Devi Murthy

#72/100 in #100extraordinarywomen 

Devi Murthy, who holds an electrical engineering degree from Drexel University, USA and Masters in Entrepreneurship from Indian Institute of Management (IIM) - Bangalore, identified growing difficulties faced by small-scale Indian farmers. A majority of agrarian workers in the country were finding it increasingly difficult to keep up with rising labour costs, but were unable to mechanise their cultivation processes because imported farm equipment was unsuitable to their modest farm sizes. Instead of pursuing a high-paying corporate career, she nose-dived into an entrepreneur journey like no other. With her farming equipment development company, Kamal Kisan, she began to customise her products to suit the needs of the small-time Indian farmer. 

While she was studying at IIM-Bangalore in 2010, Devi came across students with a background in agriculture who sought her help to design tools for their factories. The 33-year-old had already developed products for her family business of commercial automotive components, so this was right up her alley. As more people approached her, she realised there was a gap in the market and set up Kamal Kisan in 2013. 

Labour shortage is a reality in rural India and farmers bear the brunt of it. Though India is the largest manufacturer of tractors globally, less than 2 percent of the country’s farmers use machines. Besides, over a lakh farmers give up farming every year due to lack of good technology and increasing labour costs. On the other hand a PTI report, published early in January last year, states that while around 1.5 million engineering students graduate every year in India 80% of them remain unemployed.These students mostly end up working out of their areas of expertise, in roles that don’t interest them. The founder of Kamal Kisan, Devi Murthy, saw a potential solution to both problems. She decided to reduce their dependency on labour and introduce them to tools like machines and farm equipment instead. 

“India, as a country, is capable of a lot more innovations in agriculture but we are not doing enough in that area. Indians are known for their ‘jugaad’ mechanism. We need to take this mechanism to the next level where it gets community focus and not individual focus,” she says. It was with this belief that Devi began Kamal Kisan. Her aim was to kick-start a company that would develop cost-effective, smart mechanization solutions for India’s small and marginal farmers, to reduce labour dependence and increase profitability. 

A resident of Bangalore, it was taken for granted that Devi would join the family business, an established sheet metal fabrications and components manufacturing company called Kamal Bells. Keeping with tradition, she joined the firm as Head of Product Development and Business Development and worked at the post for over six years. However she was unable to shake off a desire to begin a project that would create social impact. The idea first occurred to her while she was pursuing her Masters in Entrepreneurship at the IIM - Bangalore. One of her classmates, who belonged to a farmer’s family, suggested that she use her skills to help farmers. 

Devi began her journey to start Kamal Kisan by spending two years travelling across the country to meet small farmers. She also visited various institutes such as the CIAE in Bhopal and the UAS in Dharwad. Her research made her realize the large gap that existed between the needs of the Indian farmer and the expensive, large-sized, imported machinery used in farming. 

Despite the fact that India is the 3rd largest tractor manufacturer in the world, less than 2% of the country’s farmers use mechanization. A dearth of equipment and scarce availability of hands-on-the-ground have driven up labour costs. Farmlands with less than five acres of area constitute more than 80% of farm holdings in the country today. The increasing non-availability of labour has become a major concern among farmers as it leads to low productivity. Furthermore, adapting modern, mechanized techniques in cultivation have proven to be difficult because most available machinery is unsuitable for small farms. Devi decided to use her machine development skills to help small farmers. 

A hardcore city girl, Devi had never visited a farm before. But once she became focused on developing products for the sector, she began to attend farmer fairs, travel to fields across the country and survey farmers to better understand their needs and the products already available in the market. Often, she juggled her newfound interest in farm equipment with her day job at the family firm. “I would sneak out two hours earlier than usual from my regular job and spend time at my workshop in the same facility. I had hired two people with my salary and together we would inspect existing farm equipment from China and tinker around to see how we could make it better and suitable for the Indian farmer,” she recalls. 

Finally, with a seed fund of Rs. 5 lakh from the Rural Technology and Business Incubator (RTBI) at Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) - Madras, Devi began her experiment in 2013. She also received incubation and mentoring from Villgro Innovation Foundation in 2014 to ensure her venture had all the support to succeed. With all this support, Kamal Kisan first manufactured a vegetable planter in July 2015. The product was priced low to make it affordable to small farmers. The feedback was overwhelming. “A small farmer who bought our product was so happy with the reduced labour and cost effectiveness that he personally came to thank me. You get to enjoy such experiences only if you are working for a social impact,” says Devi. 

When asked about whether she found her line of work difficult because she was a woman in a typically male-dominated field, she responds positively, saying that her gender never made a difference to the farmers she worked alongside. On the contrary, most people seemed taken with the idea of a foreign-educated girl working for them. Devi soon discovered that it was often times the urban public who came with a discriminatory mind-set with regards to gender-specific work, rather than the vast workforce across rural India. 

Today, Kamal Kisan has been able to reach over 800 farmers and deliver a cumulative saving of over Rs. 10 lakh. “We, as innovators, never see small farmers as our customers. I think this perspective has to be changed,” says Devi. 

At present, the firm has several innovative products for small farms on the market, as well as plans to develop at least two products in the pipeline per year. Foremost among these is the Vegetable Planter, a handy low-cost machine that eases the cultivating process of most fruit and vegetable saplings with an increased process efficiency. The planter allows for a single laborer to plant a one acre plot with vegetable seedlings within four hours, as opposed to a conventional planter that requires four laborers to achieve the same results. Furthermore, it is portable and easy to operate, manufactured with high-quality steel and equipped to adjust planting depth according to the seeds being worked with. Another popular creation is the Kamal Kisan Mulch Layer, a tractor-attached device that can lay plastic mulch sheets between three to four feet, covering soil in a single pass. The mulch layer has reduced labour requirements from six to just two laborers, while completing the laying of one acre of mulch film within three hours. The first-of-its-kind Sugarcane Planter has also received positive reviews. The device combines three processes – ridging, planting and furrowing – to increase efficiency and has reduced the time required to plant a one-acre area to just three hours. Moreover, it mimics current planting methods and easily be can be used with small tractors with powers as low as 30 HP. Apart from these, the company is researching two new products and is soon to launch a mini rice mill. The products are priced between ₹2,000 (vegetable planter) and ₹50,000 (a tractor attached with bed-cum-mulch layer). 

The manufacturing unit in Bangalore assembles the products, but its spare parts are developed by SMEs. Kamal Kisan has direct (farmers) and indirect (those who rent) beneficiaries. The rental model was set up with the help of Tata Trusts and Social Alpha, and is currently operational in Jharkhand and Andhra Pradesh. “Tata Trusts support a couple of village youth in funding some of our equipment… then they go out and rent it, so it becomes a form of livelihood for the individual renting it. At the same time, it works as a ripple effect for us as more people find out about us,” says Devi. Social Alpha also mentors the Kamal Kisan team whenever needed. 

Kamal Kisan has competitors in the form of Dharti Agro and Agribiz. But it prides itself on the fact that its equipment is cheaper, easy to use and low-maintenance. Also, most of it has been co-developed with farmers as Devi Murthy and her team work directly with them. “One of the reasons we are cheaper than our competitors is because we give them products catering to their needs. There is no point giving farmers heavily loaded features that they will never use,” says Devi. Farmers have generally been reluctant to use equipment. “They were using cheaper imported machinery, which had no post-sales services. They were left with a feeling of mistrust. We design our products in such a way that even a blacksmith can fix them,” she says. 

Kamal Kisan aims to help 10 lakh farmers in five years from approximately 13,000 now, and have a presence across South India. Right now, it is limited to Karnataka and a few places in Andhra Pradesh. 

