off statistics regarding the very few women as heads of state, in parliament, and in top positions in the corporate sector. Now, Sandberg has put her money where her mouth is.

The author of Lean In, CEO of Facebook, and all around hustling business woman, Sandberg is now one of the youngest billionaires at only 44. According to The L.A. Times, Sandberg, who owns 12.3 million shares of Facebook, raked in $750 million dollars as the shares closed at $58.51 per share on January 20, 2014. Additionally, she sold $300 million in stock and has royalties from her bestselling book, Lean In.

Sandberg was one of Facebook's first female directors. Previously, she was at Google as Vice President of Global Sales and Online Operations.

And the next stop for Sandberg isn't so suprising — people are pointing to political office.

For now, Sandberg at least has a our vote for being one hell of an inspiring woman. Time for us to follow suit, lean in, and make more money.

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The Unexpected Career Advice

Rachel Washburn is not your average football fan. The Philadelphia Eagles honored the former cheerleader as its "Hometown Hero" Sunday night after she returned home from two tours in Afghanistan as First Lieutenant in the United States Army.

Washburn cheered for the Eagles from 2007-2010 while she attended college at Drexel University. After graduating with an ROTC scholarship, Washburn traded in her Vera Wang-designed sequined uniform for camouflage gear, joining the Army's Cultural Support team.

"The Cultural Support Team was an initiative created by the military to fulfill a tactical gap in Afghanistan, given the cultural restrictions," Rachel told the Philadelphia Eagles website. "The Special Operations operators are not able to engage the female population, so they recruited females in the military to fill that gap. We could be their voice during missions for engagement to ensure security on objectives, and we could help search and secure the females and the children during missions."

During Washburn's second tour, she served as a platoon leader of an Army intelligence unit.

The Eagles' director of cheerleading, Barbara Zaun, called Washburn the epitome of the "American Hero," and said Sunday night served as a way to thank the former cheerleader for her service.

Washburn's interest in the armed forces stemmed from her father, who was a pilot in the Army and Air Force. He nominated his daughter for the recognition. Though she moved mutliple times throughout her childhood, Washburn's interest in the armed forces did not waver. She considers Philadelphia her hometown.

First Job: In high school, I persuaded my dad and the other doctors in his Indiana complex to ditch their expensive lawn-care service and pay me to cut the grass. It was an easy job, and I could tan at the same time.

Best Career Advice: Don't follow in someone else's footsteps. Create your own. It takes courage, confidence, and maybe a little risk, but that's what finding success is all about.

Morning Routine: At 2:30 a.m., the alarm goes off, with two backup alarms set just in case. That leaves 25 minutes to shower, throw on clothes, and head out. I'm at the office by 3:15.

Go-To Breakfast: Oatmeal with a little brown sugar, raisins, granola, and peanut butter. Don't knock it till you've tried it.

Fitness Regimen: I've recently gotten into Spinning. Working out has become about much more than just staying fit. It is the absolute best stress reliever and biggest help in getting to bed on time.

Blackberry or iPhone: Both. I love the iPhone for taking pictures and Instagram, but I just can't give up my BlackBerry for e-mail.

Afternoon Pick-Me-Up: I love fruit Popsicles. They're the perfect sweet treat and can sit in your freezer forever.

When I Punch Out: There's never really "punching out" in news. I leave the office around noon, but my BlackBerry is always by my side.

Twitter Handle: @katebolduan. I also have to give shout-outs to @chriscuomo, @michaelacnn, and @newday.

Reading List: I've long been a fan of Daniel Silva's spy series. When a new book comes out, I download it immediately.

Career Highlight: I'm living it as we speak. I've never worked harder or had more fun than I am right now.

Wish List: Another five minutes to prep for the show, another 30 minutes to read a book, another hour to sleep, and another day in every weekend.

Greatest Weakness: Breakfast cereal. I seem to collect boxes. I just can't get enough.

Left Photo: Christy Turlington Burns (Credit: Kasia Meador); Right: Monique Villa (Credit: Courtesy of Subject)

Do you remember your favorite toy as a child? Your first day at school? Your first love? The moment you clearly felt you'd become an adult?

Many young girls will never have any of those memories. As of today, the International Day of the Girl Child, around 250 million of them live on less than $2 a day. They don't go to school. They've never seen a doctor. In many cases, they're married before they turn 15 and many die from childbirth complications.

Adolescent girls are not children, but they're not quite adults. That makes them particularly vulnerable, powerless and at risk of different forms of exploitation. They are a category on their own, with very specific needs that global policy makers and the international humanitarian community must identify, understand and tackle appropriately.

So far, this hasn't happened. Adolescent girls have notably been left out of the Millennium Development Goals agenda which, while successfully targeting the improvement of healthcare standards for women and children, has failed to address crucial issues regarding teenagers. In the eyes of those driving development, an adolescent girl is invisible.

There are plenty of 'invisible girls' around the word: 50% of Tanzania's population is under the age of 15; 30% of the demographic of the entire Middle East is between the age of 15 and 29; and in India, more than half the nation is under 25. This is the largest youth generation in history. Its potential is unrivalled, yet left completely untapped. Worst, this category is now at risk.

Very rarely is contraceptive promotion targeted to the specific needs of young girls. Standard family planning for adult women is implemented instead. The unfortunate result is a rise in HIV infections and sexually transmitted diseases, along with 86 million unintended pregnancies, almost half of which lead to abortion. Three million of such abortions are unsafe, and are a leading cause of maternal mortality.

Nearly 10% of all girls in low-income countries are mothers before they turn 16. They are five times more likely to die in childbirth than women aged 20; their bodies are just not ready for pregnancy. Yet in African countries - where half of all births are to adolescent girls - sexual and reproductive health services tend to focus exclusively on married women.

Violence against girls continues to be one of the most pressing challenges the world faces. Nearly half of all recorded sexual assaults worldwide are against girls aged 15 or younger, but very little has been done by the international community to create the right framework for these young victims to come forward, so justice can be enforced. As a result, the vast majority of violent crimes against girls go completely unreported.

How can we turn things around before it's too late? We must start with the girls.

Teenage girls must be listened to and taken seriously. It's time for the international development community to identify them as a priority target, one that must be consulted when implementing and evaluating new programs and services. The top-down approach has failed too often.

Girls must be the focus of targeted funding. But for that to happen, they must be properly identified first. Data must be compiled and analyzed in a much smarter way, classifying people not only by sex, but also by very specific age segments (10-14, 15-19). Failure to do so will result in ineffective programs, and further waste of aid money.

Sexual violence against girls must be increasingly addressed at both international and national levels. There is a chronic data deficit worldwide, as victims often don't report rape. Even in countries such as the UK, only 15% of all victims of rape come forward.Much more has to be done to reassure young girls that justice is firmly on their side, preventing them from falling into the trap of self-blame.

Countries that don't meet their obligations in enforcing the rule of law must be held accountable. Perception polls are a good to way to start, especially when data is lacking. The latest expert poll on women's rights by the Thomson Reuters Foundation showed India to be the most dangerous country for women within the G20. The finding came six months before the infamous Delhi gang rape, and has since been used extensively by activists to demand change.

Education, however, must top all priorities. Placing girls in a safe learning environment means reducing their chances of being sexually or economic exploited, or married off as child brides. Giving girls the right skills means making sure they enter adulthood as active citizens, with more choice in life. It's a matter of human rights, but also an investment that could solve global challenges. On average, 70% of every woman's salary is spent directly on her family. This has obvious positive consequences for society at large.

It is estimated that just one additional year of secondary schooling can boost girls' future earnings by 15-25%. In practical terms, that means that if girls in Nigeria had the same employment rate as boys, the country would add $13.9 billion annually to the economy. In Kenya, this would add $27 billion to the national GDP. In India, 4 million adolescent illiterate mothers translate into a loss of over $383 billion in potential lifetime income.

