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"The Advocate: Christy Turlington Burns Part-time model, full-time activist: waging a campaign to make sure world leaders know that maternal health is a human right To get involved with her cause, visit everymothercounts.org &amp;quot;Every minute of every day, a woman in the world dies from preventable complications during pregnancy or birth,&amp;quot; says Christy Turlington Burns, 42. And she should know: It nearly happened to her. Turlington Burns&amp;#039;s condition \u2014 a retained placenta \u2014 can cause a woman to bleed uncontrollably after delivery. Such bleeding is the number one killer of women in childbirth globally. A team of talented medical professionals saved Turlington Burns&amp;#039;s life, but too many women, she learned, don&amp;#039;t get the same level of care. In the seven years since, Turlington Burns has become increasingly engaged in the issue of maternal health care. Since 2005, she has served as a maternal health advocate for the relief organization CARE, raising awareness both on Capitol Hill and abroad. In 2010, she launched the Every Mother Counts campaign, whose goal is to educate and mobilize Americans around the issue. Not content to be merely a celebrity face for the cause, she is pursuing a master&amp;#039;s degree in public health at Columbia University. She directed and produced the critically acclaimed documentary No Woman, No Cry, which will be broadcast on OWN, the Oprah Winfrey Network, this Mother&amp;#039;s Day weekend; the film follows four at-risk pregnant women in the U.S. and abroad and shows the seemingly insurmountable hurdles each faces to give birth to a healthy baby. It is a tireless effort by a woman who wants the world to hear her message: Every mother counts.  This is not the first time that Turlington Burns has transformed a personal challenge into public activism. Her father, a lifelong smoker, died of lung cancer. The model, who had smoked throughout her teens, worked with the CDC and the American Cancer Society to educate young people, particularly young women, about the decidedly unglamorous dangers of smoking. While she is still best known as a supermodel, Turlington Burns both appreciates and chafes at fame and the opportunities it has offered her: &amp;quot;I was able to use modeling to go and see the world, which is my favorite thing. But this odd gift of a career can be very limiting. There were so many times I thought, I don&amp;#039;t want to be stuck in this box of being a model and being perceived this way. That desire kept pushing me to try new things. I&amp;#039;m in a profession where women are paid too much, whereas most women are underpaid in their careers. The question for me is, &amp;#039;How do I make more with what I was given?&amp;#039;&amp;quot; Next: --&amp;amp;gt;  Innovators: sOccket Girls Necessity may be the mother of invention, but for these young women inventors, fun is a vital part of the equation  To get involved with their cause, visit soccket.com A girl takes a soccer ball to a field after school. She plays a pickup game with her friends. That night, after dinner, she takes the soccer ball, plugs it into an LED lamp, and does her homework. Fifteen minutes of play with a sOccket soccer ball can power three hours of light. It&amp;#039;s what inventor Jessica Matthews calls &amp;quot;functional fun.&amp;quot; Matthews is just 23, and she invented the sOccket ball with three other female Harvard undergrads \u2014 Jessica Lin, Julia Silverman, and Hemali Thakkar. All four had spent time abroad in developing countries where soccer was the sport of choice and communities relied on diesel generators and kerosene lamps, whose toxic fumes cause lung disease and devastating pollution.  &amp;quot;In Nigeria, you can turn on MTV in your home, but some have to walk miles for clean water,&amp;quot; Matthews says. And while sOccket isn&amp;#039;t the solution to this disparity, it&amp;#039;s a symbol of empowerment for creative logic as a problem-solving tool. &amp;quot;My vision, something that goes beyond sOccket, is to redefine what play means,&amp;quot; she explains. The balls were field-tested in South Africa during the World Cup last year, and were so popular the testers had to beg kids to stop playing in order to demonstrate how the sOccket ball worked.  