“I just have one message,” says Devi in conclusion. “There is huge opportunity in this field and more and more people should come forward to use their skills to help our farmers.” 

Source: Google search. 

Judit Polgár

#71/100 in #100extraordinarywomen 

Judit Polgár is a Hungarian chess grandmaster and the most popular and charismatic player in chess. By far the strongest female player of all time, she also became the only woman ever to be ranked in the top 10 chess players of the world. 

Judit Polgár was born on 23 July 1976 in Budapest, to a Hungarian Jewish family. Judit and her two older sisters, Grandmaster Susan and International Master Sofia, were part of an educational experiment carried out by their father László Polgár, in an attempt to prove that children could make exceptional achievements if trained in a specialist subject from a very early age. "Geniuses are made, not born," was László’s thesis. He and his wife Klára educated their three daughters at home, with chess as the specialist subject. László also taught his three daughters the international language Esperanto. They received resistance from Hungarian authorities as home-schooling was not a "socialist" approach. They also received criticism at the time from some western commentators for depriving the sisters of a normal childhood. 

Trained in her early years by her sister Susan, who ultimately became Women's World Champion, Judit Polgár was a prodigy from an early age. At age 5, she defeated a family friend without looking at the board. After the game, the friend joked: "You are good at chess, but I'm a good cook." Judit replied: "Do you cook without looking at the stove?" However, according to Susan, Judit was not the sister with the most talent, explaining: "Judit was a slow starter, but very hard-working." Judit described herself at that age as "obsessive" about chess. Judit started playing in tournaments at 6 years old, and by age 9, her rating with the Hungarian Chess Federation was 2080. She was a member of a chess club in Budapest, where she would get experience from master level players. In 1984, in Budapest, Sophia and Judit, at the time 9 and 7 years of age, respectively, played two games of blindfold chess against two masters, which they won. At one point, the girls complained that one of their opponents was playing too slowly and suggested a clock should be used. In April 1986, 9-year-old Judit played in her first rated tournament in the U.S., finishing first in the unrated section of the New York Open, winning US$1,000. All three Polgár sisters competed. Susan, 16, competed in the grandmaster section and had a victory against GM Walter Browne and Sophia, 11, finished second in her section, but Judit gathered most of the attention in the tournament. Grandmasters would drop by to watch the serious, quiet child playing. She won her first seven games before drawing the final game. Although the unrated section had many of the weaker players in the Open, it also had players of expert strength, who were foreign to the United States and had not been rated yet. She first defeated an International Master, Dolfi Drimer, at age 10, and a grandmaster, Lev Gutman, at age 11. 

In April 1988, Judit made her first International Master norm in the International B section of the New York Open. In August 1988, she won the under-12 "Boys" section of the World Youth Chess and Peace Festival in Timișoara, Romania. In October 1988, she finished first in a 10-player round-robin tournament in London, scoring 7–2, for a half point lead over Israeli GM Yair Kraidman. With these three results, she completed the requirements for the International Master title; at the time, she had been the youngest player ever to have achieved this distinction. Both Bobby Fischer and Garry Kasparov were 14 when they were awarded the title; Judit Polgár was 12. It was during this time that former World Champion Mikhail Tal said Judit had the potential to win the Men's World Championship. 

Traditionally, chess had been a male-dominated activity, and women were often seen as weaker players, thus advancing the idea of a Women's World Champion. However, from the beginning, László was against the idea that his daughters had to participate in female-only events. "Women are able to achieve results similar, in fields of intellectual activities, to that of men," he wrote. "Chess is a form of intellectual activity, so this applies to chess. Accordingly, we reject any kind of discrimination in this respect." This put the Polgárs in conflict with the Hungarian Chess Federation of the day, whose policy was for women to play in women-only tournaments. Judit’s older sister, Susan, first fought the bureaucracy by playing in men’s tournaments and refusing to play in women’s tournaments. 

Judit Polgár has rarely played in women's-specific tournaments or divisions and has never competed for the Women's World Championship: "I always say that women should have the self-confidence that they are as good as male players, but only if they are willing to work and take it seriously as much as male players." While László Polgár has been credited with being an excellent chess coach, the Polgárs had also employed professional chessplayers to train their daughters, including Hungarian champion IM Tibor Florian, GM Pal Benko, and Russian GM Alexander Chernin. Susan Polgár, the eldest of the sisters, 5½ years older than Sophia and 7 years older than Judit, was the first of the sisters to achieve prominence in chess by winning tournaments, and by 1986, she was the world's top-rated female chess player. Initially, being the youngest, Judit was separated from her sisters while they were in training. However, this only served to increase Judit's curiosity. After learning the rules, they discovered Judit was able to find solutions to the problems they were studying, and she began to be invited into the group. One evening, Susan was studying an endgame with their trainer, a strong International Master. Unable to find the solution, they woke Judit, who was asleep in bed and carried her into the training room. Still half asleep, Judit showed them how to solve the problem, after which they put her back to bed. László Polgár's experiment would produce a family of one international master and two grandmasters and would strengthen the argument for nurture over nature, as well as prove women could be chess grandmasters. 

In 1991, Judit achieved the title of Grandmaster at the age of 15 years and 4 months, at the time the youngest to have done so, breaking the record previously held by former World Champion Bobby Fischer. She was the youngest ever player to break into the FIDE Top 100 players rating list, ranking No. 55 in the January 1989 rating list, at the age of 12. She is the only woman to qualify for a World Championship tournament, having done so in 2005. She is the first, and to date only, woman to have surpassed 2700 Elo, reaching a career peak rating of 2735 and peak world ranking of No. 8, both achieved in 2005. She was the No. 1 rated woman in the world from January 1989 until the March 2015 rating list, when she was overtaken by Chinese player Hou Yifan; she was the No. 1 again in the August 2015 women's rating list, in her last appearance in the FIDE World Rankings. 

She has won or shared first in the chess tournaments of Hastings 1993, Madrid 1994, León 1996, U.S. Open 1998, Hoogeveen 1999, Sigeman & Co 2000, Japfa 2000, and the Najdorf Memorial 2000. Judit is also the only woman to have won a game against a reigning world number one player, and has defeated eleven current or former world champions in either rapid or classical chess: Magnus Carlsen, Anatoly Karpov, Garry Kasparov, Vladimir Kramnik, Boris Spassky, Vasily Smyslov, Veselin Topalov, Viswanathan Anand, Ruslan Ponomariov, Alexander Khalifman, and Rustam Kasimdzhanov. 

In September 2002, in the Russia versus the Rest of the World Match, Judit finally defeated Garry Kasparov in a game. She won the game with exceptional positional play when a cornered Kasparov eventually resigned and immediately left by a passageway barred to journalists and photographers. Kasparov had once described her as a "circus puppet" and asserted that women chess players should stick to having children. Judit called the game "one of the most remarkable moments of [her] career". The game was historic as it was the first time in chess history that a female player beat the world's No. 1 player in competitive play. 

In August 2000, Judit had married Hungarian veterinary surgeon Gusztáv Font. In 2004, Judit took some time off from chess to give birth to her son, Olivér. She was consequently considered inactive and not listed on the January 2005 FIDE rating list. She returned to chess at the prestigious Corus chess tournament on 15 January 2005. Owing to an exceptional performance in the tournament, she was relisted in the April 2005 FIDE rating list. In September 2005, she once again made history as she became the first woman to play for the World Championship, at the FIDE World Chess Championship 2005. However, she had a rare disappointing performance, coming last out of the eight competitors. She did not play at the 2006 Linares tournament because she was pregnant again. On 6 July 2006, she gave birth to a girl, Hanna; returning to Chess again in September 2006. 

