Jane Golden was born in Minnesota and grew up in Margate, New Jersey. From a young age, she loved painting and studied at The Philadelphia Museum of Art. After graduating high school, she attended Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers, and after receiving her Masters in Fine Arts degree, she continued her education at Stanford University, studying Fine Arts and Political Science. At 24, Golden moved to LA, where she taught art to children in the Santa Monica area. In 1981, after receiving a grant to create a mural as a community artist, she co-founded the Los Angeles Public Art Foundation, where she trained children to create public art and worked with parolees as their community service. During that period, Golden painted one of her first massive artworks – a 20ft x 100ft mural titled Ocean Pier, which later was named a historic landmark. In 1984, after diagnosed with Lupus and annoyed by the continuous destruction of her murals by graffiti, Golden moved to Philadelphia to be closer to her family. There, she was hired by the Anti-Graffiti Network as a field representative. The organization’s mission was to fight graffiti by providing graffiti artists a productive and artistic outlet. In this position, she worked with at-risk teens, providing them a place to contribute to the city as artists. In 1989, the Anti-Graffiti Network painted the mural Stop the Violence in Point Breeze in honor of the neighborhood children killed by gun violence. In 1996, Golden expanded the small initiative into the Mural Arts Philadelphia program as part of the city Department of Recreation. As founder and executive director, Golden collaborated with community-based and nonprofit organizations, philanthropies, and private sector organizations to sponsor and support public artworks and transforming public spaces through art. Under her leadership, Mural Arts have branched out to other programs that promote practice and policies regarding environmental issues, youth education, behavioral health, and restorative justice. By 2010, Mural Arts Philadelphia became the largest public art program in the US, creating more than 4,000 murals in Philadelphia, turning it into “the city of murals.” In 2017, Golden founded Mural Arts Institute – a knowledge-sharing center to guide similar programs in the world. Since 2001, Golden is teaching art at the University of Pennsylvania. She is also an instructor at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art. She serves on the Penn Museum Advisory Committee, on the Mayor’s Cultural Advisory Council, and the Heliotrope Foundation board of directors. Read more...

Katalin Karikó was born in Szolnok, Hungary, and grew up in a small town in Central-East Hungary. She studied biochemistry at the University of Szeged, focusing her Ph.D. on molecular biology and Messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA). A molecule that transmits genetic information and leads to a synthesis of specific proteins. In 1982, at the age of 27, Karikó completed her postdoctoral studies at the Institute of Biochemistry, Biological Research Centre of Hungary, where she examined mRNA therapy and ways it could tackle viruses. Three years later, she left communist Hungary and immigrated to the US with her husband and toddler daughter. She continued her research at Temple University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Science, Bethesda, Maryland. In 1989, at the age of 34, Karikó began to work at the School of Medicine of the University of Pennsylvania. By the 1990s, mRNA research improved, but the main obstacle has not yet been solved – the synthetic mRNA generated severe inflammatory reactions and could not be used in human therapy. Karikó was determined to find the solution and proposed to research mRNA to treat strokes and cystic fibrosis. She did not get research grants and got demoted to a rank of a researcher. In 1997, at the age of 42, Karikó teamed up with Drew Weissman, an immunology professor who worked, at the time, on an HIV vaccine. They realized that they need to identify which of the four nucleosides (the mRNA building blocks) in the mRNA is causing the inflammatory response and replace it with something else, so that the synthetic mRNA can be used for gene therapy. In 2005, Karikó and Weissman published their discovery in a series of articles that did not receive much attention. However, based on their articles, a Canadian stem cell biologist, Derrick Rossi, co-founded Moderna, producing mRNA-based medicines and vaccines. At the same time, Karikó and Weissman founded their own company, in which Karikó served as chief executive. In 2013, after three decades of research, Karikó received patents for modified nucleosides RNA. Soon after, the University of Pennsylvania sold the patent’s license to a third party who supported the Moderna company, and Karikó and Weissman could not apply their research on the clinical stage. At 58, Karikó realized that she could not proceed with her research at the university, so she took a job offer from a small German company named BioNTech, serving as senior vice president. In 2018, BioNTech partnered with the American pharmaceutical corporation Pfizer. In 2020, during the global COVID-19 pandemic, both Moderna and Pfizer used Karikó’s and Weissman’s mRNA technology to produce a vaccine for the virus. The mRNA-based vaccines were proved as the most potent solution to prevent the Coronavirus, and in November 2020, under Karikó’s leadership, Pfizer and BioNTech announced that their coronavirus vaccine is over 90% effective, giving hope to the world population that things will get back to normal. Read more...

Lula Mae Grant was born in Vidalia, Georgia, the second of 6 siblings. At the age of 14, her parents died, and she had to learn cooking and sewing to take care of her siblings. At 16, Mae attended Georgia State Teacher’s College, and after graduation, she worked as a teacher as well as writing articles for the Savannah Tribune. During the summer vacations, she traveled to Chicago to learn how to make handmade hats in the Chicago School of Millinery. She met William Mincey, they got married, and soon after, her first son was born. Unfortunately, a few years later, her husband died in a car accident. A widow and a single mother at 22, she followed the Great Migration and moved to Philadelphia, where she worked as a milliner at a women’s clothing shop, dreaming of opening her store. It took her a few years, but in 1940, at the age of 28, she was granted a $500 loan from the black-owned Citizens and Southern Bank and opened “Mae’s Millinery Shop” at 1630 South Street. It made her one of the first African-American women to own a business in downtown Philadelphia. Her handmade, one-of-a-kind hats drew a diverse clientele, from housekeepers to socialites, schoolteachers alongside celebrities such as Marian Anderson, Ella Fitzgerald, and Eartha Kitt. As her business grew, she was able to travel to NYC and Paris to purchase materials for her work of art hats.   At 32, Mae married Joel Reeves and relocated the store to a more residential neighborhood of West Philadelphia. In 1953, she opened a second shop at 41 North 60th Street and became the first African-American woman to own business on the commercial corridor of 60th Street. Over time, she began serving as the president of the 60th Street Business Association. Her shop was more than just retail, but a location for community gathering, where people from all classes and all races came together. As a NAACP member, she advocated for exercising Voting Right, and on election days, she turned the shop into a polling station. She continued to make hats until she was 85 years old. She refused to sell the store, insisting it will remain untouched so she could come back and make more hats, and so it remained until she passed away at 104 years old.   Read more...

