Santosh Yadav

#21/100 in #100extraordinarywomen

Santosh Yadav is an Indian mountaineer. She is the first woman in the world to climb Mt. Everest twice, and the first woman to successfully climb Mt. Everest from Kangshung Face. She first climbed the peak in May 1992 and then did it again in May 1993. During her Everest mission of 1992 she saved the life of another climber, Mohan Singh, by sharing oxygen with him.

She comes from an affluent family of Joniyawas village in Rewari District, Haryana state, India, and has five older brothers. Her father served in the Indian Army for some time. She studied in a local Hindi medium school in her village till tenth grade. A lot of people ask her whether she was a victim of a gender bias, because her brothers studied in English medium schools while staying in hostels in nearby cities. She tells them, “When I grew up in the seventies, it was not very common to send girls away to study on their own, so my father made the best possible choice under the circumstances. My parents adored me. My parents raised me with a lot of love and affection. Why should I insult them by disregarding all their love and judging them on the basis of this one decision? My parents did send me to study in Jaipur when I finished my high school. They even bowed down to my decision that I would consider marriage only after completing graduation. Yes, I did have to put in extra efforts to learn English, but I took it as a challenge, not a setback. Studying in an Hindi medium school never stopped me from doing anything that I wanted to do, in fact, it kept me connected to my culture, my people, my land.”

She attended Maharani College in Jaipur. The hostel was facing the Aravallis and she was able to see mountaineers from her room. She was inspired by this to join Uttarkashi's Nehru Institute of Mountaineering. While studying she prepared herself to climb two greatest peaks in her life, namely, mountaineering and Indian Civil Services and was successful in both. She prepared for her Indian Administrative Service (IAS) exams in a hostel provided by Indian Mountaineering Federation at Connaught Place, New Delhi. 

When she landed up at the institute, she was thin, underweight and had low lung capacity. All the instructors thought she would never make it. They thought she would opt out of the course within a few days. Not only did she manage to finish the course, she managed to top her batch. There were girls far stronger than her physically who did the course along with her, but she managed to top it because she had no expectations. She had come simply to be in the Himalayas. She did not want to prove anything to anyone. Interestingly, her lungs were small and climbing is all about lung capacity. In her own words, “The doctors at the institute were surprised to see that despite the small size of my lungs, my oxygen saturation levels were really good. I was used to leading a very healthy lifestyle. I did yoga. I prayed. I chanted. I meditated daily, and I had a very a balanced outlook towards life. That was the time I realised that there is a very strong connect between the body and the mind and a strong grounding in spirituality helps to cement that connection.”

After that she never looked back. She was hooked onto the Himalayas. Aged 20 in 1992, she scaled the Everest, becoming the youngest woman in the world to achieve this feat. Within twelve months, she became a member of an Indo-Nepalese Women's expedition, and scaled Everest the second time, thus setting the record as the only woman to have scaled the Everest twice. She answered an exam and got selected for Indo-Tibetan Border Force. While serving at ITBP, she became a professional mountaineer. She served as an officer in the Indo-Tibetan Border Police. She was part of the nine-nation international climbing camp-cum-expedition to Nun Kun in 1989. In 1999, Santosh Yadav led an Indian mountaineering expedition to Kangshung Face, Everest. In 2001, she led mountaineering team to East Face, Mt. Everest.

She quit her job when she was expecting her kids. She wanted to devote the next few years of her life to raise her kids, the way her mother did. She now lives in Haryana Sadan as her children go to school in Delhi: a son aged 11 years and a daughter aged 13 years. She often travels around the country to give lectures on leadership and team-building at various educational institutions, but she always travels with her kids. She now runs holiday camps for school children in a village near Manali during school vacations. She teaches Moutaineering but it is just a medium. She actually teaches the children many things, how to take care of their health, how to take care of the ecology, yoga, spirituality, how mountain climbing is a form of meditation. She believes, “You cannot separate the Himalayas from Hindu Dharma and spirituality. The only way to preserve the Himalayas is to preserve our faith, our culture, our spiritual traditions.” 

