This book pro­files ten women who have been suc­cess­ful in the busi­ness world. They share some of the fol­low­ing character­istics: ear­ly lead­er­ship roles, high moti­va­tion, courage, cre­ative approach­es to prob­lem solv­ing, hard work and excep­tion­al tal­ent. Each woman com­ments about how dif­fi­cult it is to work in a busi­ness envi­ron­ment in which men are dom­i­nant. How­ev­er, per­sis­tence and excel­lence in their cho­sen fields gain them respect from both males and females. Anoth­er com­mon com­po­nent is their char­i­ta­ble contri­butions to their com­mu­ni­ties both local and international.

The women come from not only the U.S. and Cana­da, but also from Chi­na, Eng­land, India, and Tanzania.

The first woman in the book, CJ Walk­er, is an African Amer­i­can woman who lived from 1867 – 1919. She cre­at­ed a hair prod­ucts busi­ness that expand­ed inter­na­tion­al­ly. The daugh­ter of a share­crop­per, Madame Walk­er, real­ized that ​“poor women lived with­out the lux­u­ry of run­ning water.” As a result, they only washed their hair once a month. Scalp dis­eases were the result. Madame Walker’s first prod­uct addressed this problem.

Sue Chen and her fam­i­ly immi­grat­ed to the U.S. from Chi­na in 1974. Her father, a doc­tor who spe­cial­ized in phys­i­cal reha­bil­i­ta­tion, start­ed a man­u­fac­tur­ing com­pa­ny to make ortho­pe­dic appli­ances in Tai­wan. After his death, Sue tried to start up her own com­pa­ny ​“to dis­trib­ute these prod­ucts.” She was only 23. How­ev­er, much to everyone’s amaze­ment, she made the com­pa­ny a success.

From Tan­za­nia, Susan Mashibe, trav­eled to the U.S. to study avi­a­tion. After com­plet­ing class­es, she became ​“a trained air­frame mechan­ic” and a cer­ti­fied com­mer­cial pilot. At the same time, she was per­fect­ing her Eng­lish, as this would be essen­tial for her to communi­cate with air-traf­fic-con­trol staff. She returned to Tan­za­nia where she start­ed her own avia­tion com­pa­ny. Her com­pa­ny, Tan­Jet, is known for its hon­esty, excel­lence and reli­a­bil­i­ty. It is also finan­cial­ly successful.

Two Jew­ish women, Dame Ani­ta Rod­dick, and Sheryl Sand­berg, are also pro­filed. Ms. Rod­dick is respon­si­ble for a line of nat­ur­al skin care prod­ucts called The Body Shop. Because of her efforts, she was able to bring about “…social and envi­ron­men­tal change”. 

Ms. Sand­berg was taught at a very young age to speak out for what she believed. Her fam­i­ly sup­port­ed the Amer­i­can Sovi­et Jew­ry Move­ment and her father did vol­un­teer eye surgery for poor chil­dren in the Caribbean. Ear­ly on, she decid­ed that she was going to make a dif­fer­ence in the world. Now, she is on the Board of Direc­tors of Face­book after using her exper­tise to make the com­pa­ny profitable. 

This book illus­trates that tal­ent­ed women can be suc­cess­ful in a world where men have pre­vi­ous­ly led the way. These women serve as mod­els and inspire oth­ers. This is an excel­lent resource for ages 10 – 15 and would be of par­tic­u­lar inter­est to girls look­ing for success­ful and inter­est­ing role models.