Ellen Ochoa

Ellen Ochoa was born in Los Angeles, California, in 1958.

When she was youg, she did not want to be an astronaut. She studied sciences (which were her favourite subject) at the high school and at the university (obtaining a science bachelor and a degree in physics in Stanford), but she did not think about becoming an astronaut until she was selected by the NASA in 1990 to do so. This made her the first Hispanic woman to go to space in 1993 on board of the Discovery.

Apart from this, she has investigated optical systems and she has already patented one. Moreover, she has participated in other three more patents.

What her life shows us is that we never know what tomorrow may bring, so she can be an inspiration of our lives, too.


Webgraphy:
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/ames/spanish/news/releases/2003/HQ03_207_span.html
http://www.biography.com/people/ellen-ochoa-10413023
http://www.mujeresdeempresa.com/ellen-ochoa-la-primera-hispana-en-llegar-al-espacio/

Soledad O'Brien

Soledad O’Brien is an award-winning journalist, documentarian, news anchor and producer. O’Brien is one of the most sought-after journalists today. In June 2013, O’Brien launched Starfish Media Group, a multi-platform media production and distribution company, dedicated to uncovering and producing empowering stories that take a challenging look at the often divisive issues of race, class, wealth, poverty, and opportunity through personal narratives.

O’Brien was the originator of the highly successful CNN documentary series, “Black in America” and “Latino in America,” which continues to be produced under Starfish Media Group (“SMG”).

In 2003, O’Brien joined CNN, where she anchored the morning news program for many years. O’Brien’s coverage of race issues has won her two Emmy awards and she earned a third for her reporting on the 2012 presidential election. Her coverage of Hurricane Katrina for CNN earned her and the network a George Foster Peabody Award.

O’Brien was named journalist of the year in 2010 by the National Association of Black Journalists and one of Newsweek magazine’s “10 People who Make America Great”, in 2006.

In 2013, Harvard University, her alma mater, named O’Brien a Distinguished Fellow. She was also appointed to the board of directors of the Foundation for the National Archives that same year.

In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, O’Brien and her husband, Brad, created the Soledad O’Brien & Brad Raymond Starfish Foundation to help disadvantaged young women get to and through college. Participants engage in activities and experiences that break down stereotypes and remove the limitations society has assigned due to gender, race and economic and social inequalities. By providing resources to overcome barriers, the Foundation helps each young woman reach her highest potential.

Isabel Allende

Isabel Allende was born in Lima, Peru in 1942. She was the daughter of Francisca Llona and Tomás Allende, who was at the time a second secretary at the Chilean embassy. Her father was a first cousin of Salvador Allende, President of Chile from 1970 to 1973. In 1945, after Tomás had disappeared, Isabel’s mother relocated with her three children to Santiago (Chile) where they lived until 1953.

Later, from 1959 to 1965, Allende worked with the United Nations Food and Agrilture Organization (FAO) in Santiago. For a brief while in Chile, she also had a job translating romance novels from English to Spanish. However, she was fired for making unauthorized changes to the dialogue of the heroines to make them sound more intelligent as well as altering the Cinderella endings to let the heroines find more independence and do well in the world.

Foundation

Allende started the Isabel Allende Foundation on 9 December 1996 to pay homage to her daughter Paula Frías Allende, who had a rare blood disorder that nowadays should not be fatal, but there was negligence in the hospital because she was given the wrong medication and she fell into a coma. Paula was 28 years old when she died in 1992.

The foundation is "dedicated to supporting programs that promote and preserve the fundamental rights of women and children to be empowered and protected”. The foundation supports select nonprofits in Chile and California whose missions are to provide vulnerable women and children with access to:

Reproductive rights

Healthcare

Education

Protection from violence

The Isabel Allende Foundation is focused on achieving a world in which women and girls have economic and social justice, empowerment, and protection.

Alicia Dickerson Montemayor

As Jovita Idár, Alicia Dickerson Montemayor was a Latina from Laredo, Texas. She was born in 1902 and she became an American civil rights activist.

Montemayor studied law at the university. In 1936, she was invited by Esther Machuca to join the LULAC (League of United American Citizens), and she became the first woman elected in this organization. By 1940 she was the associate editor of the organization’s newspaper, the director of Junior LULAC. She had to lead the voice of women at the national level, so she propmoted the creation of more ladies council, but also she wrote articles in which she denounced the male superiority and pushed for a more active role for women. Finally, in 1940 she decided to leave the LULAC.

After that, she became a school registrar and she retired of it in 1972. Then, she established herself as a folk artist and started painting. Her art has become very famous.

She finally died in 1989.

Why was she so important? Because she showed how to be a wife, a mother, a businesswoman, a middle-class American woman, and at the same time, an independent radical feminist and a political activist. She could do everything at the same time, and her example can still make us be sure that we can also do it if we want.

Webgraphy:

http://wiselatinaslinked.blogspot.com.es/2012/09/hispanic-heritage-month-alicia.html

http://www.idra.org/IDRA_Newsletter/March_1996_Gender_Equity/Alice_Dickerson_Montemayor's:_Feminist_Challenge_to_LULAC_in_the_1930s/

Idar Jovita

Jovita Idar was a pioneering Mexican-American female journalist.

Since she was  a child, she worked in the newspaper of her family. In 1903 she became a teacher in Ojuelos. However, her inability to improve the poor conditions of the school incited her to resign and join the family weekly newspaper, La Crónica. It was a vocal in criticizing certain aspects of Hispanic-Anglo relation. The newspaper also supported efforts of the revolutionary forces in Mexico during the Mexican Revolution.
In 1911 Idar became the first president of the League of Mexican Women to promote the education of poor children.