Santosh Yadav was awarded the Padma Shri in 2000. She says, “I firmly believe that all of us have a choice at any given point of time, no matter how bleak our circumstances are. We can either surrender to the circumstances and play the victim for the rest of our lives, or we can accept the circumstances as a challenge and try to overcome them. All my life, I have made my own choices, whether it is climbing the highest mountain in the world or choosing to put raising my children first, above all other priorities. My attire, my career, my decision to quit it, every decision has been a result of a conscious choice.” 

Source: A recently viral Facebook post and Wikipedia.

Najat Balkacem

#20/100 in #100extraordinarywomen

Najat Vallaud-Belkacem is a French socialist politician, who on 25 August 2014 was the first French woman and the youngest person – at 36 – and first Muslim to be appointed Minister of Education, Higher Education, and Research, joining the second Valls government. Previously she was Minister of Women's Affairs (16 May 2012 to 25 August 2014, Ayrault government and Valls government), Minister of City Affairs (2 April 2012 to 25 August 2014, Valls government), Minister of Youth Affairs and Sports (2 April 2012 to 25 August 2014, Valls government), and Government spokesperson (16 May 2012 to 31 March 2014, Ayrault government). She was the spokesperson of Ségolène Royal's campaign during the 2007 French presidential election and again in 2009 for the 2011 French Socialist Party presidential primary. Since 2008, she has been a councillor of the city of Lyon, responsible for major events, youth and community life. Not many people know that Najat was a shepherd girl (one who herded sheep) in her childhood. She immigrated to France with her family. Her journey from being a shepherd girl to the minister of education is the stuff dreams and hard work are made of.

Second in a family of seven children, Najat Belkacem was born in the Moroccan countryside on 4October 1977 in Bni Chiker, a village near Nador in the Rif region. Her grandmothers were respectively Spanish and Algerian. Her father was in France and had a job as a construction worker and asked Najat and his family to move to France with him. Hence, Najat moved to the suburbs of Amiens in 1982 with her mother and elder sister Fatiha. She graduated from the Institut d'études politiques de Paris (Paris Institute of Political Studies) in 2002 and immediately joined the Socialist party and started fighting for citizen rights, affordable housing and against discrimination. At the Institut she met Boris Vallaud, whom she later married on 27 August 2005. She joined the team of Lyon mayor Gérard Collomb in 2003, leading actions to strengthen local democracy, the fight against discrimination, promotion of citizen rights, and access to employment and housing. Elected to the Regional Council of Rhone-Alpes in 2004, she chaired the Culture Commission, resigning in 2008. In 2005, she became adviser to the Socialist Party. In 2005 and 2006 she was a columnist for the cultural programme C'est tout vu on Télé Lyon Municipale alongside Stéphane Cayrol. In February 2007 she joined Ségolène Royal's campaign team as a spokeswoman, alongside Vincent Peillon and Arnaud Montebourg. In March 2008 she was elected conseillère générale of the Rhône department in the cantonal elections with 58.52% of the votes in the second round, under the banner of the Socialist Party in the canton of Lyon-XIII. On 16 May 2012, she was appointed to French President François Hollande's cabinet as Minister of Women's Rights and spokeswoman for the government. She supports having the French government force Twitter to filter out hate speech that is illegal under French law, such as speech that is homophobic. Regarding same-sex marriage in France, she has stated that its legalisation is a matter of "historic progress".

Najat describes herself as a "non-practicing Muslim". Because of her background and her place of birth and religion, she has been a sweet target for all the regressive sexist and racist comments conservative politicians can throw at her. They have attacked her by calling her slurs, objectifying her for the way she dresses and Najat has continued to fight back efficiently. So much so that she has been slammed by a right-wing columnist for allegedly using her sexual charms to avoid answering questions in parliament. Najat became determined to succeed in politics when she observed the rise of Le Pen (France’s Donald Trump) and the right wing in France. She recalls how at her first fundraiser – as she welcomed guests in and took their coats many mistook her for the house maid. Today, she’s called “The New Face of France.”

