Tzipora Livni Israel’s Foreign Minister She is popular among Israelis

Tzipora (Tzipi) Livni is currently Israel’s Foreign Minister and Minister of Justice. Livni is considered a rising star in Ariel Sharon’s center-right Kadima Party. She was appointed foreign minister by Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in January 2006, becoming only the second female foreign minister of Israel, following Golda Meir decades earlier. Livni has expressed her support for Olmert as both acting prime minister and as Kadima’s leader.Livni hails from a prominent Israeli political family. Her father and mother were both underground fighters for the establishment of the state of Israel, and she followed her father’s footsteps into the Knesset in 1999. She has been a strong supporter of Sharon and backed his Gaza Disengagement Plan in 2005.Livni served as a lieutenant in the Israeli Defense Forces before graduating from Bar Ilan University’s Faculty of Law. Livni worked for the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad in the 1980s and later for the Government Companies Authority (1996 to 1999), in charge of the privatization of government corporations and monopolies. She is popular among Israelis, and in 2004, she received the Champion of Good Government Award

Fumiko Hayashi Chief Executive, Daiei

Ms. Fumiko Hayashi has been serving as Vice Chairman of the Board in The Daiei, Inc. since May 24, 2007. Her previous title was Chairman of the Board and Representative Director. She previously worked for BMW Japan and BMW Tokyo and served as President and Representative Director in Volkswagen Tokyo. born May 5, 1946 in Tokyo, is the vice chairperson of the Japanese supermarket chainForbes named her the 39th most powerful woman in the world, the highest rank for a Japanese woman

Neelie Kroes The European Commissioner for Competition

Neelie Kroes was born July 19, 1941 in Rotterdam, Zuid-Holland is a Dutch politician and businessperson.Neelie Kroes was a Member of Parliament in the Netherlands for the People's Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD). Later she was the Dutch State Secretary and Minister of Transport and Water Management. Neelie Kroes was member of the board of commissioners of several multinationals. She currently is the Dutch European Commissioner for Competition.Kroes went to a protestant grammar school in Rotterdam. She continued on a Protestant high school. In 1958 she went to study Economics at the Erasmus University in Rotterdam. In 1961, Kroes was preses of the R.V.S.V. (the largest Rotterdam Sorority). She was also elected as a member of the University Council. After obtaining her Master of Science in Economics in 1965, she became a research fellow at the economic faculty at that university. During this period Kroes was involved in the women's organisation within the VVD. In this period she also was member of the board of Heavy Transporting company "ZwaTra", the company of her father.

Andrea Jung Chairman and Chief Executive, Avon Products

Andrea Jung BORN in 1959 in Toronto.Grew up in Wellesley, Mass. Shanghai-born mother, an accomplished pianist, worked as a chemical engineer. Hong Kong-born father was an architect.BA in English literature from Princeton University in 1979Jung, who became Avon's chief in 1999 and chairman in 2001, sticks to the beauty firm's original business model, using its sales force of five million, despite the explosion of online sales and the proliferation of specialty outlets like Sephora. Jung, who speaks Mandarin Chinese, has had to contend with weak profits and flat revenue growth lately and has had trouble selling into China

Ho Ching Chief Executive, Temasek Holdings Singapore

Ho Ching is the CEO of Temasek Holdings and the wife of the Prime Minister and Finance Minister of Singapore, Lee Hsien Loong.Temasek Holdings purchased Shin Corporation in 2006 from Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra who was ousted by a military coup soon after allegations of corruption.Ms Ho graduated from the University of Singapore in 1976 with a Bachelor of Engineering after completing her pre-university education at National Junior College where she emerged Student of the Year and President Scholar. She also holds a Master of Science (Electrical) from Stanford University, USA. In 1995, Ms Ho was conferred our Distinguished Engineering Alumnus Award. She is also an Honorary Fellow of the Institution of Engineers, Singapore.She is the eldest child of four children of retired businessman Ho Eng Hong and Chan Chiew Ping. In 1985, she married Lee Hsien Loong, who later became Singapore's third Prime Minister in August 2004.She began her career as an engineer with the Ministry of Defence. In 1987, she joined the Singapore Technologies group as Deputy Director of Engineering, and became its President and Chief Executive Officer before retiring in 2001. She later joined Temasek Holdings in May 2002.