Concentrating on her two children left Judit with little time to train and play competitively and her ranking dropped from eighth in 2005 to the mid-50s in 2009. She played in the 2009 Maccabiah Games in Israel, and was named the Outstanding Female Athlete of the Games. However, as of September 2010, she remained the only woman in the top 100 and still the only woman to have ever made the top 10. Comparing motherhood to playing chess, Judit has said that a chess tournament now "feels like a vacation". When asked why she came back to chess after taking time off to care for her children, she said, "I cannot live without chess! It is an integral part of my life. I enjoy the game!" On 13 August 2014, she announced her retirement from competitive chess and has been inactive since September 2015. Before that, in June 2015, Judit Polgár was elected as the new captain and head coach of the Hungarian national men's team. On 20 August 2015, she received Hungary's highest decoration, the Grand Cross of the Order of Saint Stephen of Hungary. 

Since she has stopped playing competitive chess, she has more time for other chess related activities such as giving simultaneous exhibitions, lectures, talks on stage and writing. She has founded the Judit Polgár Chess Foundation which has supported prestigious social events and festivals over the past years. She has also authored a series of children's books on chess, “Chess Playground” for which her sister Sofia provided illustrations. Moreover, in recent years as an ambassador of Chess in School project in the European Union, she has made a lot of efforts to introduce chess as an educational tool. The best Women’s Chess Player of all time has now totally dedicated her life to Chess. 

Source: Wikipedia, Google and Judit Polgár’s own website.

Wilma Rudolf

#70/100 in #100extraordinarywomen

I was already reading about another talented lady when my daughter came home and recounted the story of Wilma Rudolf. They had read the book “Wilma Unlimited” in school and were supposed to do some thought-provoking questions about how she might have inspired them as home-work. I was totally intrigued and immediately started reading about Wilma Rudolf.

Wilma Rudolph was an American sprinter who became a world-record-holding Olympic champion and international sports icon in track and field following her stupendous success in the 1960 Olympic Games in Rome, Italy. She won three gold medals in the 100 and 200 meter individual events and the 4 x 100 meter relay at the said games. Wilma was acclaimed the fastest woman in the world in the 1960s and became the first American woman, to win three gold medals in a single Olympic Games. Due to the worldwide television coverage of the 1960 Summer Olympics, she became an international star along with other Olympic athletes such as Cassius Clay (later known as Muhammad Ali), Oscar Robertson, and Rafer Johnson who also competed in Italy.

Wilma Rudolph was born prematurely at 4.5 pounds (2.0 kg) on June 23, 1940, in Saint Bethlehem, Tennessee in the US. She was the twentieth of twenty-two siblings from her father's two marriages. Shortly after Wilma’s birth, her family moved to Clarksville, Tennessee, where she grew up and attended elementary and high school. Her father, Ed worked as a railway porter and did odd jobs in Clarksville, while her mother, Blanche, worked as a maid in Clarksville homes.

Wilma was a sickly child and contracted diseases easily. At birth, she wasn’t even expected to survive a year but not only did she survive but she was otherwise a very active child, always found hopping and running around. However, she suffered from several early childhood illnesses, including pneumonia and scarlet fever. For the racially segregated family and community, doctor was a luxury – not only due to looming poverty but also because there was just one doctor in the area who would agree to see black people. Wilma contracted infantile paralysis (caused by the polio virus) at the age of four. She recovered from polio, but lost strength in her left leg and foot and ended up with a twisted leg. Because there was little medical care available to African American residents of Clarksville in the 1940s, her parents sought treatment for her at the historically black Meharry Medical College (now Nashville General Hospital at Meharry) in Nashville, Tennessee, about 50 miles (80 km) from Clarksville where Wilma would go twice a week with her mom in the back seat of a bus. She had to pull out of school too but she did not let herself be contained and would hop around on one foot keeping herself active. Physically disabled for much of her early life, she wore a heavy steel leg brace until she was eight years old. Although the brace allowed her to go back to school, she would have to just sit and watch from the sidelines during sports as she enviously watched her classmates play Basketball. For two years Wilma and her mother made weekly bus trips to Nashville for treatments to regain the use of her weakened leg. She also received subsequent at-home massage treatments four times a day from members of her family and wore an orthopedic shoe for support of her foot for another two years. Because of the treatments she received at Meharry and the daily massages from her family members, she was able to overcome the debilitating effects of polio and learned to walk without a leg brace or orthopedic shoe for support by the time she was twelve years old. One Sunday out of the blue just outside the Church, Wilma decided to take off the brace and walk in. Her knees trembled but she took one step at a time with full concentration as she walked in much to the gasps of everyone around. There was no looking back then and the brace soon was packed and sent off back to the hospital. The next target for her was Basketball which she had by now fallen in love with and which she could now take up.

As already mentioned, Wilma was initially home-schooled due to the frequent illnesses that caused her to miss kindergarten and first grade. She began attending second grade at Cobb Elementary School in Clarksville in 1947, when she was seven years old. Rudolph attended Clarksville's all-black Burt High School, where she excelled in basketball. She led her team to the High School Finals where surprisingly her team lost. As she sat dejected after the game, she was approached by Ed Temple, Tennessee State’s track and field coach, who had come to watch the game to join the track and field team. Temple invited fourteen-year-old Wilma Rudolph to join his summer training program at Tennessee State. After attending the track camp, Wilma won all nine events. She entered at an Amateur Athletic Union track meet in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Under Temple’s guidance she continued to train regularly at Tennessee State University (TSU) while still a high school student. Wilma raced at amateur athletic events with TSU’s women’s track team, known as the Tigerbelles, for two more years before enrolling at TSU as a student in 1958. During her senior year of high school Wilma became pregnant with her first child, Yolanda, who was born in 1958, a few weeks prior to her enrollment at TSU in Nashville, for which she had earned a full scholarship thanks to her performance in the track and field team. She was the first member of her family to go to college. In college, Wilma continued to compete in track. She also became a member of the Delta Sigma Theta sorority. She graduated from Tennessee State with a bachelor’s degree in education in 1963. Wilma’s college education was paid for through her participation in a work-study scholarship program that required her to work on the TSU campus for two hours a day.

When Wilma was sixteen and a junior in high school, she attended the 1956 U.S. Olympic track and field team trials in Seattle, Washington, and qualified to compete in the 200 meter individual event at the 1956 Summer Olympics in Melbourne, Australia. Rudolph, the youngest member of the U.S. Olympic team, was one of five TSU Tigerbelles to qualify for the 1956 Melbourne Olympics. She was defeated in a preliminary heat of the 200 meter race at the Melbourne Olympic Games, but ran the third leg of the 4 × 100 meter relay. The American team of Wilma Rudolph, Isabelle Daniels, Mae Faggs, and Margaret Matthews, all of whom were TSU Tigerbelles, won the bronze medal, matching the world-record time of 44.9 seconds. But the British and the Australian Teams were faster and won the silver and the gold respectively. In 1959, at the Pan American Games in Chicago, Illinois, Wilma won a silver medal in the 100 meter individual event, as well as a gold medal in the 4 × 100 meter relay with teammates Isabelle Daniels, Barbara Jones, and Lucinda Williams. In addition, Rudolph won the AAU 100 meter title in 1959 and defended it for four consecutive years. During her career, Rudolph also won three AAU indoor titles.