When the whole world is debating whether immigrants are good for the host country or not – from Donald Trump, who wants to build walls to keep the Mexicans out, and countries like Hungary and Slovakia who are not really comfortable with taking in any more Syrian refugees, Najat Belkacem quietly reminds us that immigrants are an asset – and that believing in our children and investing in them with the right character traits and the right education literally means the sky is the limit. 

Source: Google search and Wikipedia.

Sohaila Abdulali

#19/100 in #100extraordinarywomen

Sohaila was 17-years old when she was brutally raped. Her fault? She had ventured on a walk ‘alone’ with a male friend. Today, she is one of the most well-known rape survivors who chose not to hide behind anonymity.

On that eventful day in July 1983, she and her friend Rashid had gone for a walk and were sitting on a mountainside about a mile and a half from her home in Chembur which is a suburb of Bombay. They were attacked by four men, who were armed with a sickle. They beat them, forced them to go up the mountain, and kept them there for two hours. They were physically and psychologically abused, and, as darkness fell, they were separated. Then, they raped her, about 10 times, keeping Rashid hostage. If either of them resisted, the other would get hurt. Thereafter, they were let go, with a final long lecture on what an immoral ‘whore’ Sohaila was to be alone with a boy. They acted the whole time as if they were doing her a favour, teaching a lesson. They took them down the mountain even as they stumbled on to the dark road, clinging to each other and walking unsteadily. They followed them for a while, brandishing the sickle and then let go. Finally she got home, broken, bruised, shattered. Sohaila’s father called the police. He was as anxious as Sohaila was to get the rapists apprehended. Sohaila was willing to do anything to prevent someone else having to go through what she had been through. The police were insensitive, contemptuous, and somehow managed to make her the guilty party. When they asked her what had happened, she told them quite directly, and they were scandalized that she was not a shy, blushing victim. When they said there would be publicity, she said that was all right. It had never occurred to her that she or Rashid could be blamed. When the Police said she would have to go into a home for juvenile delinquents for her “protection”, she even agreed to that. She was even willing to live with pimps and rapists, in order to be able to bring her attackers to justice. Soon she and her father realized that justice for women simply does not exist in the legal system. When they were asked what Sohaila and Rashid had been doing on the mountain, she began to get indignant. When they asked Rashid why he had been “passive”, Sohaila gave up and screamed. They just didn’t understand that his resistance meant further torture for Sohaila. When they asked questions about what kind of clothes Sohaila had been wearing, and why there were no visible marks on Rashid’s body (he had internal bleeding from being repeatedly hit in the stomach with the handle of the sickle), Sohaila broke down in complete misery and terror. That was when her father threw the police out of the house after telling them exactly what he thought of them. That was the extent of the support the police gave them. No charges were brought. The police recorded a statement that Sohaila and Rashid had gone for a walk and had been “delayed” on their return.

Three years after the horrific rape, Sohaila wrote down her story in a poignant article for Manushi, which works for Women’s Rights and Democratic Reforms. (It can be read here). She wrote, “Time and again, people have hinted that perhaps death would have been better than the loss of that precious “virginity.” I refuse to accept this. My life is worth too much to me.” Today Sohaila is a true embodiment of how a life should be celebrated. Today, Sohaila writes, reads and walks. She has published two novels; three children’s books; and numerous short stories, essays, news reports, blogs, columns, manuals, and just about every form of written material, which is in direct contradiction to her devotion to trees.

Sohaila Abdulali was born in Bombay, India. She did her schooling in India, and moved to the United States with her family when she was 15. Since then, she has lived in both countries. She has a BA from Brandeis University in Economics and Sociology, and an MA from Stanford University in Communication. Her undergraduate thesis dealt with the socio-economics of rape in India. When she was 20, she wrote the above-mentioned explosive article on the subject in an Indian magazine that won her notoriety for years.