There are tipping points in history that must be exploited. And the tipping point for gender seems closer than ever. But to trigger real change, we must be strategic and tackle the root of the problem, not just the symptoms. The main obstacle to girls' empowerment – from access to healthcare, to safety and education – lies in the many discriminatory social norms embedded within their respective communities.

We know that cultural change is the hardest to harness, but with the active involvement of committed governments at a national level, and with the active participation of men, it can happen. The recent progress in the fight against female genital mutilation in Kenya is evidence that the backing of national governments is essential and can create wide-scale victories. When men see women leaders within their communities they understand the importance of education for their daughters.

Our tipping point is now. It's time to take action. It's time to make a radical shift, to start seeing girls not as vulnerable or as a liability, but as potential leaders. It's time to see girls for who they are: the driving force of their generation, one poised to bring real social change.

Women's access to healthcare is one of the themes at the forthcoming Trust Women Conference held in London on December 3-4. The event is organized by the Thomson Reuters Foundation in partnership with the International New York Times.

Malala Yousafzai, an education and women's rights activist from Pakistan, is wise beyond her years and has even left the uber talkative Jon Stewart speechless. She is also the favorite to win the 2013 Nobel Peace Prize. The following inspirational quotes from Malala are just some of the reasons why we think she'll win:

1. "When someone tells me about Malala, the girl who was shot by the Taliban – that's my definition for her – I don't think she's me. Now I don't even feel as if I was shot. Even my life in Swat feels like a part of history or a movie I watched. Things change. God has given us a brain and a heart which tell us how to live." — The Guardian

2. "Education is the power terrorists fear most." — Christian Science Monitor

3. "In Pakistan when we were stopped from going to school, at that time, I realized that education is very important and education is the power for women. And that's why the terrorists are afraid of education. They don't want women to get education because then women will become more powerful." — Christian Science Monitor

4. "The terrorists thought that they would change my aims and stop my ambitions, but nothing changed in my life except this: Weakness, fear and hopelessness died. Strength, power and courage was born." — The Washington Post

5. "If you hit a Talib, then there would be no difference between you and the Talib, You must not treat others with cruelty. … You must fight others through peace and through dialogue and through education." — The Daily Show

6. "I have a new dream … I must be a politician to save this country. There are so many crises in our country. I want to remove these crises." — Class Dismissed

7. "I think of it often and imagine the scene clearly. Even if they come to kill me, I will tell them what they are trying to do is wrong, that education is our basic right" — The New Yorker

8. "Dear friends, on the 9th of October, 2012, the Taliban shot me on the left side of my forehead. They shot my friends too. They thought that the bullets would silence us, but they failed... I raise up my voice – not so that I can shout, but so that those without a voice can be heard." — United Nations Speech

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SHIZA SHAHID WAS getting off a plane in Egypt last October when an earth-shattering message appeared on her phone: Her young friend, Malala Yousafzai, had been shot. Taliban gunmen had targeted the Pakistani teen activist for her views on girls' education. They boarded her school bus and shot her at point-blank range in the head. No one knew if Yousafzai would even survive.

Shahid jumped on a flight to England, where Yousafzai was hospitalized. The two had an emotional reunion at her bedside. "She was so weak, but she was very much herself. She was very strong and being brave and saying, 'I'm OK, I'm OK,'" Shahid recalls.

The two had become friends in 2009, when Yousafzai was just 11 years old and Shahid was a 20-year-old student majoring in international relations at Stanford University. Wise beyond her years, Yousafzai had gained world renown for blogging about her experiences in the Taliban-controlled Swat Valley, where girls were being admonished not to go to school, and Shahid, who grew up in Pakistan, wanted to help. "It was a shocking story," Shahid says. "It was the 21st century … and the Taliban were threatening to ban female education. To me, that was incomprehensible."

She organized a weeklong retreat in Islamabad for Yousafzai and 26 other girls. Once there, they were able to relax, attend plays, and sing Bollywood songs. "[I] just wanted to let these girls leave this war-ravaged society and have some fun," Shahid says. They also met some important female activists—an experience Yousafzai, who suffered hearing loss from the shooting but has no signs of major brain damage, says shaped her activism. "At the camp, I met women who were speaking up for their rights," Yousafzai says. "I saw that I could be a strong, independent woman but still hold on to my traditions and beliefs."

Shahid, now 24, quit her global business consultant job in the United Arab Emirates and spent most of the past year helping Yousafzai manage her new status as an international icon. She accompanied the teen when she gave her groundbreaking speech at the United Nations and helped her with her memoir, I Am Malala (Little, Brown and Company), out this month. She has also just assumed the role of executive director at the Malala Fund, which gives money to activists working to further the cause of girls' education around the globe. (They've already awarded $50,000 to a school near Yousafzai's hometown.)

Shahid says when Yousafzai's parents first asked her to start working with the family full-time, she felt torn. She had just graduated from college and launched her career. But she soon realized there was nothing she'd rather do more. "To help children go to school and find their voice—the way Malala did—to me that's the most fulfilling thing I could be doing right now," Shahid says.

Sophie Hayes was 24 when she went to visit a male friend in Italy — a charming Web designer with a worldly air. She had been friends with him for years, having met him at a club in the British city of Leeds, where she lived and worked in human resources. She saw potential for romance, but instead, he seized her passport, beat her up, and threatened her life and the lives of her twin teen brothers. Then he forced her to help him pay a debt — by selling her body on the streets. Now 31 and living in London, Hayes describes her unthinkable experience in her memoir, Trafficked. To protect herself, she uses a pseudonym and an image of another woman's face.

MARIE CLAIRE: Why did you feel you couldn't run away?

SOPHIE HAYES: Psychological fear is so powerful — it's far more paralyzing than being physically kept. He terrorized me: He strangled me to the point where I almost passed out; he put a gun inside of me. Once he made me choose whether to be attacked with a stick or a knife. He took me to a lake and said if I did anything stupid, that's where I would end up. He was so unpredictable, I never knew what would spark his rage. If I cooked his spaghetti wrong, I could get a beating.

MC: What was it like that first night on the streets?

SH: It was so far removed from my normal life — it was almost like it was happening to someone else. The first time, I was in tears, shaking like crazy. The guy didn't care. There were 10 men that first night, then about 25 a night. The most was 34. I didn't confide in anyone because I didn't know who to trust — I had been told that some of the men would be sent to test me.

MC: How did you escape?

SH: After six months, I was so sick and exhausted, I felt like I physically could not have sex anymore. It felt like someone was putting a burning hot poker inside of me. I stopped eating as well — food was the one thing I could control. One night I collapsed and woke up in a hospital bed. I'm not sure how I got there. I called my parents, and they came and got me.

MC: Did the guy get jailed for human trafficking?

SH: No. I thought he would send someone to kill me if I gave evidence against him. Also, we need better global laws — if a crime occurs in a different country, it's complex and often difficult to prosecute. But he was eventually imprisoned for drugs in Italy, and then for an attempted shooting in England, then was deported to Albania.

MC: What are you doing now?

SH: I've started the Sophie Hayes Foundation to raise awareness about human trafficking. People think it only happens to someone who is poor, someone who had a bad upbringing. It can happen to anyone. And the perpetrator is often someone you love and trust, not a stranger. @sophiehayesfndn

I had one week to choose a new husband. In absolute agony, I felt as if I were already falling to my death—all roads seemed to lead to a hopeless future. Four days before the deadline, I glanced into the mirror before bed—my eyes were sunken and colorless, surrounded by graying, sallow skin. Months of righteous fasting for the failing health of my late husband, Rulon Jeffs, had played havoc on my body, but it was my spirit that felt broken. After years of striving to be a good church member and a good wife—one of 65—to a man chosen for me, I was tired. Trying to look at my options with less fear, I kept coming up against a door I didn't dare open. If I did, I would have to rely on the kindness of the outside world. That thought petrified me, nearly as much as marrying again. I couldn't begin to think of how to live among the wicked, corrupt, ignorant, and unkind people of this world, as outsiders had been described to us since birth.