While she was still a sophomore at Tennessee State, Wilma competed in the U.S. Olympic track and field trials at Abilene Christian University in Abilene, Texas, where she set a world record in the 200 meter dash that stood for eight years. She also qualified for the 1960 Summer Olympics in the 100 meter dash. At the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome, Italy, she competed in three events on a cinder track in Rome’s Stadio Olimpico: the 100 and 200 meter sprints, as well as the 4 × 100 meter relay. Wilma, who won a gold medal in each of these events, became the first American woman to win three gold medals in a single Olympiad. Wilma Rudolph was one of the most popular athletes of the 1960 Rome Olympics and emerged from the Olympic Games as “The Tornado, the fastest woman on earth.” The Italians nicknamed her “La Gazzella Nera” (“The Black Gazelle”) and the French called her “La Perle Noire” (“The Black Pearl”). Along with other 1960 Olympic athletes such as Cassius Clay (later known as Muhammad Ali), Oscar Robertson, and Rafer Johnson, Wilma became an international star due to the first worldwide television coverage of the Olympics that year. The 1960 Rome Olympics launched she into the public spotlight and the media cast her as America’s athletic “leading lady” and a “queen”, with praises of her athletic accomplishments as well as her feminine beauty and poise. Following her Olympic victories the United States Information Agency made a ten-minute documentary film, Wilma Rudolph: Olympic Champion (1961), to highlight her accomplishments on the track. Wilma’s appearance in 1960 on “To Tell the Truth”, an American television game show, and later as a guest on “The Ed Sullivan Show” also helped promote her status as an iconic sports star.

In 1961, Wilma married William Ward, a North Carolina College at Durham track team member; they divorced in 1963. In the interim, she retired from track competition at the age of twenty-two, following victories in the 100 meter and 4 x 100 meter relay races at a U.S. - Soviet meet at Stanford University in 1962. At the time of her retirement, she was still the world record-holder in the 100 meter (11.2 seconds set on July 19, 1961), 200 meter (22.9 seconds set on July 9, 1960), and 4 x 100 meter relay events. She had also won seven national AAU sprint titles and set the women’s indoor track record of 6.9 seconds in the 60-yard dash. As Rudolph explained it, she retired at the peak of her athletic career because she wanted to leave the sport while still at her best. As such, she did not compete at the 1964 Summer Olympic Games in Tokyo, Japan,[15][30] saying, “If I won two gold medals, there would be something lacking. I’ll stick with the glory I’ve already won like Jesse Owens did in 1936.” After retiring from competition, Wilma continued her education at Tennessee State and earned a bachelor’s degree in elementary education in 1963. That year she also made a month-long trip to West Africa as a goodwill ambassador for the U.S State Department. She served as U.S. representative to the 1963 Friendship Games in Dakar, Senegal, and visited Ghana, Guinea, Mali, and Upper Volta, where she attended sporting events, visited schools, and made guest appearances on television and radio broadcasts. She also attended the premier of the U.S. Information Agency’s documentary film that highlighted her track career.

Wilma Rudolph, who did not earn significant money as an amateur athlete, shifted to a career in teaching and coaching after her retirement from track competition. She began as a second-grade teacher at Cobb Elementary School, where she had attended as a child, and coached track at Burt High School, where she had once been a student-athlete herself, but conflict forced her to leave the position. Wilma moved several times over the years and lived in various places such as Chicago, Illinois; Indianapolis, Indiana; Saint Louis, Missouri; Detroit, Michigan; Tennessee; California; and Maine. In May 1963, a few weeks after returning from Africa, Wilma participated in a civil rights protest in her hometown of Clarksville in an effort to desegregate one of the city's restaurants. Within a short time the mayor announced that the city’s public facilities, including its restaurants, would become fully integrated. She also married Robert Eldridge, who had fathered her child when she was in high school, later that year. The couple had three additional children, but divorced after seventeen years of marriage.

Wilma's autobiography, Wilma: The Story of Wilma Rudolph, was published in 1977. It served as the basis for several other publications and films. By 2014, at least twenty-one books on her life had been published for children from pre-school youth to high school students. In addition to teaching, Wilma worked for nonprofit organizations and government-sponsored projects that supported athletic development among American children. In Boston, Massachusetts, she became involved in the federal Job Corps program, and in 1967 served as a track specialist for Operation Champion. In 1981, Wilma established and led the Wilma Rudolph Foundation, a nonprofit organization based in Indianapolis, Indiana, that trains youth athletes. In 1987, she joined DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana, as director of its women's track program and served as a consultant on minority affairs to the university's president. The single mother of four children hosted a local television show in Indianapolis. She was also a television sports commentator for ABC Sports during the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, California, and lit the cauldron to open the Pan American Games in Indianapolis in 1987 in front of 80,000 spectators at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. In 1992, two years before her untimely death, Wilma became a vice president at Nashville's Baptist Hospital. In July 1994 (shortly after her mother's death), Wilma was diagnosed with brain cancer. She also had been diagnosed with throat cancer. Her condition deteriorated rapidly, and she died on November 12, 1994, at the age of fifty-four, at her home in Brentwood, a suburb of Nashville, Tennessee. Across Tennessee, the state flag flew at half-mast on the day of her memorial-service.

Wilma was named United Press International Athlete of the Year (1960) and Associated Press Woman Athlete of the Year (1960 and 1961). She was also the recipient of the James E. Sullivan Award (1960) for the top amateur athlete in the United States and the Babe Didrikson Zaharias Award (1962). In addition, she had a private meeting with President John F. Kennedy in the Oval Office. She was also honored with the National Sports Award (1993) and was inducted into several women’s and sports halls of fame along with many other awards. Several other recognitions like naming of roads and tracks in her name, highlighted her glorious innings as an athlete par excellence. In 1996, the Women’s Sports Foundation presented its first Wilma Rudolph Courage Award to Jackie Joyner-Kersee. The annual award is presented to a female athlete who exhibits extraordinary courage in her athletic performance, demonstrates the ability to overcome adversity, makes significant contributions to sports, and serves as an inspiration and role model to those who face challenges, overcomes them, and strives for success at all levels.

As an Olympic champion in the early 1960s, Wilma was among the most highly visible black women in America and abroad. She became a role model for black and female athletes and her Olympic successes helped elevate women's track and field in the United States. In addition to her own athletic accomplishments, Wilma Rudolph is remembered for her contributions to youth, including founding and heading the Wilma Rudolph Foundation, which trains youth athletes. She has been memorialized with a variety of tributes, including her image on a commemorative U.S. postage stamp, the fifth in its “Distinguished Americans” series. “Wilma: The Story of Wilma Rudolph” (1977), her autobiography, was adapted into a television docudrama. Her life is also remembered in “Unlimited” (2015), a short documentary film for school audiences, as well as in numerous publications, especially books for young readers. 

Source: Wikipedia, Google and “Wilma Unlimited” by Kathleen Krull

Dhivya Suryadevara

#69/100 in #100extraordinarywomen 

In an industry not exactly known for its diversity, an iconic American carmaker has appointed its first female chief financial officer (CFO). And she’s from Chennai, India. 

On June 13, 2018, General Motors (GM), the maker of Buick, Cadillac, and Chevrolet cars, said that 39-year-old Dhivya Suryadevara will take over as CFO in September. Suryadevara joined the company in 2005, and has held various positions over the years. Since July 2017, she’s been serving as its vice-president for corporate finance. With Suryadevara’s appointment, GM joins a handful of companies, including Hershey Co and Signet Jewelers, that have women serving as both CEO and CFO. In 2014, Mary Barra became the first woman to make it to the top of a major automobile company as CEO of GM. In 2018, Dhivya became the first woman to become the CFO of a major automobile company. She would replace current CFO Chuck Stevens, who has been working at the auto company longer than Dhivya has been alive. 