The idea of using play to capture kinetic energy is growing. There are now nightclubs that pull energy from the dance floor to power the lights. &amp;quot;There are other things being invented that are more powerful than this, but they&amp;#039;re not fun,&amp;quot; says Matthews. &amp;quot;Why should life be an endless reminder of your lack? We can provide a higher happiness index, a world where people play more.&amp;quot; Next: --&amp;amp;gt;  The Pioneer: Elizabeth Blackburn She won a Nobel Prize for groundbreaking research that may one day be instrumental in finding a cure for cancer To get involved with her cause, visit the website for the American Association for Cancer Research at aacr.org Scientist Elizabeth Blackburn, Ph.D., has, among her truly exceptional talents, a gift for translating complicated theories into simple, understandable ideas. When explaining her Nobel Prize \u2014 winning research, she points to her shoes: &amp;quot;If we think of our chromosomes \u2014 they carry our genetic material \u2014 as being like shoelaces, I work on the plastic tips at the end that protect them.&amp;quot; Her work has placed her at the forefront of the battle against cancer and aging. Blackburn, 62, who grew up in Tasmania, Australia, studies telomeres (those DNA shoelace tips) and, with her then graduate student Carol Greider, discovered the enzyme (telomerase) that makes them. Keeping the tips of chromosomes healthy is key to preventing the formation of early cancer cells, she explains: &amp;quot;Chronic severe psychological stress makes them wear down. By &amp;#039;severe stress,&amp;#039; I mean something like taking care of a spouse with Alzheimer&amp;#039;s.&amp;quot; Exercise and meditation not only help release stress in the short term, but may also prevent disease. &amp;quot;We can&amp;#039;t use drugs to fix everything,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;d like to think much more about prevention.&amp;quot;  A working mother, Blackburn had to travel a lot when her child, Ben, was younger. So every night she was in town, the family ate dinner at home. &amp;quot;I think life balance is much better achieved over years or decades,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;There are times when you are going to have to intensely be a mother and times when you have to work, when the dishes won&amp;#039;t be done.&amp;quot; Now that Ben is grown (he&amp;#039;s a software engineer at Amazon.com), she&amp;#039;s rediscovering movies, playing classical piano, and indulging in her guilty pleasure: mystery novels. But the most intriguing whodunit is happening in her lab. Next: --&amp;amp;gt;  The Game Changer Michelle Rhee The education reformer is determined to save America&amp;#039;s failing schools. So far, over 100,000 Americans say she can do it  To get involved with her cause, visit studentsfirst.org Education reform can sometimes seem like the political version of professional wrestling. And while many thought her resignation as the controversial chancellor of the Washington, DC, public schools meant that Michelle Rhee, 41, was no longer a contender, quitting is simply not part of her DNA. First there was her star turn in the hit documentary Waiting for &amp;quot;Superman,&amp;quot; which chronicled education reformers like Rhee and their visions for transforming our failing schools. Then Rhee launched the nonprofit StudentsFirst to create more high-quality, publicly funded school options. &amp;quot;The teachers&amp;#039; unions are doing what they are supposed to be doing: advocating on behalf of their members. But if you don&amp;#039;t have someone advocating on behalf of the kids, then you have a problem,&amp;quot; Rhee explains. Within 48 hours of the nonprofit&amp;#039;s launch on The Oprah Winfrey Show last December, StudentsFirst received more than $1,000,000 in donations from over 100,000 people. (The average gift: $64.) An impressive beginning, but Rhee is aiming for nothing less than empowering America with the best educational system in the world. &amp;quot;People need to understand we are in trouble as a country,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;Education is the key to our ability to compete globally. It can&amp;#039;t just be about parents &amp;amp;amp;mdsash it has to include effective teachers, business owners, grandparents, people who don&amp;#039;t even have kids.