Wicked … Unkind … Was that really my experience? Memories flooded my mind: neighbors offering sympathy and supplies after my childhood house burned down; a former violin teacher who nurtured my talent; the owner of a stringed-instrument shop who encouraged me to play—I took a long, hard look at all the things that new church leader Warren Jeffs had said were absolutely true that I knew were not. If I was going to leave, I would have to take a chance on that outside world, whatever it held for me.

In the predawn hours of a Sunday morning in 2002, I put a note on my bed for my mom and my sisters. Taking an exit to avoid the cameras and security patrol on the Jeffs' sprawling estate, I pushed the heavy oak door of the mansion quietly behind me until I heard the latch click shut. My heart pounding, I walked as casually as if I were out for a stroll. I made my way around the side, then turned toward the fence. The gates were locked, as I knew they would be. I scaled the tall fence that protected the Jeffs family from "outsiders and wicked apostates." In doing so, I became one of them.

The spikes at the top of the 6-foot-high wrought-iron gate I had to slip over were tricky to manage in my long skirt, yet nothing compared to the half-mile walk I had to trek to meet Ben, who would meet me in his brother's truck. Technically, he was my grandson, as he was the 19-year-old grandson of Rulon and one of my sister-wives. He had shown kindness to me, telling me not to be forced into doing anything I didn't want to do. Without him, all was lost. I had no escape route and no time for a new plan. Between the horror stories I knew from the inside, and with the police in Warren's pocket (God's law was above man's law, we were told, and law enforcement in our area was either the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints or affiliated with the FLDS), I could not win on my own.

My heart pumped wildly as we passed our neighbors' homes on the way to Highway 59, which would draw us away from Utah toward Las Vegas. In the silence of the growing light, I stole furtive glances at Ben, whom I barely knew. I had just left everything and nearly everyone I'd ever known, and so had he. We were headed to Oregon, where my brother Cole lived. He had been kicked out of the FLDS six years earlier when he tried to shield our younger siblings from a beating.

For the two days before the escape, I had attended every meal and class so it wouldn't occur to Warren that anything was different. It had been agonizing deciding what to pack besides my violin. Carefully, I had selected only a few favorite long dresses, my photos and scrapbooks, and my sewing machine and boxes of material—besides music lessons, sewing would be my only way to make a living on the outside. I'd had to sneak the most important items out without being seen, then hide them somewhere off the Jeffs' estate. Though neither a liar nor a thief, I'd had to steal my own belongings away to claim my very life.

I had worked for so many years to be an example to my family and my community, and that thought made me want to stop and go back. But the knowledge of my destiny under Warren brought reason. When my letter of explanation was discovered in the light of day, Warren was adamant in the order he issued to the community: Find us before nightfall "to save that girl's soul before she commits adultery." Many of Warren's brothers and several members of the God Squad were sent on a massive manhunt for us, scouring Colorado City, St. George, Cedar City, and environs. As the former Prophet's widow, I knew far too much about the inner workings of the Jeffs family and the true undertakings of the FLDS. I was a dangerous liability to the new Prophet.

People at rest stops and restaurants stared curiously at our attire and my hairstyle. A woman's hair, usually worn piled high atop her head, was her crowning glory. As Mary and another woman did to Christ in Luke in the New Testament, a wife will wash her husband's feet, anoint them with oil, then dry them with her long hair. That's why an FLDS woman is never to cut her hair. The FLDS bought hairspray by the caseful.

Once in Oregon, I was paralyzed by fear of the outside world. I had no idea how to do my hair, how to dress, and what social rituals to follow. The only clothes I owned were the long prairie dresses of the FLDS dress code, and I continued poufing my hair. When Cole took me shopping, with literally no idea what to choose, I ended up with a jogging suit and a shirt in the shocking and once-forbidden shade of red. (Rulon said it signaled a proud and immoral woman.) Afterward, at a hair salon, I blanched as yards and yards of my rich brown hair hit the ground. Even though it felt so foreign and naked, I thought perhaps I could live with short hair. The next day, it didn't look anything like it had the day before. Not only was my hair gone, it now looked ugly and made me feel that way inside. For days, I cried in private, feeling homesick and missing my mother and sisters and friends desperately.

In the meantime, Ben and I needed to start earning money immediately. Two weeks and countless applications later, we both got jobs at restaurants. Everything was new, thrilling, and sobering to me. Excitedly, I called my mother, anxious to share with her what I was learning in life and through books. While she was glad to know I was safe, she told me I was trading my salvation for material goods. Warren had warned that anyone who associated with either of us would be considered traitorous and deeply immoral. Our families were not to contact us—their eternal salvation was at stake—so she was risking everything by the very act of communicating with me.

When I watched television, I was surprised and often scandalized by how different it was from when we were kids and allowed only certain programs (Little House on the Prairie, Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, and Sesame Street until it, like cartoons, was deemed idolatrous for imitating God's creations). One day, Cole insisted that I watch a movie called The Truman Show. The main character, Truman Burbank, was adopted as a baby by a television studio. Every important person in his life is an actor, every part of his life a set—but he doesn't know it. Whenever he wants something the production team can't provide, he's told that it's just not available. He has inklings things aren't right and finally realizes that his life is a total lie—set up for the camera. When Truman finally makes it to the edge of a painted canvas and recognizes it for what it is, he walks off the set and into his new life.

The movie was a mirror of my own life. Before every decision I'd ever made, I'd asked myself, "What would the Prophet have me say? What would the Prophet have me do?" For every question, there had been an appropriate, programmed answer. I was never allowed my own opinion; I had never developed the ability to choose. All of my people were like that, too. I gave myself permission to look deeply at polygamy in a way I never had before. Nothing seemed holy about the structure that must be in place for polygamy to work. Why would God put a roughly equal number of males and females on the earth if He wanted a polygamous society? This structure meant that women don't get the time, affection, and validation they so crave. And because only a select number of male leaders are righteous enough to receive multiple wives, not only do an extraordinarily high number of young men get kicked out, but the marriageable girls become increasingly younger as demand intensifies.

Throw all of these factors into a climate in which the leaders make the people feel as if they can never question those leaders because that means questioning God Himself, then one has a recipe for spiritual abuse. Every way that I examined it, it was neither healthy nor holy. Why could no one see it? Because they would not—unless, like me, they were denied the good graces of Warren Jeffs. All I knew was that I did not want that perverse dictator running my show ever again.

POSTSCRIPT: Rebecca Musser, now 37, was the key state witness in the 2008 trials of Warren Jeffs and several FLDS leaders. In 2011 Jeffs, who counted a 12- and 15-year-old among his reported 80 wives, was convicted of sexual assault and aggravated sexual assault of a minor and is serving a life sentence plus 20 years in a Texas prison. Musser, a motivational speaker and the founder of Claim Red Foundation, which supports victims of human trafficking, lives in Idaho with her two children. The FLDS, based in Arizona and Utah, maintains a membership estimated between 6,000 and 10,000.

Excerpted from The Witness Wore Red: The 19th Wife Who Brought Polygamous Cult Leaders to Justice by Rebecca Musser with M. Bridget Cook. Copyright © 2013 by Rebecca Musser. Reprinted by permission of Grand Central Publishing. All rights reserved.

From 9 to 5, Jennifer Tress is a strategic planning consultant for the federal government in Washington, D.C. in her off-hours, she's a competitive storyteller who has gained a following for her wry, self-deprecating wit. A book of her stories, You're Not Pretty Enough (Createspace), is being published this month. But Tress never dreamed her most famous tale—the one that inspired the book's title—would go viral, kick-starting a campaign that's changing how women see themselves.

