Shana Swiss , Women's Rights International

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In the late 1980s at a Boston hospital, physician Shana Swiss treated a refugee woman with 19 stab wounds. The brutality made Swiss realize she wanted to do more for this patient than sew up her horrific wounds. “I had to do something to stop violence against women,” she says. The case inspired her to volunteer at Physicians for Human Rights in 1991.

Esther Hyneman , Women for Afghan Women

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When Esther Hyneman retired after decades as an English professor, she decided she wanted to pursue an international career. Outraged by the rape, murder and silencing of women under the Taliban, Hyneman became interested in advocacy work to help the women in Afghanistan achieve basic human rights – to safety, to an education, to work.

Carla Kelley , The Human Rights Education Center of Utah

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As a young single mother, Carla Kelley learned her middle child was gay.

“I knew how dangerous it was to be gay then ... and my first instinct was to protect him,” she says. She quickly grew to accept her son’s sexual orientation. Years later, in 1998, she was jolted by a trio of national tragedies: the race-related murder of James Byrd Jr., a black man in Texas; the torturous death of Matthew Shepard, killed for being gay by two men in Wyoming; and the Columbine massacre in Colorado, in which two students killed 13 classmates and then themselves.

Irene Martinez , Instituto Para La Mujer de Hoy

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Big Idea

Domestic violence is a social problem that affects us all, as children who grow up in violent homes are most likely to be violent. I see many mothers and children suffering from depression, humiliation and low self-esteem. Their emotional and mental health is so affected that their chances of success in school or work are greatly reduced. We must change the way violence is perceived and increase the knowledge of the effects it has on children. Involving victims in the solution is the answer.