Wu Xiaoling Deputy Governor, People's Bank of China

Wu Xiaoling, female, is of Han nationality. She was born in 1947 and studied at the graduate school of the People's Bank of China. She has held leading positions at the People's Bank of China and became its vice-president in 2000.No other woman is more powerful in the world of finance in China than Wu Xiaoling. Before Wu, 59, became China's No. 2 central banker, she was former deputy director of what is now called the State Administration of Foreign Exchange, where she wrote and enforced rules governing how the yuan was to be used in foreign exchange transactions. Wu won kudos for restoring confidence in China's economy and the yuan after she helped calm the markets during the Asian financial crisis in 1998

Suzanne Nora Chairman of the Global Markets Institute

Until 2007, Suzanne Nora Johnson was Vice Chairman of The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc., Chairman of the Global Markets Institute, Head of the firm’s Global Investment Research Division, and a Member of the firm’s Management Committee. She joined the firm in 1985 and became a partner in 1992. While at Goldman Sachs, she has chaired the Pine Street/Goldman Sachs University Board and served as a Board Member on the Goldman Sachs Foundation. Prior to joining the firm, Suzanne was an attorney with Simpson, Thacher & Bartlett and worked as a law clerk on the US Court of Appeals. Suzanne currently serves on the boards of Intuit, the Brookings Institution, the Carnegie Institution of Washington, Children NOW, he Council for Excellence in Government, the Markle Foundation, RAND Health, TechnoServe, the United Nations Advisors Group on Inclusive Financial Sectors, the United Nations Global Compact, the University of Southern California,and Women’s World Banking. She is on the Advisory Board of Councilors at Harvard Medical School (Departments of Cell Biology and Pathology). She is also an advisory board member to the Initiative on Financial Security at the Aspen Institute. She served as Chair of the Visiting Committee for the Institute for Innovations at Southwestern Medical School at the University of Texas (2003,2004) and as a member of the Visiting Committee at the Department of Embryology at the Carnegie Institution of Washington (2000, 2004) and Harvard Law School (2006). Suzanne earned her JD from Harvard Law School and her BA from the University of Southern California.

Khaleda Zia Twice Prime Minister of Bangladesh

Begum Khaleda Zia, Prime Minister of the Government of the People's Republic of Bangladesh, was born on 15 August 1945.
She was the third among the five children of her parents. She passed her Matriculation Examination from Dinajpur Government School and got admitted to Surendranath College, Dinajpur. She was married in August 1960 to Ziaur Rahman, then a Captain in the Pakistan Army who proclaimed the independence of Bangladesh in 1971 and later became the President of the Republic in 1977
It was the tragic death of her husband President Ziaur Rahman in May 1981, that changed her entire life-pattern and brought her into the mainstream of national politics, and eventually to the seat of power. Power, however, did not come automatically to Begum Khaleda Zia. She had to earn it at an immense cost and personal sacrifices. She encountered personal tragedies in the assassination of her husband, courted arrests eight times in nine years and had to continually undergo harassment and repression at the hands of the autocratic regime. But nothing could deter her from her mission of freeing the nation from autocratic rule and re-establishing a democratic polity in the country

Marjorie Scardino was President of the Economist Newspaper Group

Dame Marjorie has been Chief Executive of Pearson, the international education and media business made up of Pearson Education, Penguin and the Financial Times Group, since 1997. Between 1985 and 1997 she was successively President of the Economist Newspaper Group Inc. and Chief Executive of the Economist Group. Prior to 1985, she was a partner in a law firm in Savannah, Georgia, and founded and published the Pulitzer Prize winning newspaper, The Georgia Gazette. She is a non-executive director of Nokia Corporation and a member of a number of charitable and advisory boards, including The MacArthur Foundation and The Carter Center.Scardino is married to journalist Albert Scardino; the Scardinos have three children.

