When my younger sister was going through the process of getting a summer internship this year, one of the questions we anticipate that might come up in the interview was "Who is your role model?". And I am not one of those people who worship pop stars even though I am an eighties child. Considering that we are both females, it was quite hard to think of an academic or business female role model. We did better on the atheletic or human rights front (Mia Hamm, the Williams sisters, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, Mother Theresa etc.) but ofcourse these are not so relevant.

Or maybe I know them and they are just not cropping up. I tried to think of a few but it is a short list - Margaret Thatcher, Oprah, Marie Curie (not really new or a paractical role model).

I can think of so many male ones... (and No Stu it is not because males are better)!

Margaret Thatcher...are you serious? You'd get linched up north having her as a role model.

I know she is not the best but who else is there?

Carly Fiorina. Meg Whitman.

Marie Curie is a good female role model, even though she is no longer alive. She investigated radiation, and eventually died from it, but she won the Nobel prize for physics.

Perhaps this would be an interesting person for you to look into

Different but who about Betty Boothroyd or Stella Rimmington?

Different but who about Betty Boothroyd or Stella Rimmington?

Hmmm. a little technical difficulty there.

Susan Greenfield. Alison Richards.

Oprah! a role model?

Oprah did good in her business. It is an all-American rags to riches story. A role model for business women. Not academics.

How about Body Shop founder Anita Roddick? Which reminds me that I just recently found out that Green & Black's chocolate has been bought by Cadbury/schweppes! or as the BBC put it: "Cadbury gobbles up organic rival".
Margarte Steiff- built up a Teddy bear imperium single handed (and unmarried)whilst being bound to the wheel chair and having the use of only one hand.
For my field: Christiane Nuesslein-Volhard- she won the 1995 nobel prize for medicine for her work in developmental biology- she's the one that called all those genes after german food specialities.

Anita Roddick...gets bad press as a parent/person.

How about Rosalind Franklin? The only reason she didn't get the nobel for the discovery of the structure of DNA was because she a)died and b) thought that doing science in the lab was more important than making a big deal about things (oh- and because wilkins showed her results to Watson/Crick).
Not to mention Lise Meitner (overlooked when Otto Hahn got the nobel for nuclear fission), Barbara McClintock ...

Estee Lauder, Elisabeth Arden if you are more into the business side of fame.

Oh dear- let's hope Johannstein doesn't read what you wrote about Anita Roddick...
Anyway, there are several mentoring scemes out there for us .. just look it up on the internet and get the career advice from real woman- let's show the boys how networking really goes.