Thirty years after her rape, in light of the December 16 rape of ‘Nirbhaya’ in Delhi in 2012, her old article written for Manushi suddenly started doing rounds on the internet and Facebook. She was all over Facebook, and she didn’t even have a Facebook page. She was suddenly not a writer, not a mother, not an ordinary, muddled, rather happy soul, but apparently, ‘The World's Most Famous Living Rape Victim’. She didn't want her 17-year-old’s cry of rage in a women's magazine to be her final word on the subject, so she wrote again, this time on the recovery process and the stupidity of equating rape with dishonour. In January 2013, she wrote an op-ed in the New York Times, "I Was Wounded; My Honor Wasn't." It went globally viral, and brought an unprecedented response both to Sohaila and to the New York Times. The following week, Sohaila went live on the New York Times website to talk about rape in India as well as the op-ed. Then, all hell really broke loose. In the first month alone, her website got more than 2 million hits. She got several thousand emails from women and men all over the world. It was like a global outpouring of support. “Hats off to you, madam,” they said. “You are so brave. You are one helluva tough cookie. You are a saint. You are a hero. Please help me. Please be my friend. My husband beats me, my cousin rapes me, I never told anyone. Hats off. Heads off to you,” said one particularly eager soul. University students debated her piece. The Indian government quoted her. Media called, institutions called. Everyone wanted to hear more. But Sohaila was done telling her story, so, she wrote back, “I prefer not to.” Her logic was simple. She had chosen to speak out the first time. The second time, it really didn't feel like a choice. Almost all her relationships were given a good, bone-rattling shaking. Her immediate family shone like stars. Her extended family, in her own words, “buried their heads in the sand”. Some people cheered, and some looked away in embarrassment. Some people said truly nasty things. Her 11-year-old daughter was hastily told about the incident before she heard about it at school. She just nodded casually. She saw her normal goofy mother and wisely decided everything was all right. Sohaila later reflected, “Rape is like any other life-shattering event – no matter how hard you try, you remember how every person reacted to it, and you either love them forever or you spend the rest of your life not quite succeeding in forgiving them.”

Sohaila is now a Senior Editor at Ubuntu Education Fund, an international NGO working to transform the lives of vulnerable children in the townships of Port Elizabeth, South Africa. She writes and edits grants, annual reports, the Ubuntu website, op-eds and editorial stories, and regular blogs. She helped guide Ubuntu through an update of its communications strategy and is part of a successful team of dedicated, passionate people who are making a real difference in the Eastern Cape. For two years, Sohaila was the Director of Communications at AIDS-Free World, an international advocacy organization. In this position, she wrote briefs, reports, press releases, essays, letters and more, which were carried by worldwide media; helped set up the communications strategy of the organization; assisted in the development of a new website; and initiated several large ongoing projects including a comprehensive atlas of AIDS. As soon as she graduated from college, Sohaila coordinated the biggest, oldest rape crisis centre in the Northeast for two years. She worked as a journalist in Philadelphia, Boston and Bombay. She also began her fiction career, and, to support her writing, she did various odd jobs, from working in an independent bookstore, working with mentally ill adults, to doing sleep research in a psychiatric hospital. She moved to Delhi, India, for two years, where she coordinated publicity and publications for Oxfam. She traveled all over India and England, writing, speaking and producing reports, brochures and a film. Back in Bombay, she did freelance writing and research for the Ford Foundation, Oxfam, and the London School of Tropical Hygiene. In New York, from 1996 on, she worked as a freelance editor for several UN organizations, as well as private companies. She has edited books on computer systems in health care, human rights movements, and hedge funds. She ghostwrote two articles for Wall Street publications. She has produced reports for The Micronutrient Initiative, and worked as a proofreader for a busy advertising agency. During this time, she has had two Ford Foundation grants. The first was to research, produce and distribute three children's books on women's health in India. The results, the ‘RangBibi and Langra’ series, were sold all over India in four languages. The second grant was to write a book about aboriginal people in Western India. The book is called ‘Bye Bye Mati: A Memoir in a Monsoon Landscape’. 