Marie Claire: So tell us where "You're not pretty enough" came from.

Jennifer Tress: It was something my ex-husband said to me during a fight. He had been really distant, so I asked him, "Why are you treating me this way?" And he said, "Jen, sometimes i think you're not pretty enough for me." Eventually, I found out he was having an affair with an intern at his office, this blonde, big-breasted California girl. It made me think for the first time, Wait, was I pretty enough? Even if you have strong self-esteem—which I do—when your spouse says that to you, it's a heart-piercing sort of thing.

MC: How did you take back that hurtful comment?

JT: In 2010, 13 years after my divorce, I started getting into the live storytelling scene in D.C. I thought about the stories I wanted to tell, the defining moments in my life, and that was a big one. This is a story people really connected with. They would see me and say, "You're the 'not pretty enough' girl, right?" Then when I went to create a website to publish my stories, I chose yourenotprettyenough.com, thinking it would be a funny joke for people who knew that story.

MC: And what happened once you launched your website?

JT: Because I had set up analytics, I could see how people found me online. And I realized that so many people—thousands every month—were reaching my site after Googling phrases such as "Am I pretty enough?" It was startling. At first I thought, Why are you asking the Internet? It's like asking a Magic 8 Ball! But that sparked something in me. I wanted to take action.

MC: What did you do?

JT: I decided to turn the site into a support and discussion group for women on self-esteem issues. I wanted it to be a conversation about empowerment: Let's talk about how to get out of that space where you start questioning whether you're pretty enough. I conducted surveys and videotaped women's responses. I asked questions such as, "When was the last time you didn't feel pretty enough?" Most came back saying, "Literally 30 seconds ago, or at least today." And I asked people, "Specifically, what do you do to get out of feeling that way?" One of my favorite stories came from a woman who talked about how she always used to untag herself in Facebook photos because she thought she looked overweight. She said, "I had to ask myself: Do I look different in person than I do on Facebook? No, I don't. People know what I look like and they like me anyway." I think it's especially important to spread messages like that to young women. This fall, I head off on a tour of college campuses that will continue through spring 2014.

MC: What has this experience taught you about women and self-esteem? Is the problem getting better or worse?

JT: I think it's getting better. And the more we see a variety of people represented and accepted in pop culture—think Lena Dunham—and in our daily lives, and the more we talk about what that means and how we feel about it, that's when change happens. @jdtress

Picture this: You are raped by a colleague, then your boss gets to decide if the case moves forward — assuming you report the crime and risk your career. That's how it works in the military, and it's a system that a fiery team of women in Congress has vowed to change.

An estimated 26,000 people were sexually assaulted in the service last year, up from about 19,300 in 2010, according to a Pentagon survey. Yet only 3,374 cases were reported last year — and fewer than 10 percent of those went to trial.

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) says the system is in desperate need of a fix. "Victims feel they can't get justice," she says. "They fear retaliation." This spring, she and 27 bipartisan senators and representatives proposed a bill that would reform the military legal system by appointing trained prosecutors — not officers in the victim's chain of command — to decide whether serious crimes go to trial.

Military brass objected, claiming that the current system promotes "order and discipline." At press time, the future of Gillibrand's plan was in doubt, but she vowed to continue battling for justice in the military ranks.

Other women on the Hill have been in on the fight, too: Senators Claire McCaskill (D-MO) and Susan Collins (R-ME) have pushed to strip generals of power to overturn assault convictions. Two female war veterans in the House, Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) and Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI), also have spoken out for reform, as has Jackie Speier (D-CA), who has proposed three House bills aimed at curbing assault.

"Women have taken on this issue with passion," Gillibrand says. "And they will drive us across the finish line." It won't be easy. Says Speier: "Dwight Eisenhower warned about going up against the military industrial complex. We need to stay very firm and very committed to this task."

While it's standard practice for political candidates to release books that tout their ideological and community-based bona fides, New York City Council Speaker and mayoral hopeful Christine Quinn, 46, has written a memoir that covers some very personal ground, including painful memories of losing her mother to breast cancer as a teen, subsequent recoveries from disordered eating and binge drinking, and her coming out to her loving but skeptical father.With Patience and Fortitude (William Morrow) is a self-portrait that complicates Quinn's image as a tough-talking New York dame.

MARIE CLAIRE: How does your potential "firstness" influence your campaign strategy?
CHRISTINE QUINN: I'm me! I'm Irish and I'm a woman and a lesbian. That's just who I am. If you spend too much time thinking about how your gender or sexual orientation affects you, it takes up an important part of your brain, as opposed to just going out there and doing what you love to do.

MC: Your identity might affect the way you're received. For example, The New York Times recently ran a piece about your hot temper, a quality that might not have been remarked upon were you male.
CQ: Look, I am a very pushy broad, and I say that with great pride. My late mother was abundantly clear: My sisters and I were to figure out what we were to do with our lives and we were to do it exceptionally well. The most significant thing about my outlook has been the effect of my mother dying when I was a teenager. I don't believe that you have an open-ended amount of time, so I push really hard.

MC: When the Times ran the story about your anger, I wondered: Is impoliteness a prerequisite for the job of mayor of New York?
CQ: I'm polite! Being pushy and being impolite are two different things. I always say "thank you"; I always say "please."

MC: Your memoir is revealing about your sexual awakening, your struggle with bulimia, a stint in rehab. Why expose so many vulnerabilities going into a political race?
CQ: If a young woman can read this book and see that a challenging childhood can lead to an amazing life beyond her wildest dreams—that's what the story of my life is. I'd also like to share the message with girls and young women that they need to let go of the goal of perfection.

MC: When you met your wife, attorney Kim Catullo, she had no interest in going out with a politician because she's so private. How does she feel about this campaign?
CQ: Yes, Kim told the friend who set us up on a blind date that she would never go out with a politician. Now she worries sometimes—that the things I push to
do will be difficult. But Kim is a thousand percent immovably supportive of me.

MC: Your dad transformed from someone who didn't want to acknowledge your homosexuality to someone who marches in the Pride parade. Did his evolution on gay rights mirror the nation's?
CQ: My father's evolution is something he deserves an amazing amount of credit for. It also speaks to the power of people sharing who they are with the people they know and love, and how that has created an enormous change.

MC: You write that as a kid, "biographies of people who changed the world were everything to me." Do you feel like your becoming mayor of New York could make an impact on the world?
CQ: Where New York leads, the country follows. Second to the president of the United States, the bully pulpit of the mayor of the city of New York is the biggest and strongest. So what we do right around affordable housing, reducing unemployment, reducing homelessness—those are going to be successes that I hope will resonate through every city in America.

Yoani Sánchez hurries through the United Nations headquarters, her long hair swinging around her waist. Wearing dangly earrings and no makeup, she has the look of a 1960s flower child. But she's far from mellow. One of the world's most influential bloggers, she's in New York City as part of a risky 12-nation tour, openly criticizing the communist regime in Cuba, where she lives. In her country, that kind of talk can get a person jailed.

A day ago she was on Capitol Hill. Tonight she heads to Amsterdam. Now she makes her way across the labyrinthine U.N. compound for a speech. "I want to talk about the real Cuba," she says in Spanish through a translator. "Not what you read in magazines, where it's an island where everybody drinks rum or everyone is in military fatigues."

Sánchez, 37, has been telling the world about life in closed-off Cuba since 2004, when she launched an online magazine and then a blog called Generation Y, where she rattled off thoughts on everyday Cuban existence and critiqued Fidel Castro's government for squashing free elections and free speech. Although Cuban authorities are notorious for imprisoning dissenting writers, they didn't attempt to shut down Sánchez's blog because "the government greatly underestimated the Internet," she says.

