Women who went first: What courage looks like in practice

The women below are known for what they achieved. What's told less often is that they felt doubt, met closed doors, and worked with less than they needed. What set them apart was what they did next.

Each story ends with a practical tool from this library, so you can move from inspiration to your own next step.

Ginni Rometty

Former chair and CEO, IBM

About ten years into her career, Rometty was offered a promotion and told the executive she wasn't ready and needed more time to think. That evening her husband asked whether a man would have answered the same way. The next day she went back and accepted. She has since described the lesson as realizing that growth and comfort don't coexist.

Try this: The Promotion Readiness Audit

Ursula Burns

Former chair and CEO, Xerox

Burns was raised by a single mother in a New York City public housing project and chose engineering after her own library research showed it offered a reliable path to the middle class. She joined Xerox as a summer intern in 1980. Years later, her candor during an internal discussion impressed senior executive Wayland Hicks, who made her his executive assistant. Her willingness to speak her mind again led chairman and CEO Paul Allaire to bring her into the same role the following year. In 2009 she became CEO, the first Black woman to lead a Fortune 500 company.

Try this: Sponsorship and Network Map

Katherine Johnson

Mathematician, NASA

In her early years at NASA's predecessor agency, women were not allowed to attend briefings or put their names on research reports. When Johnson was told women didn't participate in briefings, she asked whether there was a law against it. There wasn't, so she began attending and asking questions. She became the first woman in her division credited as an author on a report, and John Glenn asked her to verify the computer calculations for his orbit before he flew.

Try this: Speaking up when you're interrupted or overlooked

Reshma Saujani

Founder, Girls Who Code

In 2010, Saujani stepped away from a successful career in law and finance to run for Congress, and lost decisively. She has said that losing, and realizing she had survived it, gave her the courage to start something she knew nothing about. She went on to found Girls Who Code, a nonprofit teaching girls to code, without a technology background of her own.

Try this: The Next Role Playbook

Mary Barra

Chair and CEO, General Motors

Barra has worked at GM since she was 18. As head of global human resources in 2009, shortly after the company's bankruptcy filing, she replaced a ten-page dress code with two words: dress appropriately. Even her own HR team pushed back, and she held firm, using it to signal that managers would be trusted to use their judgment. Soon after she became CEO, millions of vehicles were recalled over a faulty ignition switch, and her handling of the crisis was widely regarded as steady and transparent.

Try this: Executive Dressing and Wardrobe checklist

Fei-Fei Li

Professor of computer science, Stanford University

Li immigrated to the United States from China as a teenager. To make ends meet, her family borrowed money, including from her high school math teacher, to open a small dry-cleaning shop in New Jersey. Because she spoke English and her parents did not, she ran it, working weekends through her physics degree at Princeton and managing it remotely into her PhD at Caltech. In 2007 she led the development of ImageNet, the visual database that helped advance modern AI.

Try this: The Daily Practice

Sara Blakely

Founder, Spanx

Blakely spent seven years selling fax machines door to door after college and saved $5,000. When patent attorneys quoted her more than she could afford, she studied a book on patents and wrote the application herself. She launched Spanx in 2000 with her savings and took no outside investment for more than two decades.

Try this: The Monthly Wealth Check-in