Sohaila has done a lot of public speaking and teaching. In Boston, she spoke at hospitals, schools and many other institutions about sexual assault. When she worked for Oxfam, she spoke in public about issues such as poverty and women's rights. She has appeared on broadcast television in the US, India and on the BBC in England. She was a guest speaker at Clark University in Massachusetts, Northwestern University in Chicago, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, among others. In 2004 and 2008, she was an adjunct professor at New York University, teaching South Asian Civilization to undergraduates. Her curriculum was based on her own book, ‘Bye Bye Mati: A Memoir in a Monsoon Landscape’. Sohaila's writing has been published in India, the US, England, and Canada. In 1998, her bestselling novel, ‘The Madwoman of Jogare’, was published by HarperCollins India. In 2010, Penguin India published her novel, ‘Year of the Tiger’. She is on the board of ‘Point of View’, a women's media group in Bombay, India. She continues to write and publish both fiction and non-fiction. She lives in the Lower East Side of Manhattan with her husband and their daughter. 

Source: Wikipedia, Google search and Sohaila’s own website (http://www.sohailaink.com)

Dr. V. Shanta

#18/100 in #100extraordinarywomen

Dr. V. Shanta was born in a distinguished scientific family of India in Chennai. Despite the fact that she comes from a family of scientists and Nobel laureates – S. Chandrasekhar and Dr. C.V. Raman, who are her maternal uncle and grand uncle, respectively – Dr. Shanta decided to become a doctor, inspired by Dr. Muthulakshmi Reddy, the first woman medical graduate in the country. She graduated (M.B.B.S.) in 1949, D.G.O. in 1952 and M.D, in Obstetrics & Gynecology in 1955. In April 1955, she joined the fledgling Cancer Institute, established in 1954 by the Womens' Indian Association Cancer Relief Fund, as its Resident Medical Officer in preference to the Asst. Surgeon's Post in the Women & Children's Hospital, Madras, to which she had been selected by the Madras Public Service Commission. Dr. V. Shanta is a prominent Cancer specialist and the Chairperson of Adyar Cancer Institute, Chennai. She has been associated with Adyar since 1955, and has held several key positions, including its Director between 1980-1997. She is a member of the World Health Organisation's Advisory Committee on Health and several other national and international committees on health and medicine. Her career has included organizing care for cancer patients and research in the prevention and cure of the disease. Her work won several awards including the Magsaysay Award, Padma Shri, Padma Bhushan, and Padma Vibhushan, the second highest civilian award by Government of India. She is also the member of Tamil Nadu State Planning Commission for Health.

Dr. V. Shanta was born on March 11, 1927 at Mylapore, Chennai in a Iyer family. Her family includes Nobel Laureates C.V. Raman and S. Chandrasekar. She did her schooling from National Girls High School (now P.S. Sivaswamy Higher Secondary School) and had always wanted to become a Doctor. She completed her graduation from Madras Medical College in 1949, and her M.D. in 1955. When Dr. Muthulakshmi Reddy set up the Cancer Institute in 1954, Dr. Shanta then had just finished her Doctor of Medicine (M.D.). She also got through the Public Service Commission examination and was posted to the Women and Children Hospital. She decided to join the Cancer Institute instead, upsetting many people. The institute began with a single building and a cluster of huts with minimal equipment and two doctors, Dr. Shanta and Dr. Krishnamurthi. For three years she worked as honorary staff after which, the Institute offered to pay her Rs. 200 per month and residence within the campus. She moved into the campus and has remained there ever since. Recalling her early years, Dr. Shanta says that for her the biggest take away from her teachers and family was to be selfless in her profession – “from them I learnt the principle ‘to give and not take’.” Joining the cancer ward of the local government hospital was the big turning point of her professional career.