Margaret Mary Beckett is a British Labour politician and Member of Parliament (MP) for Derby South

Margaret Mary Beckett is a British Labour politician and Member of Parliament (MP) for Derby South.Margaret Jackson was born in 1943, in Ashton-under-Lyne, into a working-class family. Her father was an English carpenter and her mother an Irish Roman Catholic. Her sister is a Catholic nun. She was educated at the Notre Dame High School for Girls (a state-school in Norwich), the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology, where she qualified as a metallurgist.In 1961, Jackson joined Associated Electrical Industries as a student apprentice in metallurgy. She joined the Transport and General Workers Union in 1964 and remains a member to this day. She joined the University of Manchester in 1966 as an experiment officer in its metallurgy department. In 1970 Jackson went to work for the Labour Party as a researcher in industrial policy.She married party official Lionel "Leo" Beckett in Lincoln in 1979. She was Deputy Leader of the Labour Party from 1992 to 1994 and was briefly its leader in 1994 following the premature death of John Smith. In Tony Blair's government, she held a series of Cabinet offices, including Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and Foreign Secretary

Dr. Sima Samar is the Chairperson of the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission

Dr. Sima Samar is the Chairperson of the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC). Before chairing the Commission, she was elected as the Vice Chair of the Emergency Loya Jirga in 2002. At the Bonn meeting in 2001, Dr. Samar was chosen to be the first Deputy Chair and Minister of Women’s Affairs in the Interim Administration of Afghanistan. Dr. Samar has received various international awards for her work on human rights and democracy. In 2001 she received the John Humphrey Freedom Award. During the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, Dr. Samar was forced to flee after her husband was arrested. He was never heard from again. In Pakistan, Dr. Samar worked to set up medical services for Afghan refugees. In 1987, she helped open the first hospital for women, staffed by women in Quetta, Pakistan. In 1989, she established the Shuhada Organization, a non-governmental and non-profit organization committed to the reconstruction and development of Afghanistan with special emphasis on the empowerment of women and children. Sima Samar was born in February 1957 in Ghazni province. She obtained her degree in medicine in February 1982 from Kabul University; she was the first Hazara woman to achieve this in Afghanistan.

McCann handled a variety of clients including Sony, Keebler, McDonald's, and Dewar's

Renetta McCann, CEO, The Americas Starcom MediaVest Group was born Renetta E. Walker on December 8, 1956 in Chicago, Illinois. Raised by her mother, school teacher, Aditha Lorraine Collymore Walker and grandmother, Renetta Collymore, she attended Holy Cross Elementary School, St. Phillip Neri School and graduated from Aquinas Dominican High School in 1974. McCann, who excelled in forensics, earned her B.S. degree in speech from Northwestern University in 1978.
McCann joined Chicago's Leo Burnett advertising agency as a client service trainee in 1978 and rose rapidly to become Burnett's first African American media supervisor the following year. She then became the first African American vice president in 1988, and the first to be media director in 1989. As media director, McCann handled a variety of clients including Sony, Keebler, McDonald's, and Dewar's. She was named senior vice president in 1995. In 1998, she was promoted to managing director of Starcom. As Leo Burnett merged with D'Arcy, then McCann became CEO of the Americas Starcom MediaVest Group. McCann is responsible for the operation of the largest office in the Starcom MediaVest Group network encompassing Canada and the United States, including Starcom; MediaVest; GM Planworks; and Starlink. She oversees all annual business plan development and finance issues, maintains client relationships and drives the agency's strategic planning functions. Her responsibilities include the United States and Latin America.
McCann has developed Starcom into one of the advertising industries top strategic planning "think tanks". The winner of numerous Effies and Cannes Lions, McCann was selected as one of Ebony magazine's 57 Most Intriguing Blacks and Black Enterprise designated her as "2002 Executive of the Year". McCann was chosen "Media Maven" by Advertising Age in 1991, while the Women's Advertising Club of Chicago selected her as Advertising Woman of the Year for 2002. Recognized by Business Week and Chicago Magazine, Essence named McCann one of "50 Women Who Are Changing The World".