&amp;quot; In Rhee&amp;#039;s home, the students who come first are her own. She treasures dinners at home with daughters Starr and Olivia and with her fianc\u00E9, Kevin Johnson, mayor of Sacramento, CA. &amp;quot;I talk to my employees, in particular the young women, about this,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;Take care of yourself and your family. Work will always be there.&amp;quot; It&amp;#039;s a powerful message from a woman whose vision is much more than a full-time job.  Next: --&amp;amp;gt;  The Visionary: Lisa Switkin Where others saw abandoned train tracks, Lisa Switkin envisioned a secret garden. Then she made it happen To get involved with her cause, visit thehighline.org As a child, Lisa Switkin devoured books about other worlds, from The Secret Garden to A Wrinkle in Time; she spent her childhood in Columbus, OH, head-down in a book. As a landscape architect, Switkin calls on those same powers of imagination: &amp;quot;Part of the skill and fun of the job is being able to see the potential of places that might otherwise be overlooked,&amp;quot; she says. Although she is only 36, Switkin has already become a legend in her field. An associate partner at James Corner Field Operations and the lead designer of New York City&amp;#039;s High Line, she transformed a derelict stretch of elevated train tracks into a dynamic park with more than 200 types of plants. The High Line is the first of its kind in the country, and more than two million people visited the park in 2010. Switkin explains, &amp;quot;Many cities have had ideas for converting sites like this \u2014 landfills, abandoned plants, decommissioned waterfronts \u2014 into parks, but they weren&amp;#039;t able to effectively communicate the value of this transformation to others. The High Line has attracted commerce, restaurants, a vibrant street life, and visitors. The benefits aren&amp;#039;t only evident; they&amp;#039;re measurable. Now other cities can study them for future projects.&amp;quot; Switkin takes special joy in sharing the High Line with the people she loves: her niece, her nephews, and her fianc\u00E9, Elijah Saintonge (whom she calls simply &amp;quot;a wonderful man&amp;quot;). The park is Switkin&amp;#039;s real-life secret garden \u2014 one that she now happily shares with the world.  Next: --&amp;amp;gt;  The Powerhouse: Indra Nooyi She&amp;#039;s a one-woman glass ceiling-breaker (who also plays electric guitar)  To get involved with her cause, visit water.org Women in corporate America know Indra Nooyi, 55, chairman and CEO of PepsiCo, as one of the most powerful women in business. Your teenage daughter may know her from Gossip Girl \u2014 as the character with whom Blair Waldorf tried to get an internship. It&amp;#039;s a rare businessperson who is both a legend in her field and a figure in popular culture, but from the beginning, Nooyi has never fit neatly into any single category.  She grew up in south India, in the city of Chennai. &amp;quot;It had a number of universities and colleges,&amp;quot; she explains. &amp;quot;In Chennai, if you didn&amp;#039;t study math and science, you were considered an absolute outcast.&amp;quot; The community was so education-focused that parents took off work during the school exam period to help their children study. Nooyi thrived in that academically rigorous environment, but she also played cricket, as well as electric guitar in an all-girl rock band. When she landed at Yale, she continued to go her own way: A scholarship student on a strict budget, she wore a sari to one of her first corporate interviews because she couldn&amp;#039;t afford a proper business suit (and she got the job). Nooyi, now married and the mother of two daughters, believes that for any woman, the people one loves are the bedrock of success. &amp;quot;Build around you a terrific ecosystem, preferably with family,&amp;quot; she advises. &amp;quot;But it&amp;#039;s &amp;#039;family&amp;#039; defined every which way you want.&amp;quot; It&amp;#039;s a message she shares with her PepsiCo employees \u2014 a staggering 300,000 people report to her globally. &amp;quot;The times I feel the greatest are when I&amp;#039;m coaching, developing talent, mentoring people to do what they never thought they could. When you see your team blossoming and growing, you say, &amp;#039;Man, I&amp;#039;m doing good for the next generation.&amp;#039;&amp;quot; "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.goodhousekeeping.com/life/inspirational-stories/interviews/a19459/shine-on-award-winners/>