As of now, she is managing two simultaneous jobs at General Motors, as she over­sees funding for the automaker’s capital activities, banking relation­ships, and $80 billion pension plan. She commutes between New York City, where her home and family are, and Detroit. Earlier in the month, she played a key role in getting a $2.25 billion investment in GM Cruise by Japanese tech giant SoftBank Group Corp, and GM’s investment in San Francisco-based on-demand transportation company Lyft. 

GM CEO Mary Barra, who has made significant strides to increase female leadership in the company, says Dhivya is ready. "Dhivya's experience and leadership in several key roles throughout our financial operations positions her well to build on the strong business results we've delivered over the last several years," Barra said. Although Dhivya never imagined going into the automotive industry, she has said that she's always enjoyed anything "challenging and complicated." That was also the theme of her upbringing in Chennai, India. After her father passed away when Suryadevara was young, all parenting duties fell onto her mother. "My mom had to raise three children on her own, which is difficult to do anywhere, let alone in India," she said. "She wanted to make sure there were no corners cut when it came to our education and to prove that we could have the same resources as a two-parent household." Her mother's high expectations stayed with Suryadevara as she completed her bachelor's and master's degree in commerce at the University of Madras. When she was 22, Suryadevara traveled to the U.S. for the first time to attend Harvard Business School, where she got an MBA. 

She began her career at PricewaterhouseCoopers before moving to investment banking at UBS. At 25, she joined GM as a senior financial analyst at the treasurer’s office, and she’s been with the company ever since, eventually becoming one of the youngest chief investment officers of GM Asset Management, in which she managed $85 billion worth of assets for the company’s pension plans. She served as CEO and Chief Investment Officer for GM Asset Management from 2013 to 2017. Dhivya is also a chartered financial analyst and a chartered accountant. In 2015, she was named one of Fortune Magazine’s 40 under 40. At the time, she revealed that her very first car had been a Buick Enclave. 

Dhivya’s husband and 12-year-old daughter are based in New York. Weekends, she’s home, and the weeks are dependent on what’s going on at any given time. She spends a lot of time going back and forth. But that had never deterred her. She says, “It teaches you to be more efficient. When I’m in Detroit, I take more meetings and focus on work so that it’s easier for me to be with my family when I’m in New York. And I work while I travel. I get hundreds of e-mails each day. I use my time on the plane to go through them.” 

Dhivya unwinds by exercising, especially boxing. She finds it very therapeutic. She also refrains from giving any Mantra for “maintaining a balance” and believes that it’s about prioritization. She doesn’t have time to cook; she recognizes that and doesn’t even bother. “You can’t follow a template that works for someone else. I don’t have a silver bullet for balance, but I try to make the most of every week, recognizing that there will be some weeks that are hard.” 

In taking on the CFO role, Dhivya Suryadevara joins a class of female chief financial officers that’s grown in recent years. Let’s hope her tribe increases further. 

Source: Google search.

Gladys West

#68/100 in #100extraordinarywomen

Gladys West had no idea, at the time, that her recordings of satellite locations and accompanying mathematical calculations would become today's GPS system and affect so many areas of life. She remarks, "When you’re working every day, you’re not thinking, ‘What impact is this going to have on the world? You're thinking, ‘I’ve got to get this right.'" And apparently, she did just that. 

Last year, Gladys was honored during a Black History Month celebration and U.S. Navy Captain Godfrey Weekes, who served alongside her, described how significant of a role she played during her time spent at Dahlgren. “She rose through the ranks, worked on the satellite geodesy [science that measures the size and shape of Earth] and contributed to the accuracy of GPS and the measurement of satellite data,” he wrote. "As Gladys West started her career as a mathematician at Dahlgren in 1956, she likely had no idea that her work would impact the world for decades to come."

Gladys Mae West (née Brown), born in 1931, is an American mathematician known for her contributions to Global Positioning Systems. As a girl growing up in Dinwiddie County south of Richmond, all Gladys knew was that she didn’t want to work in the fields, picking tobacco, corn and cotton, or in a nearby factory, beating tobacco leaves into pieces small enough for cigarettes and pipes, as her parents did; to provide for their family. She saw education as a "way out". When she learned that the valedictorian and salutatorian from her high school would earn a scholarship to Virginia State College (now University), she studied hard and graduated at the top of her class. She got her free ticket to college, majored in math and taught two years in Sussex County before she went back to school for her master’s degree. She sought jobs where she could apply her skills and eventually got a call from the Dahlgren base, then known as the Naval Proving Ground and now called Naval Support Facility Dahlgren.

“That’s when life really started,” she said. Gladys began her career in 1956, the second black woman hired at the base and one of only four black employees. One was a mathematician named Ira West, and the two dated for 18 months before they married in 1957. “That was a great time to be at the base,” Ira said. “They were just discovering computers.” While he spent most of his career developing computer programs for ballistic missiles launched from submarines, Gladys’ calculations eventually led to satellites. She collected information from the orbiting machines, focusing on information that helped to determine their exact location as they transmitted from around the world. Data was entered into large scale “super computers” that filled entire rooms. Gladys worked on computer software to ensure that calculations for surface elevations and geoid heights were accurate. She took pride in knowing that data that she was entering was correct and she would work tirelessly to make certain of her work’s accuracy.

The process that led to GPS is too scientific for a newspaper story, but Gladys West would say it took a lot of work—equations checked and double-checked, along with lots of data collection and analysis. Although she might not have grasped its future usage, she was pleased by the company she kept. “I was ecstatic,” she said. “I was able to come from Dinwiddie County and be able to work with some of the greatest scientists working on these projects.”

Ralph Neiman, her department head in 1979, acknowledged those skills in a commendation he recommended for Gladys, project manager for the Seasat radar altimetry project. Launched in 1978, Seasat was the first satellite designed for remote sensing of oceans with synthetic aperture radar. “This involved planning and executing several highly complex computer algorithms which have to analyze an enormous amount of data,” Neiman wrote. “You have used your knowledge of computer applications to accomplish this in an efficient and timely manner.” He also commended the many hours she dedicated to the project, beyond the normal work week, and the fact that it had cut the processing time in half, saving the base many thousands of dollars. Dr. Jim Colvard was technical director—the top civilian position at NSWC Dahlgren – from 1973 to 1980 and knew her as one of his students in a graduate program and as a professional employee. “She was an excellent student and a respected and productive professional,” he wrote in an email. “Her competence, not her color, defined her.”

While she may not be as well known as other women in STEM fields, her contribution is undeniable. Gladys West retired from the base in 1998, a year after her husband, and the two celebrated by traveling to New Zealand and Australia. She was excited about the new stage of her life and all the things she might get into. She’d been taking one course at a time toward her doctorate in philosophy from Virginia Tech and was ready for the last step, to write her dissertation. “However, the Almighty apparently had other plans for me,” she said. Five months after retirement, she had a stroke that impaired her hearing and vision, balance and use of her right side. She was feeling pretty sorry for herself until “all of a sudden, these words came into my head: ‘You can’t stay in the bed, you’ve got to get up from here and get your Ph.D.’ ” She did just that.

She and her husband started taking classes at the King George YMCA to rebuild her strength and recover the mobility she’d lost in the stroke. She had to have a quadruple bypass later, then dealt with breast cancer in 2011. The two continue to attend five exercise classes a week, and both are going strong. He ran a half-marathon six years ago, at age 80, and she’s in the midst of writing her memoirs. “Gladys and Ira are two of the finest people I’ve ever known,” said Cindy Miller, a King George resident and former technical writer at Dahlgren. “They’re just good, solid-to-the-core, God-fearing people.”