Left unchecked, Generation Y rocketed out to computer screens around the planet, reaching millions of readers eager for rare frank dispatches from the island. In 2008, Time named Sánchez one of the world's 100 most influential people. Then she interviewed President Barack Obama for her blog. Her newfound global superstar status made it difficult for authorities to silence her. "When they realized the virtual world was so powerful, it was too late. I had already become recognized. I had a protective shield."

Not that she hasn't suffered consequences: Sánchez says she has been arrested four times, including one incident that left her with a knocked-out tooth. She says she is regularly "slandered in the state-run media." Her family is "radioactive," says Sánchez, who is married to a journalist and has a teenage son. "We have people who won't come near us" out of fear, she says. "We've lost many friends."

And yet, Sánchez doesn't quit. Her world tour, made possible through support from human-rights groups and universities, marks the first time the blogger has left her native country in a decade. Officials denied her an exit visa some 20 times in the past few years, she says. Recently, President Raúl Castro loosened visa rules, allowing her to set forth in February. Now, after criticizing the Castro regime around the globe, she worries about what awaits her back home. (At press time, she was scheduled to return to Cuba in May.)

Sánchez dates her idealism back to when she was 5. Thousands were fleeing Cuba amid an economic slump, boarding boats in the Mariel Harbor with the government's blessing. Sánchez remembers looking down from the balcony of her Havana tenement and seeing a furious mob harassing a family that wanted to leave. "They were shouting, 'Down with traitors! Long live Fidel!'" she says. The nightmarish image stayed with her.

"I don't consider myself a person who is especially strong," she says, when asked what drives her. "Strength comes from my family, my child, and the grandchildren I don't yet have. One day I will have to answer when my grandchildren ask: 'What did you do when there was a dictatorship in your country?'"

I know it's not the best time to leave our home in the city of Hargeisa, Somalia, and make the journey 480 miles southeast. My NGO (nongovernmental organization) keeps a field office there, next to a dangerous border called the Green Line separating territories partially held by the Islamists from those still controlled by the official Somali government.

The Green Line is invisible, known best by the people it divides, never included on official maps of Somalia. I've had my eye on the violence down there for a long time. It isn't something I actively fear; I watch it the way a farmer keeps an eye on the horizon.

My concern is getting caught in the crossfire of any one of the countless acts of clan warfare or random hooliganism that plague southern Somalia and keep it in a state of general anarchy. For potential robbers, Westerners may represent a chance at fast money. This is a part of the world where hardly anyone has any, with an average per capita income of $600.

My NGO's plan is for me to fly from Hargeisa to North Galkayo, where, for safety, the excursion from North to South is to be made in a three-car caravan. The security caravan is our standard mode of travel, but what my colleagues have neglected to tell me is that there is a kidnapping threat for expats in the area, and that our destination is situated about a third of a mile from a known pirate den. The very fact that it is unsafe is what maintains my concerns for the children who have no choice but to live there. Every time I think of quitting, I consider the lives we're saving with this mine awareness program and the mutilations we can prevent in the future with this work. Six months earlier, a busload of women and children was bombed on the same road we'll be using.

My colleague, Poul Thisted, and I bring along a few small workbags holding computers and training materials, plus one small personal bag apiece. He's already left, so I grab a U.N. flight of several hours to the town of Galkayo. We spend the night at the NGO guesthouse just to the north side of the Green Line, in the safer zone. From there I send my husband, Erik, a text message that will always stick in my memory: "If I get kidnapped on this trip, will you come and get me?" He responds, "Of course I will come but nothing will happen!! Make sure it doesn't, OK? Love you too much to even think about that, so make sure you will be supersafe."

Once our training session finishes, our convoy arrives to whisk us away from the southern office and back to our guesthouse. The distance isn't far, maybe 20 minutes of driving time. And so at 3 p.m. on October 25, I toss my small bag into the Land Cruiser and get into the backseat while Poul climbs into the passenger seat in front of me. Abdirizak, our locally hired security manager, climbs into the backseat behind the driver, someone new. After spending the entire training session eager to be anywhere but there, it feels wrong to second-guess things now. It's a routine ride for about 10 minutes.

The attack begins as if an umpire has just blown a starting whistle. A large car roars up beside us and careens to a stop. Men with AK-47s encircle our car, pounding on the doors, shouting over each other in Somali. My heart goes straight to my throat. Adrenaline sends a jolt of fear from head to toe. The terror feels like heat, like we are suddenly being roasted alive inside this car. I hear a little version of my own voice in the back of my skull chanting: This is really bad this is really bad this is really bad. Two Somali men outfitted in Special Protection Unit (SPU) uniforms yank open the doors. They may or may not be real SPU members, in this zone of dubious authority. The men close behind them have gun barrels trained on us. I know nothing in this moment except to make no reaction, avoid doing anything that looks aggressive, but also not to cower. With or without training, every mouse knows to freeze in the presence of vipers.

The attackers leap into the passenger compartment. One pulls open the rear door and grabs Abdirizak, our useless "security manager" from behind the driver's seat. The attacker's face is a tarmac of acne scars, punctuated by the crazed eyes of somebody who has had plenty of khat leaves to chew that day. The stuff is a stimulant in low doses and a mind-bender at higher doses over time. The attacker will later tell me his name is Ali, and he makes a show of beating Abdirizak to the ground to establish superiority. And with that, everything slips into slow motion. Crazy-eyed Ali climbs in next to me with his AK-47 pointed at my head. He is close enough that I can see the weapon's ammo cartridge. My body constricts, moving on its own with the expectation of being shot. The other attacker scrambles through the rear hatch, and our last line of hope for escape collapses when our "this is my first day" driver reveals who he is really working for. He speeds away with us like a furious drunk, slamming us around in the passenger compartment while Ali screams the first English word to us I have heard so far: "Mobile!" (meaning our cell phones) and then, "Thuraya!" (satellite cell phones).

The fact that they immediately rob us actually calms me, a bit. Maybe they're just going to carjack us. Maybe they'll push us out, take the vehicles, the cash, and drive away! A rash of carjackings has recently occurred in nearby Kenya where victims were driven to distant locations and pushed out. So if we're simply being robbed and carjacked, then walking home suddenly sounds like a great way to finish off the day. The vehicle plunges out into the wilderness, slamming over rough roads. All we need is for one hard bump to meet one careless trigger finger, and there we are: dead or maimed in the middle of this horror show.

For a moment, I lock eyes with Poul and silently mouth the words, "What's happening?"

He answers in a soft, grim voice, "We're being kidnapped." Nothing else I know is of any use in this moment. Nothing I can do in my working life is relevant here. The person I am to my loved ones, my husband, my friends, doesn't mean anything. My colleague and I are objects of pursuit, nothing more. The glaring difference between Poul's situation and my own is both simple and deadly. Poul is a 60-year-old Danish male and I'm a 32-year-old American female. Homophobia is dominant here, so Poul has little reason to fear gang rape. But I do. And while the news media here did carry that story of mobs protesting outside the Danish Embassy after the uproar over cartoon images of the Prophet Mohammed, in most neighborhoods there is generally not the same danger in being a Dane as in being an American.

"Money!" Ali now bellows. He gestures to our few pieces of jewelry and shouts something in Somali that we can tell is a command to part with our bling. I start to remove my chunky necklace of costume jewelry, but he sneers and shakes his head. They only want the good stuff. I'm worried about losing my wedding band and a diamond of my mom's that was given to me after her passing. My heart sinks when he confiscates my bag.

Beyond that I can't move. All I can do is struggle to recall anything useful from our pitifully brief hostage training session, which was taken from a larger program called HEIST, for Hostile Environment Individual Safety Training. The HEIST instructors impressed on us the importance of hiding our anger and avoiding any unnecessary conflict. They stressed that attackers will likely be in such an excitable state, they may be provoked into killing even if they don't plan to. The trainers urged everyone to memorize a reliable phone number of someone who would be the right person to receive a "proof of life" phone call. Their reasoning was grimly practical: The only way to aid your own survival in a kidnapping situation is to have a line to a potential ransom source. Your chance for life is your captor's hope for money. I recall the main point of HEIST is to focus on surviving the first 24 hours. After that, survival percentages surge upward. If we can get through the first day, we might have a shot at entering that small golden ratio of people who actually come out of these things alive.