Born in Washington, DC, and grew up in NYC. Her interest in arts began at a young age, learning the discipline from her father, who was the director of the Museum of Modern Art. After graduating high school, she studied History and Literature of Europe and England at Radcliffe College, from which she graduated Magna Cum Laude. At 22, while earning her MA in arts at the Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London, she had her first museum experience, preparing catalog entries in the Tate Gallery. When returning to the US, d’Harnoncourt started working as a curatorial assistant in the Department of Painting and Sculpture at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. In this position, she helped oversee the last major art installations of Marcel Duchamp. At 26, she moved to Chicago and worked as assistant curator of twentieth-century art at the Art Institute of Chicago, where she met her husband, Joseph J. Rishel. Three years later, she returned to Philadelphia as a curator of twentieth-century art at PMA. As the director, she is known to revive the museum – enlarging its professional staff, promoting a sequence of exhibitions and publications by the curators and scholars of the institute, renovating its galleries, and expanding its modern art collection. She was considered “the person most responsible for transforming the institution into a great museum.” In June 2008, she died in her home when she is only 64 years old. Read more...

Born in Bristol, England, to a family of wealthy Quaker merchants. She was the only child out of 9 to reach adulthood, and as the sole heir of the family business, she learned the trade, which included accounting and management skills. At the age of 25, she married 52 years old Pennsylvania founder William Penn, and 3 years later, the couple moved to Philadelphia, where William Penn served as governor of the province of Pennsylvania. As opposed to other women of the era, Hannah Callowhill wasn’t an ordinary housewife and was deeply involved in the colony affairs, making connections with government officials and men in power. Two years after the Penn’s arrived in America, they had to return to England because of financial issues, and Callowhill Penn, with the help of her father’s fortune, managed to keep the colony from falling into ruins. In 1712, her husband suffered a series of strokes that affected his mental and physical health, so for the six years till his death, Callowhill Penn took control of both family and all the colony matters. She paid her husband’s debts and managed his financial and legal affairs, which sometimes included forging his signature and writing letters in his name. In 1718 William Penn passed away, and in his will, he gave his wife full control of his possessions as well as the colony. Penn’s oldest son from his first marriage tried to dismiss his father’s will and to gain control of the colony, but the Board of Trade and the Assembly of Pennsylvania sided with Callowhill Penn, and at age 47, she officially became the acting proprietor of the Province, a position she served for 8 years until her death. Read more...

Lucretia Coffin’s schoolmates used to call her a “spitfire” – and she turned her skill of speaking her truth into a lifelong career, traveling and lecturing on the twin causes of antislavery and women’s rights. Mott’s faith in equality and confidence in female abilities were fostered in her childhood by the family’s Quaker faith, and by the fact that her mother succeeded as a shopkeeper while her sea captain father was away. When she started teaching in her boarding school in New York, she had an important encounter with gender inequality: discovering that the salary of the female instructors was half as much as male colleagues. At the school she met her husband – James Mott. The two had a mutual devotion to be active for abolition while raising six children, one of them died at the age of three. Her public speaking career began in Quaker meetings, and before she turned 30, she was formally recognized as a minister. She noticed the exclusion of women in the organized Abolitionist Movement and turned her anger into action: co-founding the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society and co-organizing the woman’s rights convention at Seneca Falls. There she also delivered the opening and closing addresses. Decades of popular speeches and organizational achievements later, Lucretia Mott delivered her last public speech, at the age of 85, in the 30th anniversary of the Seneca Falls Convention. Read more...

Born in Germantown, Pennsylvania, to a family of abolitionist and transcendentalists, a movement that encouraged the perfection of the individual. She was homeschooled by her father, who was a teacher. During Alcott’s childhood, her family moved to various places. When in Harvard, they tried to establish a utopian community called ‘Fruitlands,’ and when moved back to Concord, they helped hide fugitive slave that escaped via the Underground Railroad. From a young age, Alcott helped to support her family and worked in various jobs, such as a teacher, governess, seamstress, domestic helper, and writer. When she was only 17 years old, she wrote her first book. At first, she published under the pen name Flora Fairfield, and later as A. M. Barnard. She published poems, thrillers, short stories, and juvenile tales. During the American Civil War, Alcott volunteered as a nurse in the Union Hospital at Georgetown, DC. Her experiences in the hospital inspired her to write “Hospital Sketches,” the book which made her famous. After Alcott accepted an editorship at a girls’ magazine, she was asked to write a book especially for girls, and that resulted in the first part of ‘Little Women,’ inspired by her relationship with her three sisters. She was an enthusiastic supporter of women’s rights, wrote for a women’s rights periodical, encouraged women to vote, and an abolitionist. When the state of Massachusetts passed the law allowing women to vote, she was the first women to register. During her lifetime, Alcott published more than 20 books and almost 300 literary works, in them, she challenged social norms addressing women’s issues and encouraged her readers to do so as well. Read more...