Laura Safer Espinoza

Laura Safer Espinoza

By age 15, Laura Safer had already set her sights on the law. “I came of age during the civil rights movement, when court battles were fought for human rights. I wanted to be part of that.” She became a Legal Services attorney, representing poor tenants,...
Laurie Ahern

Laurie Ahern

Human rights advocate Laurie Ahern has investigated hundreds of institutions for people with disabilities around the world, but she’ ll never forget a visit to a Serbian orphanage in 2007. Rows of cribs filled a room that was dark and silent. The cribs were...
Patricia Foley Hinnen

Patricia Foley Hinnen

More than half a lifetime ago, as a Peace Corps volunteer in Monrovia, Liberia, Patricia Foley Hinnen witnessed a horror that she couldn’ t comprehend – which ignited a passion to help level the economic playing field for women around the world. Hinnen was...
Rev. Belle Mickelson

Rev. Belle Mickelson

On a perfect blue-sky day in May, in the fishing town of Cordova, Alaska, a small group of schoolchildren gathered outside Baja Taco, a popular food stand housed in an old red bus. They didn’t join the locals eating halibut tacos at picnic tables. Instead, they...