Susan Arnold,President, Global Business Units Procter & Gamble (PG)

Arnold joined P&G in 1980 and held a number of marketing and management positions before becoming category manager of P&G's cosmetics business in Canada in 1990. In 1999, she was the first woman to reach a president-level position at P&G when she assumed global responsibility for the company's personal beauty business. She has a BA from the University of Pennsylvania and an MBA from the University of Pittsburgh. She is on the executive committee of Catalyst, the leading research and advisory organization working with businesses and the professions to expand workplace diversity and opportunities for women. Check out the annual report: Arnold's name comes right after CEO A.G. Lafley's - and that may understate her importance. Arnold is responsible for the day-to-day operations of the three global business units in the $76 billion company. An organic growth goal of 4% to 6% annually means adding billions of dollars to the top line every year. But Arnold has done it before, transforming the once-sleepy health and beauty business.

Beth Axelrod,Senior Vice President, Human Resources, eBay

Whitman grew up in Cold Spring Harbor, New York, an affluent community on Long Island. She whipped through high school in three years and then went to Princeton, intending to become a doctor. Instead, she majored in economics, and following graduation headed to Harvard, where she got her M.B.A. in 1979.Whitman appears to be a big advocate for the consumer. She was very vocal in the political arena speaking on a variety of issues involving e-commerce. While many companies actually sell their customer lists to other companies, eBay doesn't. And although Ms. Whitman might not agree with the purpose of distributing customer characteristics including purchasing behaviors, she still believes Federal Regulation is unnecessary. She also spoke about eBay's volunteer removal of guns from their online trading options. Although she feels the trading of antique guns is a legitimate hobby for some collectors, she didn't feel comfortable knowing that there was no way to be sure who was actually on the receiving end when guns are bought and sold online.

Safra Catz the C.F.O and x president of Oracle Corporation

Safra A. Catz (born 1961 in Holon, Israel [1]) has been the Chief Financial Officer of Oracle Corporation since November 2005. She has also been a President of the company since January 2004 and a member of the company's Board of Directors since October 2001. She has been at Oracle Corporation since April 1999.Prior to joining Oracle, Catz was at Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette, a global investment bank, where she was a Managing Director from 1997 and had previously held various investment banking positions since 1986.Catz earned a bachelor's degree from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania in 1983 [1] and a J.D. from Harvard Law School in 1986.[1] Catz is married and has two childrenSafra A. Catz has served as a President since January 2004, as Chief Financial Officer since November 2005, and as a Director since October 2001. She served as an Executive Vice President from November 1999 to January 2004, and as Senior Vice President from April 1999 to October 1999

Prime Minister of New Zealand - Helen Clark.

Helen Clark was born in 1950, in Hamilton, and spent her first twelve years on the family sheep and cattle farm to the west of the city. She is the oldest of four girls. Helen attended Te Pahu Primary School.She attended Epsom Girls Grammar School in Auckland and then studied at Auckland University, and graduated with MA (Hons) in 1974.Her MA and PhD thesis research was on rural political behaviour and representation.She was a junior lecturer in political studies in Auckland from 1973-75, studied abroad on a University Grants Committee post-graduate scholarship in 1976, and then lectured in political studies at Auckland from 1977 until her election to Parliament in 1981. Helen Clark was elected Prime Minister of New Zealand on 27 November 1999. Her rise to the top of New Zealand politics is the culmination of almost thirty years of involvement with the Labour Party, and the latest chapter in a remarkable story which began in New Zealand's provincial, conservative heartland.In 1981 Helen Clark was elected as MP for Mt Albert. Nineteen years later, she has earned the unofficial title of 'Mother of the House' - the longest serving woman member among current MPs.