We stop several times and are forced to change into different vehicles. The afternoon bleeds into evening while we go through a process of making a series of stops, one impoverished-looking location after another. Every time we change cars or drivers, armed enforcers hop in carrying huge chains of ammunition around their shoulders. I can only guess that these personnel changes have something to do with various clan members guaranteeing safe passage from one contested territory to the next. A greater risk is that if we are spotted by a larger group, we could be kidnapped a second time—maybe by unorganized opportunists and thugs, or perhaps by people convinced they represent the will of their God.

Eventually the kidnappers pull our latest vehicle to a stop. Ali demands that we both get out. Until that moment, sleepy boredom was just beginning to fill me. Now it instantly gives way to a cold rush of fear. "Walk!" Ali shouts, pointing out into the open scrubland. With that, he stomps off and disappears. After that, everything is shouted in Somali. There isn't even an occasional English word to clarify a meaning, but the language difference doesn't shield us from knowing what they want of us from one moment to the next. They repeat Ali's order for us to start walking away from the vehicle. I can't keep quiet anymore. Somebody here has to understand my intentions if not my words. "Why?" I cry out, trying to look each man in the eye. "There's nothing out there!" Now I'm crying, but no tears are allowed. Everybody out here has a broken heart; what they don't have is money. To me, this new development has all the earmarks of a prelude to an execution. I refuse to go, clinging to my spot while the men scream orders. Every one of them appears loaded on khat. I feel desperate to stall them for no more reason than the sheer terror of the moment. I point at the small suitcase they took from me. "There is a little black bag inside and I need to bring it with me. Medicine!" I cry, pointing at the bag. I have to regulate my thyroid levels with regular medication. Without it, the wheels tend to come off as far as the rest of my physical system goes: deep fatigue, rising inflammation, obviously a long-term problem and none of this is related to the moment, but I'm grasping at shadows. Finally somebody seems to catch on and I'm allowed to remove my small powder bag. There is absolutely nothing I will actually need if we're about to be put to death. But I'll grab at anything to slow this down. I am still too petrified to obey their commands. The moment hangs like a pendulum at the tip of its arc. Then I see movement in the corner of one eye. Poul slips over to me and gently takes my arm. "It's all right, Jessica," he quietly lies. "We have to do what they tell us."

"Poul, no!" I whisper. "We can't go out there! They'll kill us!"

"Jessica, listen … no matter what they have in mind, unless we cooperate we'll have ourselves a fatal confrontation, right here."

Now the only control I have over anything here is to attempt to keep from dissolving into hysterics, if for no other reason than to avoid letting my life end that way. So we walk off into the wilderness. "I'm too young to die," I blurt out to Poul. He gives me a blank look and keeps on walking. I know by panicking this way I must seem weak, but there is nothing I can do about how I feel. I keep my mouth shut from that point on, while my obsessive inner voice switches from reminding me how bad this is to: I'm too young to die, I'm too young to die, repeated in a loop.

They move us farther into the scrub desert. The night air is quickly cooling off. I'm shivering steadily now and can't stop. The darkness is heavy, no moon, no ambient light. The sky is crystal clear and the stars are brilliant, comforting in their familiarity. I'm not wearing boots or sneakers, but at least my heavy sandals are tough enough to stand up to the terrain. A river of small noises follows along with us. People recognize it from war movies. Soldiers call it battle rattle: the sounds of dozens of guns and ammunition belts being carried by dozens of men. There is sharp pain pulsing in both my feet from the ground obstacles, but there is also an odd form of reassurance to that. I'm gasping at life like a fish on the beach, and pain at least is evidence of being alive. This isn't a hallucination in hell; I'm still alive so far.

My blood inches through me like frozen slush. If there's a personal terror more extreme, I hope to never feel it. All I can do now is to keep silently telling myself I'm too young to die. I whisper prayers for mercy, for strength. And then the attackers order us to get down on our knees and turn our backs to them.

The terror of those moments was made more awful by the waiting. I discovered a special form of living hell in that combination of helplessness and terror to be endured while waiting for execution. No doubt the horror of that moment is known to all condemned people. They would surely recognize that sensation of sharp nausea, the loss of fine motor control, the difficulty with balance when smaller support muscles spasm and misfire. Any victim taken by force is subjected to a complicated group of insults to their humanity. Your freedom, well-being, mental state, physical state—they all suddenly mean next to nothing.

I knew these men despised female emotion. It's a common trait in the culture. A woman's emotional plea is regarded as an unfair and dishonest attempt to manipulate circumstances in the female's favor, done without regard to consequences for the male. The emotions themselves are therefore an affront to him: a honeyed attack. So short of jamming my fist into my mouth, I did everything to tamp down my rocketing emotions. I could see nothing there in the darkness, down on my knees, facing the ground. I could sense nearby men surrounding me, some of them standing still, some pacing the ground, all with guns.

When the human body moves beyond the "fight or flight" response, the best thing our ancient instincts can do is prepare the body for grievous injury; pull the blood supply away from extremities and toward the major organs, throwing out one last grab for survival. I felt the massive adrenaline surge contract my muscles so hard they began to seize up.

In most cases these symptoms would immediately be lost to permanent silence with the coming of the end. But the moment hung suspended. Nothing happened. Enough time went by for stabbing knee pains to set in, throbbing with my pulse. My back muscles started to twitch. I tried to pray for help and found that my fear was so intense it dissolved my thoughts into a formless plea for strength.

And then one of the men yelled out, "Sleep!" They pushed us to the ground. "Sleep! Sleep! Sleep!"

I hated the instinctive gratitude that washed over me, but in that moment the word sleep was wonderful. It was a reprieve, and it came across as something close to mercy. It meant for the time being we had permission to exist, to keep breathing. The knife blades and rifle bullets weren't going to be coming for us on this night.

POSTSCRIPT: Jessica Buchanan and Poul Thisted were held for 93 days, during which time Buchanan's health steeply declined. On January 25, 2012, on orders from President Barack Obama, 24 U.S. Navy SEAL special operatives took off from the U.S. military base in Djibouti and parachuted into Somalia to rescue them. Two days later, Buchanan was reunited with her aid worker husband, Erik Landemalm, on a U.S. military base in Italy. Their son, August, was born October 2012. They now live in Virgina.

1. Neera Tanden, 42

President & CEO, Center for American Progress

The Buzz: The former Hillary Clinton consigliere now helms one of the most influential progressive think tanks in Washington. Her goal: broaden the policy conversations around capstone women's issues like abortion and access to contraception to also include work-related initiatives like paid maternity leave and universal preschool.

2. Danielle Crutchfield, 31

Director of Advance & Scheduling, White House

The Buzz: There is no greater commodity in the White House than face time with POTUS. The ultra-organized Seattle native manages every minute of the president's day, whether it's early-morning pickup basketball games or overseas meetings with foreign dignitaries.

3. Ana Navarro, 41

National Politics Editor, politic365.com

The Buzz: The former John McCain adviser and occassional CNN pundit is central to the political scene in ever-important Florida, counting contenders Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio among her friends. She could prove instrumental in helping the GOP communicate a kinder, gentler approach to immigration.

4. Stephanie Schriock, 40

President, Emily's List

The Buzz: Thanks to a slew of eye-popping remarks by several GOP candidates last year, membership in Emily's list, which endorses and fundraises for pro-choice campaigns, quintupled to more than 2 million. On Schriock's agenda this year: electing female mayors in Los Angeles, New York, and Houston.

