Susan Stautberg , PartnerCom

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At the top 200 companies in the S&P 500, women make up only 16 percent of the members of boards of directors, while African Americans account for only ten percent. Susan Stautberg, a former broadcast journalist, founded PartnerCom, which creates and manages Advisory Boards globally to help diversify power within corporations. Over the past eight years, PartnerCom has placed more than 250 women and minorities on corporate and advisory boards.

Charlie Stayton , The Witness Project

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A survivor of cervical cancer, Charlie Stayton, 63, joined the Witness Project as a volunteer in 1990 and was later hired as director of the organization. The Witness Project is a breast and cervical cancer education and outreach program targeting African American, minority, and medically underserved women in the Delta region of Arkansas.

Nola Theiss , Human Trafficking Awareness Partnerships, Inc.

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Her encore career

Nola Theiss spent several years as council member and Mayor of Sanibel, FL. Volunteering later with an international women's organization (Zonta International) to combat human trafficking, she was shocked to learn such trafficking had occurred right in her own community. In 2004, at age 56, she spearheaded a county-wide coalition to learn to recognize and fight this issue.

Her innovation

Judith Van Ginkel , Every Child Succeeds

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Every Child Succeeds is a nationally-lauded large scale home visitation program for first-time, at-risk mothers in Ohio and Kentucky. When the doors opened in July 1999, Judy Van Ginkel, the organizer, heart and soul of this program, was 60 years old.

Marie C. Wilson , The White House Project

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Marie Wilson, 65, started The White House Project for a critical reason: to get more women in positions of leadership and to get a woman in the White House - as president. Today women represent 51 percent of the population, but only account for 15 percent of Congress and fill less than 14 percent of the board seats in the Fortune 500. In fact the United States is behind much of the world in terms of women's political representation, ranking 68th, after Angola and Vietnam.

Marilyn Gaston , Prime Time Sister Circles

Watch a video of Marilyn Gaston

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African American women are dying at rates that are greater than any other group of women in the United States -- and most of these deaths are preventable. That fact inspired Marilyn Gaston (left) and Gayle Porter (right), both accomplished health professionals to change their focus and write Prime Time: The African American Woman's Complete Guide to Midlife Health and Wellness in 2001. But information alone wasn't enough to meet the need.

Mary Martin Niepold , The Nyanya Project

Niepold was a journalist, professor, and grandmother of five when she first went to Africa as a volunteer in Kenyan orphanages. Having read stories about the plight of grandmothers raising grandchildren whose parents died from AIDS, Niepold kept asking Kenyans, "Who is helping the grandmothers?" The answer was always the same: nobody. When Niepold returned home, she could not stop thinking about the enormous load those forgotten women had to bear.

Sandy Goldberg , A Silver Lining Foundation

In 2000, Goldberg - a clinical nutritionist and Chicago television personality - was diagnosed with breast cancer. She documented her cancer journey in the 2002 Emmy Award-winning television special "One Woman's Story." The viewer response was overwhelming. Many women contacted Goldberg with questions, concerns, and personal stories about their inability to access medical care or preventive services.

Brenda Eheart , Hope Meadows

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At 58, Brenda Eheart took early retirement from her decades-long career as a university professor to put her research on the struggles foster kids face into action. "I could not write these things up for academic journals and not do anything about it. I just thought about what I'd want for my own kids." Her strategy: avoid uphill battles in the traditional foster care system by shifting the problem-solving focus away from social service interventions to members of a multi-generational, residential community who feel -- and act -- like an extended family.

Diana Barrett , Fledgling Fund

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After 25 years at Harvard University, where she taught business and public health, Barrett left academia to start a foundation called the Fledgling Fund. Barrett says she made the decision to switch careers the day after 9/11. She was teaching a class about Martin Luther King Jr. and individual responsibility to society, when she decided to do more than teach about change, but to make change. Two years later, at age 58, she started the foundation's work by providing grants focusing on health care for impoverished women and children in New York City.