And today, she is carrying forward this legacy as the Chairperson of Adyar Cancer Institute – founded by Dr. Muthulakshmi Reddy – that has grown from a 12-bed, two-doctor cottage hospital to an institution that has a reputation for providing subsidised treatment to the poor. Dr. Shanta believes that “lack of awareness and a sense of complacency borne out of fear”, especially among the underprivileged communities, is behind the escalating number of cancer cases, particularly those of women suffering from cervical and breast cancer. Of course, cancer treatment and care-giving has come a long way. Vividly recalling her early years in this field, she explains, “Surgery and radio therapy were the only options available for patients at the time. As detection of cancer was not an easy job, we inevitably got patients at an advanced stage, and many of them did not opt for radiotherapy because of the extreme side effects. There used to be some level of exploitation of patients as well and that was why Dr. Muthulakshmi and Dr. Krishnamurthy stepped in to set up a separate wing for cancer care.” Having stepped into the shoes of her mentor and his mother, Dr. Shanta found that running a cancer hospital was no simple feat. There have been many tough moments along the way, “Everyone imagines that the hospital is well established so it would be easy to run. Few people know of the difficulties that we face internally. Fund crunch is the biggest hurdle when it comes to providing quality service and we are struggling to get donations to meet our basic minimum costs.”

In an era when specialised medical care in India has become highly commercialised, Dr. Shanta strives to ensure that the Institute remains true to its ethos, ‘Service to all’. Its services are free or subsidised for some 60 per cent of its 100,000 annual patients, eighty-nine-year-old Shanta still sees patients, still performs surgery, and is still on call twenty-four hours a day. Over the years, the good doctor has cared for her patients with a lot of patience and dedication – and her tireless service has not gone unnoticed. In 2005, she was conferred with the Ramon Magsaysay Award, better known as the Nobel Prize of Asia, and in 2006, the Indian government feted her very recently with the Padma Vibhushan (2016), the second highest civilian award in the land. Apart from that Dr. Shanta is also a recipient of the Padma Shri Award in 1986 and the Padma Bhushan in 2005. But she doesn’t plan to rest on her laurels and has a word of advice for her young colleagues. “I have worked to the best of my ability in cancer care based on ethics, values and, importantly, respect for human life. Doctors must learn to treat their patients as human beings and not as mere commodities. One must have pride in one’s profession and see it as a mission,” she signs off. 

Source: Google search and Wikipedia.

Cynthia Coopers

#17/100 in #100extraordinarywomen

Cynthia Cooper just wanted to live a quiet life working for the pride of Mississippi - WorldCom. But as Vice President of Internal Audit she discovered some suspicious entries in the company's books. Her tenacious investigations uncovered the largest fraud in corporate history. Cynthia knows a thing or two about being caught up in workplace ethical dilemmas. In 2002, she was the key whistle blower in her company’s $3.8 billion accounting fraud case, which eventually added up to $9 billion and the imprisonment of five executives, including CEO Bernie Ebbers.

"Don't ever allow yourself to be intimidated," Patsy Ferrell would say to her young daughter, Cynthia, after a grade-school bullying incident. Cynthia remembered that exhortation years later when she discovered fraud of huge proportions at WorldCom. Faced with the decision of vigorously investigating suspicious transactions or looking away, she did the honourable thing and pursued the crimes to the end - but not without months of trepidation, a queasy stomach, and shaking hands.

Her story unfolded in a time when WorldCom’s stock value and earnings were on the decline, putting pressure on the firm to deliver better results for investors. In 2000, two of the company’s mid-level managers, Betty Vinson and Troy Normand, encountered a significant ethical dilemma. They were five days away from having to release earnings to the public, and there was an error in the books they couldn't resolve: The line costs expense had jumped up dramatically and was completely out of line with the company’s revenues. The expenses had been moved from the income statement to the balance sheet, cutting it as an asset to make the company seem more profitable. Troubled and feeling the pressure of the approaching deadline, the two managers confronted Former WorldCom CFO Scott D. Sullivan. Instead of providing direct answers, he instructed Vinson and Normand to cover up the mistake by drawing on excess reserves. That way, everything would seemingly be aligned with the expectations of external auditors and Wall Street analysts, and they could be given time for the error to “reveal itself in future quarters.” Fearful of losing their jobs and financial security for their families, Vinson and Normand followed the orders of their superior, changing the numbers on the balance sheet and hiding the truth from the public. Like many companies that made lots of acquisitions, WorldCom was required by a new accounting rule to write down the "impairment" of the assets it had acquired. WorldCom's write-down would have been huge – more than $20 billion. Sullivan planned to take it in the second quarter. Also, in the second quarter he planned to write down all those improperly capitalized expenses. There aren't many times when a $3.9 billion write-down would look small, but this was one of them. The problem would have been gone as of July. But, Cynthia caught it in June. Sullivan therefore needed Cynthia to delay her Internal Audit. Growing suspicious of her superior’s increasing persistence, she withstood the pressure to play along. Once Sullivan realized the auditor would not back down, he decided to come clean, justifying his poor decisions by telling her “it was difficult to stop” cooking the books after the first time he manipulated the numbers.