5. Sanda Fluke, 32

Advocate

The Buzz: The breakout star of last year's election season scored a prime-time slot at the Democratic National Convention after Rush Limbaugh called her a "slut" for supporting free access to birth control under the Affordable Care Act. Now she's leveraging her celebrity to lobby for bills aimed at human trafficking, gender discrimination, and immigration reform.

KATIE "K.T." SCHEER, 33: The Smokejumper

Redding, California

Time on the job: Ten years

Why she loves it: "I don't do desk jobs"

Perk: Four to six months off in the winter and early spring

"I've always loved being outdoors. So I trained to become a smokejumper—we parachute into wilderness areas that can't be reached by regular firefighters and put out fires before they can spread.

I'm the only woman in my crew—only 5 to 10 percent of smokejumpers are female—but I don't mind. Wearing heavy Kevlar suits, we jump from planes as close as possible to a fire. Then the plane throws our cargo—food and water, plus tools like chain saws. As soon as we hit the ground, we cut a line around the perimeter of the fire to contain it. That means we cut the brush and trees out of the way, then dig a trench down to mineral soil. When the fire hits bare earth, there's nothing for it to burn. Depending on the size, jobs can last from half a day to a week.

My parents worry, but I tell them that the odds of getting hit by a car while driving to a fire are probably greater than the odds of getting injured on a jump. Still, I once 'burned out,' which means I landed in the trees but my parachute didn't catch and hold—it collapsed and I fell. Luckily, I just got the wind knocked out of me.

This job is for people who want to push themselves. But there are great rewards. Every time I jump out of a plane, it's a rush." —As told to Melissa Walker

STEFANIE ALCOCER, 38: The Bomb Squad Technician

Los Angeles

Time on the job: Four years

Her motivation: Protecting the city

Dress code: Her bomb suit weighs 80 pounds

"After 13 years with the Los Angeles Police Department on the gang unit and the anti-terrorism and organized crime unit, I beat out 39 other officers for the bomb squad. It's an elite post that requires an intensive year of training. We have a saying: 'In order to beat the bomber, you have to make the bomb.' I built a pipe bomb first; after that, I moved on to an improvised explosive device, or IED, by creating a circuit that led to the explosive, then attaching a timer. Blowing things up gives me an adrenaline bump and always has.

Our squad investigates terrorist threats and meth labs; we dismantle old military weapons; we use explosives to breach doors during hostage situations. Every call is a potential life-threatening event.

Recently, a shipping container with the word bomb spray-painted on the side arrived at the Los Angeles port from China. We called in reinforcements and shut down the port. Wearing our flak jackets and ballistic helmets, the same kind of gear used in The Hurt Locker, my partner and I drilled a hole through the top of the container and directed our bomb-sniffing dog to investigate. When he didn't alert us to anything, we opened the container from a distance with a system of ropes, clamps, and carabiners. We eventually declared it safe. But you never know. One of my first calls was for a copper pipe bomb at UCLA—I rendered that inoperable using a bomb-deactivation robot. If I hadn't, the explosion would have caused serious injury or death.

The majority of calls turn out to be hoaxes, but you can't get complacent. That's how people get hurt." —As told to Whitney Joiner

ILANA SCHAFER, 30: The Disease Detective

Atlanta

Time on the job: Ten months

Risky moments: Visiting outbreak areas

Early education: She trained as a veterinarian

"As an epidemic intelligence service officer at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, I work with rare, contagious, and deadly viruses like Ebola and Marburg. Patients usually develop symptoms such as high fever and severe hemorrhages within a week and can die within days.

When an Ebola or Marburg outbreak occurs, I immediately jump on a plane to the site. We need to find out how many people are sick, where and how they might have contracted the virus, and if they have passed it on. The faster we're on the ground, the faster we can contain further cases.

Once I'm at the site, I interview anyone with symptoms: Did they have any contact with wildlife or anyone else who is sick? Managing this data is how we keep track of the outbreak. For every case, I try to find everyone they've been around, even before they exhibit symptoms. Patients are placed in isolation; on the rare occasions when I visit them, I wear full-body covering, a respirator and face shield, and multiple pairs of gloves. It's heartbreaking to see people suffering, and some patients I've interviewed didn't make it.

Usually, Ebola or Marburg outbreaks happen every few years. But just in recent months, in Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, we've had four. We don't know if that's because more outbreaks are occurring or if we're just getting better at detecting them. I don't worry about infection—if you protect yourself, there's very little risk of contracting either virus—but my family was definitely worried the first time I traveled to an outbreak site. Now they're getting used to it." —As told to W.J.

CRISTINA ZENATO, 41: The Shark Handler

Freeport, Bahamas

Time on the job: 17 years

Why she loves it: "Sharks aren't mean"

Work requirement: Obsessive preparation and control

"Swimming with sharks was a childhood dream, and I finally did it when I went to the Bahamas on vacation in 1994. I remember those early dives as being full of wonder—there were sharks all around me. I was counting them, breathing with them, almost like a member of their school. I was never afraid, just fascinated. I loved it so much I decided to stay, and by 1995, I was training to be a diving instructor and a shark diver. A year later, I was feeding sharks and have been ever since.

As diver operation manager at the Underwater Explorers Society, I oversee a crew of 12 people and six boats. Certified tourist divers come from all over the world to watch me feed and handle the animals. We go about 45 feet below the surface, and sharks swim around us. No one is in a cage. We usually see Caribbean reef sharks, which grow to about 8 feet.

When I tell people what I do for a living, they almost always mention Jaws. But it's just a movie. Sharks aren't as dangerous as people think, and 99 percent of the time it's perfectly safe to be in the water with them. But sharks trigger the primordial fear of being eaten. I'm not a fool: When I'm feeding great whites, which is rare, I know that those sharks eat animals my size, so I'm always in a cage. With other sharks, which have a different diet of dead or injured fish, I wear allover body chain mail when I feed them. They can bite you accidentally—your hand is in the way! I have received minor bites, but only during feeding. The biggest risk with the chain mail is that a shark will clamp down and get its teeth stuck—if it can't get free, it will twist and arch, which could make your arm turn with the animal and cause a dislocated shoulder or elbow. That's never happened to me, but I've seen it with other professionals.

When we do dives with tourists, we use food to get the Caribbean reef sharks close enough to touch. I teach people to pet them gently on the nose so the sharks enter a state called tonic immobility, a natural hypnosis that makes them sleep. It's a specialized maneuver that I have to get in very close for—a shark would never come that close in a casual encounter with a diver. People say, 'Oh! I never knew sharks could do that!' They question what they thought they knew about sharks. When a shark is in tonic immobility, she sinks down to the bottom naturally. Then she's in my lap, this 8-foot animal under the sea. It's magical." —As told to M.W.

SAMANTHA MACIVOR, 37: The Stuntwoman

New York City

Time on the job: Nine years

Why she loves it: "The set feels like home"

Philosophy: "If you don't feel fear, you're not alive"

"I usually work as a body double for actresses who have physical roles or who require dangerous action on-screen. My skills include stunt and precision driving; stair falls; squibs—mini explosives to make it look like you're getting shot; fighting; and ground pounding, meaning I'm willing to hit the ground hard!

According to my parents, I always had natural athleticism. And I was the kid who fell down and got right back up. I took dance lessons my whole life, and in 2003 I was cast as an extra in a rave scene on Third Watch. I was mesmerized by the stunt people. I started trying out their equipment, like an air ratchet, a contraption that lifts you off the ground. But I soon learned that many stunts don't use equipment. Jumping off cliffs is just that—jumping off cliffs!