Mary Sammons, now president and ceo that pulled the drug chain back from the brink of bankruptcy

In just four years since joining Rite Aid, Mary Sammons, now president and ceo, has spearheaded a turnaround that pulled the drug chain back from the brink of bankruptcy, returned it to profitability and is now looking to grow based on a strong foundation of improved corporate culture and front-end operations nearly unparalleled in the industry. Not bad for a woman who graduated with a degree in French and holds a secondary-level teaching certificate.Sammons is a merchant in the truest sense of the word. Working her way up through the ranks--first at Fred Meyer and then taking the reins at Rite Aid as president and coo in 1999. In 26 years at Fred Meyer, Sammons held positions of increasing responsibility in all areas of operations and merchandising before becoming ceo of that company. She is also chairman of the National Association of Chain Drug Stores, the chain drugstore industry's trade association.

Anne Sweeney serves as co-chair, Disney Media Networks

Anne Sweeney serves as co-chair, Disney Media Networks and president, Disney-ABC Television Group, where she is responsible for The Walt Disney Company’s entertainment and news television properties globally.Sweeney graduated from College of New Rochelle and Harvard University. From October 2000 to April 2004, Sweeney served as president of ABC Cable Networks Group and The Disney Channel Worldwide. Continuing with the strategy that was begun by her predecessor John F. Cooke, The Disney Channel more than quintupled its subscriber base with its mix of original series and movies and acquired programming. It is now available on basic cable in more than 87 million homes in the United States.Sweeney also oversaw the successful launch of the 24-hour animation channel Toon Disney in April 1998, and built it to its current reach of more than 52 million homes in the United States. Less than two years later, in January 2000, she oversaw the launch of SOAPnet, the 24-hour soap opera network now seen in more than 61.4 million homes.

Oprah Winfrey supervising producer of award-winning The Oprah Winfrey Show

Through the power of media, Oprah Winfrey has created an unparalleled connection with people around the world. As supervising producer and host of the top-rated, award-winning The Oprah Winfrey Show, she has entertained, enlightened and uplifted millions of viewers for the past two decades. Her accomplishments as a global media leader and philanthropist have established her as one of the most respected and admired public figures today.Oprah's story is America's story: a young girl from Mississippi, who grew up without electricity or running water but realized her promise through education and achieved her dreams in liberty. Oprah, 52, reminds us that we who flourish in freedom have a moral responsibility to help others who have the desire to succeed but just need an opportunity. Oprah is helping create those opportunities. Out of her own pocket, she built new homes—and gave new hope—to 65 families who lost everything in Hurricane Katrina. In South Africa, the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls will educate a new generation of women leaders. And just last year, Oprah launched a successful campaign to help victims of abuse find the justice they deserve, so they can move on with confidence.

Melinda Gates is the wife of the richest man in the world

Born - August 15, 1964 Dallas, Texas / Lives - United States of AmericaMelinda Gates is the wife of the richest man in the world, which makes her one of the most powerful women in the world according to the Forbes business magazine (ranked 12th in 2006). Along with her husband she founded the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and continues to spend much of her time working in the organization.She was born in Dallas Texas in 1964 as Melinda Ann French. Melinda received her bachelors degree in economics and computer science at the Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. She then went on to receive an MBA (Master of Business Administration) from the Duke University's Fuqua School of Business in 1987.
In the same year she also started working at Microsoft where she would meet her future husband. Melinda worked her way into the position of General Manager of Information Products. Bill and Melinda also met that year and were married on the 1st of January, 1994.
The couple started the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in 2000 with $106 million. It has now grown to become one of the largest charitable foundations in the world. Melinda is very active in the foundation as a co-chairperson with her husband.