As for the GPS, the Wests use it when they travel, although she still prefers to refer to a paper map. That perplexes Carolyn Oglesby, the couple’s oldest daughter. The Wests have three children and seven grandchildren. “I asked her why she didn’t just use the Garmin [GPS] since she knows the equations that she helped write are correct,” Oglesby said. “She says the data points could be wrong or outdated so she has to have that map.” Gladys West is still doing her own calculations. 

Source: Google search.

Gloria Steinem

#67/100 in #100extraordinarywomen

I was wondering who should be an appropriate woman to share her story with everyone on the event of International Women’s Day. This day is all about the Feminist movement and equality and inclusion of genders, races and classes. Who then should it be if not the most famous face of feminism, Gloria Steinem? Gloria Steinem is the nearest thing we have to a grande dame of feminism, a mantle she abhors.

Gloria Steinem has been at the forefront of American feminism for a half century. Social activist, writer, editor and lecturer, Gloria, was born in Ohio on March 25, 1934 to Ruth (née Nuneviller) and Leo Steinem. Her paternal grandmother, Pauline Perlmutter Steinem, was chairwoman of the educational committee of the National Woman Suffrage Association, a delegate to the 1908 International Council of Women, and the first woman to be elected to the Toledo Board of Education, as well as a leader in the movement for vocational education. Pauline also rescued many members of her family from the Holocaust. The Steinems lived and traveled about in the trailer from which her father, Leo, carried out his trade as a traveling antiques dealer. Before Gloria was born, her mother Ruth, then aged 34, had a "nervous breakdown" which left her an invalid, trapped in delusional fantasies that occasionally turned violent. She changed "from an energetic, fun-loving, book-loving" woman into "someone who was afraid to be alone, who could not hang on to reality long enough to hold a job, and who could rarely concentrate enough to read a book." Ruth spent long periods in and out of sanatoriums for the mentally ill. Gloria was ten years old when her parents finally separated in 1944. Her father went to California to find work, while she and her mother continued to live together in Toledo, Ohio.

While her parents divorced as a result of her mother's illness, Gloria did not attribute it to a result of chauvinism on the father's part, and she claims to have "understood and never blamed him for the breakup." Nevertheless, the impact of these events had a formative effect on her personality: while her father, a traveling salesman, had never provided much financial stability to the family, his exit aggravated their situation. Gloria concluded that her mother's inability to hold on to a job was evidence of general hostility towards working women. She also concluded that the general apathy of doctors towards her mother emerged from a similar anti-woman animus. Years later, Gloria described her mother's experiences as having been pivotal to her understanding of social injustices. These perspectives convinced Gloria that women lacked social and political equality.

Gloria attended Waite High School in Toledo and Western High School in Washington, D.C., graduating from the latter. She then attended Smith College and she studied government, a non-traditional choice for a woman at that time. It was clear early on that she did not want to follow the most common life path for women in those days marriage and motherhood. “In the 1950s, once you married you became what your husband was, so it seemed like the last choice you’d ever have I’d already been the very small parent of a very big child my mother. I didn’t want to end up taking care of someone else,” she later told People magazine. In the late 1950s, Gloria spent two years in India as a Chester Bowles Asian Fellow, where she was briefly associated with the Supreme Court of India as a Law Clerk to Mehr Chand Mahajan, then Chief Justice of India. After returning to the U.S., she served as director of the Independent Research Service, an organization funded in secret by a donor that turned out to be the CIA. She worked to send non-Communist American students to the 1959 World Youth Festival. In 1960, she was hired by Warren Publishing as the first employee of Help! magazine.

Esquire magazine features editor Clay Felker gave freelance writer Gloria what she later called her first "serious assignment", regarding contraception. He didn't like her first draft and had her re-write the article. Her resulting 1962 article about the way in which women are forced to choose between a career and marriage preceded Betty Friedan's book The Feminine Mystique by one year. In 1963, while working on an article for Huntington Hartford's Show magazine, Gloria was employed as a Playboy Bunny at the New York Playboy Club. The article, published in 1963 as "A Bunny's Tale", featured a photo of Gloria in Bunny uniform and detailed how women were treated at those clubs. Gloria has maintained that she is proud of the work she did publicizing the exploitative working conditions of the bunnies and especially the sexual demands made of them, which skirted the edge of the law. However, for a brief period after the article was published, Gloria was unable to land other assignments; in her words, this was "because I had now become a Bunny – and it didn't matter why." In the interim, she conducted an interview with John Lennon for Cosmopolitan magazine in 1964. In 1965, she wrote for NBC-TV's weekly satirical revue, That Was The Week That Was (TW3), contributing a regular segment entitled "Surrealism in Everyday Life". Gloria eventually landed a job at Felker's newly founded New York magazine in 1968. In 1969, she covered an abortion speak-out for New York Magazine, which was held in a church basement in Greenwich, New York. Gloria had had an abortion herself in London at the age of 22. She felt what she called a "big click" at the speak-out, and later said she didn't "begin my life as an active feminist" until that day. As she recalled, "It [abortion] is supposed to make us a bad person. But I must say, I never felt that. I used to sit and try and figure out how old the child would be, trying to make myself feel guilty. But I never could! I think the person who said: 'Honey, if men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament' was right. Speaking for myself, I knew it was the first time I had taken responsibility for my own life. I wasn't going to let things happen to me. I was going to direct my life, and therefore it felt positive.” In December 1971, she co-founded the feminist-themed magazine Ms. with Dorothy Pitman Hughes; it began as a special edition of New York, and Clay Felker funded the first issue. Its 300,000 test copies sold out nationwide in eight days. Within weeks, Ms. had received 26,000 subscription orders and over 20,000 reader letters. The magazine’s first independent issue appeared in January 1972. The magazine was sold to the Feminist Majority Foundation in 2001; Gloria remains on the masthead as one of six founding editors and serves on the advisory board. Also in 1972, Gloria became the first woman to speak at the National Press Club. In 1978, Gloria wrote a semi-satirical essay for Cosmopolitan titled "If Men Could Menstruate" in which she imagined a world where men menstruate instead of women. She concludes in the essay that in such a world, menstruation would become a badge of honor with men comparing their relative sufferings, rather than the source of shame that it had been for women. On March 22, 1998, Gloria published an op-ed in The New York Times ("Feminists and the Clinton Question") in which, without actually challenging accounts by Bill Clinton's accusers, she claimed they did not represent sexual harassment. This was criticized by various writers, as in the Harvard Crimson and in the Times itself. The original item has since been scrubbed from the NY Times archives and as noted by Nathan Dial, who reposted it on Scribd with the comment: "the fact that it's not on the NYT's page is disturbing.”

Gloria first expressed her feminist views in such essays as “After Black Power, Women’s Liberation.” In 1971, she joined other prominent feminists, such as Bella Abzug and Betty Friedan, in forming the National Women’s Political Caucus, which worked on behalf of women’s issues. That was when she took the lead in launching the pioneering, feminist Ms. magazine. Under her direction, the magazine tackled important topics, including domestic violence. Ms. became the first national publication to feature the subject on its cover in 1976. As her public profile continued to rise, Gloria Steinem faced criticism from some feminists, including the Redstockings, for her association with the CIA-backed Independent Research Service. Others questioned her commitment to the feminist movement because of her glamorous image. Undeterred, Gloria continued on her own way, speaking out, lecturing widely, and organizing various women’s functions. She also wrote extensively on women’s issues. Her 1983 collection of essays, Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions, featured works on a broad range of topics from “The Importance of Work” to “The Politics of Food.” 