Cynthia didn't buy it, and with the help of her internal auditing team, she sniffed out the discrepancies. She and her team of auditors worked together and often at night and in secret to investigate and unearth the fraud at WorldCom. As soon as she had something concrete to show, she immediately went over her boss’ head and called the chairman of the board’s audit committee. He arranged to meet with her and the company’s new auditor, KPMG. Two weeks later WorldCom announced it would restate earnings by $3.9 billion – the largest restatement ever. The importance of Cooper's refusal to postpone her audit, as Sullivan had asked, is even greater than it may appear. Facts uncovered by the company, combined with the memo Sullivan wrote to the board in a last-ditch attempt to defend himself, show that if she had been ‘a good soldier’, the whole incredible mess might have been concealed forever. She went on to become one of the world’s most famous whistle blowers. Vinson and Sullivan received prison sentences of six months and five years, respectively, and Normand received three years of probation. WorldCom CEO Bernard Ebbers is still serving a 25-year term for his role in the fraud.

The decision to come forward did not come easily to Cynthia, as she contemplated the potential repercussions of her actions. Despite some high-profile exceptions — such as the IRS’ record $104 million award to UBS whistle blower Bradley Birkenfeld — corporate truth-tellers don’t always come out on top. Most whistle blowers end up leaving their companies (voluntarily or involuntarily) within a year of speaking up, and many others suffer through hardships such as long-term unemployment, financial instability, anxiety, alcoholism, social isolation, and marital problems. Cynthia herself remained a VP and never got promoted. Moreover, she never received any gratitude for her relentless work and instead had to face resentment from employees and fellow workers. She experienced depression and major weight loss throughout the ordeal, which she described as “by far the most difficult thing I've ever been through.” “It was literally all I could do but get out of bed and put one foot in front of another,” she said. “I realized I had a choice to make. I could either let this ruin my life or I could try and find a way through it and do something completely new.” Most whistle-blowers say they would not do it again. But Cynthia maintains that she would do it all over again because she firmly believes that it was the right thing to do. She found herself at a crossroads where there was only one right path to take.

As a WorldCom employee, Cooper had never intended to go public (a member of Congress had released her Internal Audit memos to the press), and the drama she was watching from the inside was the downfall of a home town company she loved. She still feels empathy for the managers, board members, auditors, and other employees who were working at WorldCom at the time — even those who were involved in the scandal. “The people who were complicit with the fraud were not just numbers to us—they were people who we had worked with for many years,” Cooper said. “Nobody wakes up and says, ‘I want to become a criminal today.’ It’s a slippery slope, and people go down that slope one step at a time.” “We all have the power of choice,” she added. “You can give it away, but you all have the power of choice, so prepare yourselves.”

On personal front, Cynthia earned her Bachelor of Science in Accounting from Mississippi State University and a Master of Science in Accountancy from the University of Alabama. She is a Certified Public Accountant (CPA) in Georgia, Certified Information Systems Auditor (CISA) and a Certified Fraud Examiner (CFE). She married Lance Cooper in 1993 with whom she has two children, Stephanie and Anna Katherine. Before joining WorldCom, she previously worked for the Atlanta offices of public accounting firms PricewaterhouseCoopers and Deloitte & Touche. In 1994, Cynthia landed a job in internal audit at WorldCom - then known as LDDS - in Jackson, Mississippi. When the company moved to her hometown of Clinton, Mississippi, she thought she would settle into a comfortable niche, surrounded by her husband, children, extended family, and lifelong friends. But then her nightmare started.