"Mexican children in Texas need an education...There is no other means to do it but ourselves, so that we are not devalued and humiliated by the strangers who rurround us"

That same year, she founded the Liga Femenil Mexicanista, a social, cultural, political, and charitable organization for Mexican-American women. Several of women operated their own schools and allowed the children of the poor to attend free of charge. The league is one of the first-known attemps by Mexican-American women to unite for a social and political cause, and it attracted the most educated women of the community.


Webography:
https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fid03
http://www.factmonster.com/ipka/A0886845.html
http://www.latinorebels.com/2016/03/04/latinahistorymonth-jovita-idar-journalism-pioneer/

Vilma Socorro Martínez

Vilma Socorro Martínez is an American lawyer, civil rights activist and diplomat who formerly served as the U.S. Ambassador to Argentina. She was the first woman to hold this position.

Vilma Socorro Martínez was born to Marina and Salvador Martínez, a Mexican American couple living in San Antonio, Texas. She was raised in a climate of certain racial hostility; as an honor student in high school, for example, she found herself steered away from academics by a counselor who tried to convince her that someone of her background would be better off attending a trade school than a major university. Martínez ignored that advice and instead enrolled in the University of Texas at Austin.

While working her way through college in the biochemistry lab, Martínez met a professor who recognized her potential. In marked contrast to her high-school counselor, the professor insisted she pursue further education; after receiving her bachelor's degree, Martínez went on to Columbia Law School, and graduated in 1967.

The same year, she then joined the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF). At LDF, she defended a number of poor and minority clients. She also served as the attorney for the petitioner in the case of Griggs v. Duke Power Company, a landmark action that ultimately went before the U.S. Supreme Court and helped establish the doctrine of affirmative action.


In 1982, Martínez became a partner at the Los Angeles law firm of Munger, Tolles & Olson, where she specialized in federal and state court litigation, including defense of wrongful termination and employment litigation and other commercial litigation. In 1994, she helped in the fight against California’s Proposition 187—which sought to ban illegal immigrant children from attending the state’s public schools—while representing the Los Angeles Unified School District

During the 1990s, Martínez was also vice-chair of the Edward W. Hazen Foundation and a member of the board of People for the American Way and The Ninth Judicial Circuit Historical Society, and she has served on the boards of several non-profit organizations, including theLos Angeles Philharmonic Association.

In conclusion, Vilma Socorro was the U.S. ambassador to Argentina, has a long history of straddling the worlds of corporate boardrooms and legal defense of minorities. One of the leading voices in Hispanic civil rights since the 1970s, Martínez has run the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF) and been a part of legal fights on behalf of both documented and undocumented immigrants from Latin America. She also served on the board of directors of beer giant Anheuser-Busch for 25 years. Martínez was confirmed as ambassador by the Senate July 24, 2009.

Vilma Socorro was undoubtedly a exceptional and powerful woman!

Here we can see a short and interesting video about her determination.

We hope you like it!:

Webgraphy:

http://biography.yourdictionary.com/vilma-socorro-martinez

http://ms.shellus.com/news/press120996

http://www.bookrags.com/biography/vilma-socorro-martinez/#gsc.tab=0

http://www.allgov.com/news/appointments-and-resignations/ambassador-to-argentina-who-is-vilma-martinez?news=841262

Dolores Huerta

Dolores Huerta was born in 1930 in New Mexico. When she was three, her parents got divorced and her mother took her and her brothers to Stockton, California. There, her mother worked in a farming community very hard to provide her children a good education.During World War II, her mother ran a restaurant and the family's economic situation was improved little by little. Dolores did not lose her relationship with her father, who became an union activist. He and her mother were a clear inspiration for her.

Dolores was a good student, but she suffered from the racism against Mexicans and Mexican Americans: she was bullied at school for her ethnic origin.

After graduating, she changed of job many times until she decided to obtain a teaching degree. She worked as an elementary school teacher until she resigned due to the poor conditions of many of her students, who were farm workers’ children.

She decided to help:

• In 1955, she started the Stockton chapter of the Community Services Organisation (CSO),which fought against segregation, police brutality and discrimination and worked for the improvement of economic and working conditions of farm workers.
• In 1960, she started the Agricultural Workers Association (AWA) to lobby the politicians to allow migrant workers to receive public assistance and pensions and to provide them voting ballots and driver’s tests in Spanish. Meanwhile, she met a CSO official called Cesar Chavez, who with she collaborated to lobby the CSO to make it help also farm workers, but the Organisation was focused just on urban issues. That is why they left the CSO and started the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA).
• The NFWA and the AWA combined to become the United Farm Workers Organizing Committee in 1965 and, after five years, the UFW signed an historic agreement with 26 grape growers to improve working conditions for the farm workers (reduction of the use of harmful pesticides, unemployment and healthcare benefits, and so on).
• During the 1970s, Dolores Huerta helped to create the political climate to arrive in 1975 to the Agricultural Labor Relations Act, which recognized the right of farm workers to bargain collectively.
• During the 1980s, she was the vice president of the UFW and co-fundated the UFW’s radio station.

Today, she is still being honored for her entire life of work for the rights of the farm workers and against the racism. She received many prizes and she started the  Dolores Huerta Foundation, in which she is still working by lecturing and speaking out on social issues as immigration, incoming inequality and the rights of women and Latino-American people.

Here we can see many videos of her life and labor: http://www.makers.com/dolores-huerta

Webgraphy:

http://www.makers.com/dolores-huerta
http://www.ufw.org/_page.php?menu=research&inc=history/sp/07.html
http://doloreshuerta.org/dolores-huerta/
http://www.biography.com/people/dolores-huerta-188850#early-life-and-career