In 1986, Gloria faced a very personal challenge when she was diagnosed with breast cancer. She was able to beat the disease with treatment. That same year, Gloria explored one of America’s most iconic women in the book Marilyn: Norma Jean. She became a consulting editor at Ms magazine the following year after the publication was sold to an Australian company. Gloria found herself the subject of media scrutiny with her 1992 book “Revolution from Within: A Book of Self-Esteem”. To some feminists, the book’s focus on personal development to be a retreat from social activism. Gloria was surprised by the backlash, believing that a strong self-image to be crucial to creating change. “We need to be long-distance runners to make a real social revolution. And you can’t be a long-distance runner unless you have some inner strength,” she explained to People magazine. She considers the work to be “most political thing I’ve written. I was saying that many institutions are designed to undermine our self-authority in order to get us to obey their authority,” she told Interview magazine. She was also diagnosed with trigeminal neuralgia in 1994. Gloria had another collection of writings, “Moving Beyond Words: Age, Rage, Sex, Power, Money, Muscles: Breaking Boundaries of Gender”, published in 1994. In one of the essays, “Doing Sixty,” she reflected on reaching that chronological milestone. Gloria was also the subject of a biography written by another noted feminist Carolyn G. Heilbrun entitled “Education of a Woman: The Life of Gloria Steinem”.

Although she didn’t marry until the age of 66, Gloria Steinem has had some high-profile relationships over the years, with director Mike Nichols and publishing magnate Mort Zuckerman, among others. In 2000, Gloria did something that she had insisted for years that she would not do. Despite being known for saying that a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle, Gloria decided to get married. She wed David Bale, an environmental and animal rights activist and the father of actor Christian Bale. They loved each other and wanted to be together, she has said, but married only because his visa was about to run out. Still, she is glad that they did it. At the age of 66, Gloria proved that she was still unpredictable and committed to charting her own path in life. Her wedding raised eyebrows in certain circles. But the union did not last long. Bale died of brain cancer in 2003. “He had the greatest heart of anyone I’ve known,” Gloria told O magazine.

Gloria Steinem is someone who cannot sit still or stop planning. Over the years she has tried to join her friends in meditation groups, but it has never worked. Inevitably her mind races ahead to forthcoming deadlines. For her, being out on the road is a form of meditation; she has very little social life outside the movement. It’s a wonder she still has the appetite for it. Prior to leaving, she says, she always hopes something will come up to prevent her travelling. But then she gets on her way, and is ignited again, not least by the prospect of a general election in the US. Steinem was a democratic and Barack Obama / Hillary Clinton supporter.

A life devoted to a single political movement gives rise to certain habits of thought. Steinem sees everything through the filter of what it means for women, minorities and society’s least empowered, categories that often overlap. Recipient of innumerable awards including the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2013, Gloria Steinem continues to work for social justice. As she recently said, “The idea of retiring is as foreign to me as the idea of hunting.”

Source: Wikipedia and Google.

Mikaila Ulmer

#66/100 in #100extraordinarywomen

I bring a small and cute package today but don’t be mistaken, this lady is a firebrand. Many entrepreneurs get their start after college, but not Mikaila Ulmer. 

The Austin, Texas, girl founded a successful company, Me & the Bees Lemonade, securing a $60,000 investment on the TV show “Shark Tank” and a contract with Whole Foods. She’s been featured on “Good Morning America” and NBC News, and in Forbes and Time magazines. She was named among the Top 25 People Shaping Retail’s Future by the National Retail Foundation, spoke onstage with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella before 15,000 people at the WE Day Seattle conference in 2016, and introduced President Barack Obama at the 2016 United State of Women Summit.

And all this before her 13th birthday.

The path to CEO started in a most unlikely way for the 12-year-old, after she was stung by a bee twice in a week at age 4. Her parents suggested she channel her newfound fear into a research project, so Mikaila began reading about bees and was soon fascinated by them — and concerned about their dwindling numbers. At the same time, her great-grandmother, who passed away in late 2016, sent the family a 1940s cookbook that included her recipe for flaxseed lemonade. 

That fall, her mom and dad encouraged her to make a product the lemonade for a local children's business competition, the Acton Children's Business Fair, and Austin Lemonade Day. Mikaila's lemonade was a hit. "The first time I sold it, I thought, 'This is only going to be a one-time thing. I am going to do it once, get the money, donate some and then save some and then use the rest to buy this awesome toy that I wanted.' I do not remember what it was!" Mikaila tells CNBC. But though she was exhausted, Mikaila adds, "I realized I am really enjoying doing this." Six months later, she and her family made more lemonade and sold it. Then, when Mikaila was seven, a local pizza shop asked to carry her lemonade. "It seemed like no matter how many lemons I squeezed, we would always sell out," she says.

The research about the bees was also an eye-opener. “I learned that bees are dying at an alarming rate, so we need to save them,” she says. “Because of my research, I decided to start a business that could save the bees and use my great-granny Helen’s recipe as well.” Mikaila was soon selling her flaxseed and honey-sweetened beverage at events and her own lemonade stand. With the help of parents Theo and D’Andra Ulmer, the budding social entrepreneur and bee ambassador started her company in 2009 at the age of 4, growing it into a thriving enterprise that donates a percentage of its profits to organizations working to save honeybees. The company’s evolution has surprised Theo Ulmer, who initially saw his daughter’s venture as a valuable learning opportunity and a way to foster positive relationships. “I don’t know that I foresaw anything of this magnitude when we started, not at all,” he says. “But Mikaila has always been impressive in that regard. I’m not surprised that it was something that if she put her mind to it, she would be a success at it.”

She wanted to use her Great Granny Helen’s recipe to help honeybees. So instead of sweetening with anything else, she decided to sweeten the lemonade with local honey. It would not only have helped the bees and the beekeepers, but would also have been a lot healthier, as well. It was a sweet success from the start. She started off with a lemonade stand in the beginning, and used to tout: Buy a Bottle…Save a Bee! She started with one lemonade stand, and stuck around for three years, during which she kept on selling out. Due to the drastic increase in demand, she decided to expand and got into her first pizza store, and that’s how she started going big. Over the period of time, BeeSweet Lemonade started getting sold out at entrepreneurial events as well. The locals also loved the idea that her lemonade was made from locally-sourced and natural ingredients, and what cheered them even more was that some portions of the profits were being donated to support organizations who were working to save the honeybees.

But the path to profitability has had some bumps — most notably, when the company had to change its original name, BeeSweet Lemonade, in 2016 over a trademark issue. Mikaila came up with the name, which signified both her personal mission and a plea to the world to be kind to bees, and she had an emotional connection with it. “She had to work hard to let something go that she’d grown comfortable with,” Ulmer says. The brand-savvy businesswoman got to work on finding a new name, soliciting suggestions from contacts and customers and holding informal focus groups with her classmates. It was a challenging time, Ulmer says, but one that led to personal and professional growth. “She got a lot of support from people during the process, and that really helped her,” he says. “It brought people into the story, and I think that helped her to become a lot more comfortable with what she’s doing and why she’s doing it.” 