She stayed for two years until MCI (that had merged with WorldCom) had emerged from bankruptcy. She knew that if she left, many of her staff would lose their jobs. So she stayed until most had found other employment. After leaving MCI, she started her own consulting firm. In addition, she speaks to professionals as well as high school and college students about workplace ethics and shares her experiences and lessons learned. Her book about her life and the WorldCom fraud, “Extraordinary Circumstances: The Journey of a Corporate Whistleblower”, was published in 2008. She wanted to share the story because she believed there were valuable lessons that can be gleaned and shared with the next generation. She also hoped that it might encourage others who find themselves going through one of life's storms or faced with tough choices. Profits from the book were given to universities for ethics education. She was named one of three "People of the Year" by Time magazine in 2002. In addition, she was featured as one of the 25 most influential working mothers in Working Mother Magazine. She now maintains an office in Brandon, Mississippi.

Her story speaks of the importance of living a life of integrity and making decisions we can look back on without regret. It illuminates the value of developing strong boundaries, keeping our paths straight, and guarding against the temptations and trappings of material success.


Source: Google search.

Sarla Thakral

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#16/100 in #100extraordinarywomen

When we talk about all these successful ladies, the one lady who pioneered a career in aviation cannot be forgotten. Sarla Thakral was the first Indian woman to get an aviation pilot licence and fly an aircraft. From the extra ordinary support from her family to her unflinching passion to achieve her dreams, Sarla Thakral’s story is truly amazing and inspirational.

Born in 1914, she earned an aviation pilot license in 1936 at the age of 21. Her first step into the world of flying was in the cockpit of a Gypsy Moth – in a saree. At a time when there were only male faces to be seen in the cockpit, Sarla was the face of new and confident India, a fresh breeze of courage and determination. She flew the said Gypsy Moth solo and she had a four-year-old daughter at that time. After obtaining the initial licence, she persevered on and completed one thousand hours of flying in the aircraft owned by the Lahore Flying Club. It was support of two men – her husband and her father-in-law – which gave her the strength to reach the blue sky. Her husband P. D. Sharma – who himself was a successful pilot and the first Indian to get an airmail pilot’s licence and fly between Karachi and Lahore – whom she married at 16 and who came from a family which had 9 pilots encouraged her to achieve it.

She was the first woman pilot to obtain ‘A’ license when she accumulated over 1000 hours of flying. But as every successful story has its own challenges, Thakral’s life too took an ugly turn when she lost her husband in a plane crash in 1939. She became a widow at a young age of 24. She was at that time all set to obtain the ‘B’ license which would have given the opportunity to fly a commercial plane. But this dream had to wait to be fulfilled. While she was working towards the commercial pilot license in 1939, World War II broke out and civil training was suspended. She abandoned her plans to become a commercial pilot, returned to Lahore and joined the Mayo School of Art where she trained in the Bengal school of painting and obtained a diploma in fine arts. After the partition, she moved to Delhi with her two daughters.

She was an ardent Arya Samaj follower. Being an Arya Samaji made it easier for her to remarry her second husband P. P. Thakral as widow remarriage was encouraged. She married him in 1948. Sarla, also known as Mati, successfully took up costume jewellery making, saree designing, painting and designing for the National School of Drama in her later years. She supplied her jewellery designs to several cottage industries for over 20 years. She had also started textile printing and her saree prints were a rage with the fashionable crowd. One of her clients was Vijayalaxmi Pandit. If we see, Thakral’s life was divided into two parts, and she lived both of them perfectly. She did not let anything come in the way of a good life and was an inspiration to all women till she took her last breath on 15th March, 2009.

We salute the amazing lady, who took woman empowerment to a new height. We also salute her family who stood by her through thick and thin and always supported her at a time when women were not even given a chance to educate themselves. Women like Thakral are true gems and an inspiration to all of us.


Source: Google search and Wikipedia.