It took a few months to get my first stunt job—a riot scene for HBO's The Wire where cops were dragging, punching, and kicking people. Now I work regularly. I've doubled for Mariska Hargitay on Law & Order: SVU, Edie Falco on both The Sopranos and Nurse Jackie, and for movie stars like Emma Watson and Scarlett Johansson. In the movie Zombieland, I was yanked out of a car and dragged on my stomach with a high-powered winch system. When I'm not on a job, I train, which means yoga, combat and dance classes, plus gymnastics. I work enough to have a solid salary, but each job has a different budget. Usually I'll get extra if I have to do the stunt more than a few times.

I've never been seriously injured—just some cuts and scrapes and whiplash. But I've been on set where people have been severely burned in fire stunts, and one woman nearly died after a car-crash stunt. In this line of work, there's always a risk.

My scariest stunt was probably one I did for a TV pilot that never aired. The shot was a woman grabbing a child from an apartment that was on fire and then falling from a 10th-floor window. I was in a harness, dangling from a crane with a 4-foot-tall dummy in my lap, and had to plunge 75 feet while attached to a rope. I was free-falling for about 40 feet before the rope began to slow my descent. It was intense.

There have been times when I've thought, Is this safe? But the only time I say no is when I'm already booked. I trust the teams I work with, so I just do it." —As told to M.W.

MARIE CLAIRE: Your first real job in politics was, at age 24, working as an assistant for then Massachusetts Senator John Kerry. What were you doing for him?

ALYSSA MASTROMONACO: I answered the phones. I did the press clips back when clips were real clips—I had to cut them out, tape them to a piece of paper, and then fax them to all the state offices.

MC: You were director of scheduling for Kerry's failed presidential bid in 2004. What's it like to lose a presidential race?

AM: It's incredibly sad. You invest so much, and then have to deal with the disappointment when you're just completely exhausted. It takes a while to bounce back from it. In that case, I had to stay on to do the wind-down—putting binders in boxes and whatnot.

MC: How did you come to work for President Barack Obama?

AM: I was in the Kerry offices right after the campaign ended, and my instant messenger window popped up. It was [future White House press secretary] Robert Gibbs. He said, "You should come meet this guy Barack Obama, who I'm working for now." And so I went in a week later and met with [Obama's chief of staff in the Senate] Pete Rouse, followed by POTUS [an Illinois senator at the time]. I've worked for him since January 2005.

MC: As deputy chief of staff for operations, what do you do exactly?

AM: I oversee the actual planning and setup of presidential events. I also oversee presidential personnel—the hiring process for all political appointments in the executive branch—as well as screen nominees for Cabinet positions. I handle Oval Office operations and anything having to do with the White House campus itself. It's my job to coordinate among the Secret Service, first family, and the White House Military Office, which includes Air Force One and Marine One, to make sure everything runs smoothly.

MC: What are your hours like?

AM: We get in every morning between 7 and 7:30, and I'm usually here until about 8 p.m. But it ebbs and flows. Last night at midnight we got a phone call about seismic activity in North Korea. You're always sort of on 24/7.

MC: What's the president like as a boss?

AM: One of the hardest transitions was calling him Mr. President. He's just not one for titles. When I started in his Senate office, I always called him Senator Obama. And one day he asked, "Are you angry with me? Why do you keep calling me Senator Obama? I'm Barack. In front of other people, you can call me Senator, but around here, please just call me Barack." But I've never called him anything but Mr. President since he was sworn in.

MC: I imagine that overseeing White House personnel means that people are constantly hitting you up for jobs.

AM: It's why you'll almost never see me out. It can be exhausting. But at the same time, around here, there's always an open-door policy. I've done more career counseling than you could possibly imagine. It's important to do—you'd be surprised by the very bad career decisions people are inclined to make for an extra $7,000 in salary.

MC: What have you learned coming up through the staffer ranks?

AM: Always, always be nice. People remember. When I was in college at the University of Vermont, I answered phones in Congressman Bernie Sanders' office. I ended up having a conversation with a man who called from Wisconsin. I tried to be very polite. That fall, after I transferred to the University of Wisconsin, that man gave me a job as an assistant at his nonprofit. He said it was because I was so nice on the phone.

MC: What's been your biggest screwup?

AM: It was 2006, and President Obama, then a senator, was doing about 50 stops to stump for candidates in the midterm elections. He was in Denver, en route to San Francisco, when our finance director called me and said, "The plane's not here." I had reserved a $30,000 private plane for the wrong day.

MC: How did you handle that?

AM: I broke into tears. Rouse heard that I was crying and called Obama to tell him that I was having a meltdown. Then my phone rang—back then he had a cell phone number that came up "Barack Obama"—and I was like, Shit! So I picked up the phone, and I'm like [tearfully], "Hello?" And he said, "I hear that there are some tears at the office—I don't know why because I'm in a first-class seat on a United flight to San Francisco, and we're going to be there in no time." But I can tell you, I took it as a onetime reprieve. I try to never fuck up like that again.

MC: What do you make of criticism leveled at the White House about the lack of women in powerful staff positions?

AM: People on the outside tend to view only those who go on television as influential or important. [White House Counsel] Kathy Ruemmler does not do television. But there are few people in the building more powerful than her.

MC: You're engaged to David Krone, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's chief of staff. Where do you find the time to plan a wedding?

AM: We got engaged on a Thursday night, and by the next afternoon I left for Hawaii for work [for the president's annual vacation], but David had to stay back here to work on the fiscal cliff negotiations. I was like, "I can't do this, I can't do this." Everyone thinks I'm a good planner, but there's a decent chance I may not have a wedding. I'll just go to the courthouse or something. It's too much pressure.

MC: Really?

AM: Or it could be a D.C. circus—three rings, no tent, with everyone and their brother invited.

In 2003, Sonali Mukherjee was a vivacious 17-year-old college student living in Dhanbad in eastern India when her life was devastated by three male neighbors. The men sexually harassed Mukherjee every morning as she left for class. When she threatened to tell police, the men crept into her room one night and doused her with acid. She was brutally disfigured: The acid burned off most of her face, leaving her almost blind and partially deaf.

Although there are no figures for acid attacks in India, they're almost always perpetrated against women — as are nine-tenths of all violent crimes in India — and activists say such crimes are on the rise. Worse, many perpetrators escape severe punishment. (Mukherjee's three attackers were each sentenced to nine years in prison but were released after serving a little more than two.)

During the next nine years, Mukherjee underwent 22 painful reconstructive surgeries that bankrupted her family. Last year, needing still more surgery that she couldn't afford, the despondent Mukherjee wanted to end her life. "I thought it would be better to die," she says. Because euthanasia is illegal in India, Mukherjee wrote a letter to the government requesting permission.

Then something extraordinary happened. Before the government replied, Mukherjee's heart-wrenching letter was leaked to the media and went viral. Moved by her story, a producer on the country's most popular TV quiz show, Kaun Banega Crorepati (KBC), India's version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, asked her to appear. Mukherjee saw the invitation as a possible lifeline — if she won, it might help fund her treatment.

Last November, millions watched as Mukherjee, wearing dark glasses and a red scarf around her scarred face, discussed her plight. "For years, I have only left the house to go to the hospital. It has been like a jail," she said. Members of the studio audience were in tears.

Mukherjee went on to answer 10 questions correctly, winning the jackpot of 2.5 million rupees ($46,000). The audience erupted with joy. Mukherjee says the prize money helped pay for her next round of surgery and restored her will to live. "I know I will never be beautiful again, but now people tell me that my courage and words are beautiful."

By exposing millions of viewers to her tragedy, Mukherjee also helped highlight the problem of acid attacks. After years of inaction, in February the Indian government approved a law that would imprison acid attackers for 10 years to life. The Supreme Court also directed officials to discuss regulating the sale of acid, and to set up a fund for victims. Mukherjee believes the outpouring of sympathy generated by her appearance helped to spur the legislation. The brave survivor says that when she recovers from her operations, she plans to devote herself to speaking out on behalf of other acid attack victims. "I don't want what was done to me done to any other girls," she says.