Bit by bit, distribution expanded. Soon, Whole Foods started carrying “Me & the Bees Lemonade”. The business was growing so fast, and so big that Mikaila and her family were finding it exceedingly difficult to produce the lemonade. Hence, they decided to get external help and pitched a potential expansion on the 6th season of the TV show ‘Shark Tank’. Shortly after her product hit the shelves of Whole Foods, Mikaila appeared on ABC's hit reality show "Shark Tank." What’s more, Mikaila Ulmer, then in the capacity of the “BeeSweet Lemonade” founder and CEO, amazed the nation when, at nine years old, she walked away from ABC's hit reality show "Shark Tank" with a $60,000 investment deal with Daymond John. Now for all those who aren’t aware, Shark Tank, is a TV show that is hosted by few highly successful billionaires, namely: Kevin O’Leary, Barbara Corcoran, Daymond John, Robert Herjavec, Lori Greiner, Mark Cuban, Ashton Kutcher, etc., who invest in businesses out of their personal capacity. And believe me when I say this – Shark Tank is a tough nut to crack! They rarely have sympathy for the old or the young. But luckily, one little girl impressed these sharks with her sweet lemonade so much that, fashion mogul – Daymond John invested $60,000 in BeeSweet for a 25% stake. And since then there has been no looking back for BeeSweet (later Me & the Bees). The visibility helped the business. In the year after the show aired, sales grew by 231 percent, says Mikaila. She also received a low-interest “local producer loan” from Whole Foods, which helped her to expand beyond the lemonade’s original flavour and experiment with other versions. Although, the Terms weren’t disclosed, but its loans run up to $100,000!

Me & the Bees Lemonade is based in Austin, Texas, but the Generation- Z influencer and her privately-owned company have garnered national attention. Over the past few years, Ulmer has visited the White House and met former president Barack Obama on numerous occasions. Earlier this year, Ulmer launched the Healthy Hive Foundation and became a member of Microsoft's People of Action network. She also travels with Dell Women's Entrepreneur Network (DWEN) throughout the world, most recently to Cape Town, South Africa, where she taught Finance 101 at DWEN's youth program. In July, a group of NFL players and businessmen invested $810,000 in Ulmer's company.

The exposure led to invites from the White House, first in 2015 for the annual kids’ “state dinner,” then to the following year’s White House Easter Egg Roll, where Mikaila served up her lemonade and popsicles to about 10,000 guests as one of the event’s celebrity chefs. Her first time meeting the president was intimidating, she admits. “I’d never met Mr. Obama yet, and we all know that he’s very important. I was definitely nervous,” she says. Not so when the then 11-year-old introduced President Obama at the women’s summit in June 2016. Wearing a white, eyelet-trimmed dress with sandals and a matching hair wrap in her trademark yellow, she delivered an impassioned speech about entrepreneurship with poise and confidence beyond her years. “Entrepreneurs hold the American dream, and the biggest dreamers are kids,” Mikaila said, to applause and cheers. “We dream big. We dream about things that don’t even exist yet. We believe in our dreams. We jump out of bed in the morning because we had the craziest idea and can’t wait to grab a notebook and get started. We believe in the impossible. We see possibilities, while others just see problems.” Obama strode onto the stage a few minutes later, clearly impressed. “What an amazing young lady,” he said, then quipped, “I will be back on the job market in seven months, so I hope she’s hiring.” She may well have been. The company’s lemonade, made at a commercial facility near San Antonio, Texas, is sold at a growing number of grocery shops, coffee shops and natural and organic food stores nationwide. Aside from lemonade — currently available in flavors with mint, ginger, iced tea and prickly pear — the company’s products include tote bags, ball caps and gift sets. And Mikaila is always thinking bigger. “She’ll tell you, ‘I want to see my lemonade product global, but I also want to have brand extensions,’” her father says. “To have someone at her age talking about brand extensions and different lines of business that she wants to get into, all integrated and interrelated with her current product, that’s surprising.” 

Being a middle-school CEO has benefits and drawbacks. Mikaila gets help from her parents: Her mom assists with marketing and her dad with the finance operations. But she also has to do her homework first before working for her company. (Her favorite subjects in school are science and Spanish.) Her business responsibilities include doing trade show demos, media interviews, business presentations, workshops about bees and about entrepreneurship, depositing her money in the bank, putting in money orders, depositing checks, checking the business email and posting on social media. Mikaila adds, “I still get underestimated for being a 13-year-old entrepreneur, so it can be hard looking for investors or partners because they're like, ‘You're a kid, we love your product and your mission but come back when you're a little bit older or come back when you're willing to work with your company full time and not got to school.’ That is definitely a challenge. Another challenge is balancing school, work and play. I still go to school during the week, I still have to do my homework and I still have sleepovers, so it's hard to balance all those things along with running the company.” 

For Mikaila, life as a seventh-grade CEO involves some tradeoffs. After school, when her peers are playing sports or hanging out, she usually heads to the company office with one or both parents to do homework or attend to business — maybe an interview or photo shoot, or dealing with a production or distribution issue. The family often travels on weekends, visiting prospective retailers or taking Mikaila to speaking engagements. Sleepovers and birthday parties are sometimes passed up, school occasionally missed. “When I’m traveling during school, it is hard because there’s a lot of makeup work that greets me when I return,” Mikaila says. “This year, procrastination was one of the main things that I had to learn not to do.” But the sacrifices are worth it. Mikaila relishes being the owner of a business, using her profits for a worthy cause and teaching people about bees. She’s also a mentor to other budding female entrepreneurs. She helped her friends at school launch a company making soaps and bath products to sell at a business fair, and traveled to South Africa to speak to girls at a women’s entrepreneur conference about how to start and run their own businesses. “I think what people recognize most about Mikaila is that she’s not just in this to create revenue, but she’s also in it to solve a bigger problem,” says her mother.

Me & the Bees is at a key juncture, with opportunities for growth and the attendant challenges of taking a family-run venture to the next level as a viable commercial enterprise. It set a goal of quadrupling sales annually, but achieving that will require scaling up production and expanding distribution. The company is also competing with major beverage manufacturers that have large budgets to pay for marketing and in-store demos that can attract customers and boost sales. Technology is helping to facilitate the day-to-day operations — the family uses various Microsoft apps and programs to collaborate, keep in touch and create presentations, and the company increasingly relies on technology to support sales and automate some processes. Managing home life, full-time work and a growing company is a constant balancing act for the family, which also includes 9-year-old Jacob, the company photographer, and Khalil, 21, who is studying computer science in college. D’Andra runs business operations and manages the household, while Theo works full-time as a program manager at Dell and processes orders for Me & the Bees at night, sometimes working 20-hour days. Trips for Mikaila’s speaking engagements often double as mini-vacations, with the family spending an extra day or two sightseeing together in a new city. “That’s one of the ways we find balance,” D’Andra Ulmer says. 

For Mikaila, her enterprise is an environmental and social mission. She donates more than 10% of the profits from the sale of her business to organizations including: Heifer International, Sustainable Food Center of Austin and Texas Beekeepers Association, which help save the bees. She can often be seen educating families about the importance of honeybees and how to save them, and also passionately facilitates workshops about honeybees and entrepreneurship as well. One of her advices for other kids, or in fact for anyone who might also like to start their own business is: GO BIG! In fact, in addition to being a well-known speaker, and being featured as a panelist at several conferences like SXSW ECO, SXSW EDU, and SXSW Interactive; she’s been featured in Oprah magazine and even has her own YouTube channel. Today, Mikaila leads workshops on how to save the honeybees, and she participates in social entrepreneurship panels. "I think she is a pretty hard worker," D'Andra told NBCBLK. "I'm impressed with how she gets her homework done during her travels. She has a gift for public speaking but what makes me very proud is that she is not only a smart entrepreneur but she's a good person and she's kind to people. That's more important than business."

Now 13, Mikaila Ulmer has been named one of TIME magazine's most influential teens of 2017 and says that she is reflecting on her nine years of experience as an entrepreneur to write a children's book on how to start and grow a business. And yes, she reminds us, she’s doing it for the bees! 

Source: Google search.