Recently I conducted a seminar about the role of vision in companies where employees have a high degree of motivation. So I decided to assemble a list of visionary leaders. I believed that I approached the task with no gender bias and it was done before the MeToo Movement began. But at one point I realized that from Gandhi to Martin Luther King Jr. to Steve Jobs, I was coming up with only men. So I asked myself why here in the 21st century my list included no women.

I recognized that my selection might have been based upon visionary leaders whose visions and approaches were ones I would easily relate to, and that might mean that certain kinds of visions appeal to men and others to women. And of course I recognize that women have not had the same opportunities as men to reach positions of high visibility and/or power, although that is thankfully changing.

I parked those hypotheses and began asking women I knew for the names of visionary female leaders. I limited the list to women who lived in the past 100 years (Sorry, Joan of Arc). Thirteen names were proposed. No conclusion should be drawn from these facts, but on my list seven of the 12 women are American. Five of them are businesswomen. Interestingly, three of them were Prime Ministers of their respective nations and all three have been referred to in their countries as “The Iron Lady”.

Here is the list, in no particular order:

Mother Theresa -- an ethnic Albanian, Indian Roman Catholic nun, (1910-1997). Her vision, as I understand it, was to bring people to love Jesus, promote respect for life and minister to the suffering of others. The singularity of commitment to her vision and her passion for it made her a global icon. She accepted her fame only because it allowed her voice to be heard by more people.

Meg Whitman –American business executive, most recently president and chief executive officer of Hewlett-Packard . She is a graduate of Princeton University and Harvard Business School. Whitman served as an executive in The Walt Disney Company where she was vice president of strategic planning throughout the 1980s. In the 1990s, she served as an executive for DreamWorks, Procter & Gamble, and Hasbro. Starting in 1998 she began a 10-year tenure at EBay where she oversaw expansion from 30 employees and $4 million in annual revenue to more than 15,000 employees and $8 billion in annual revenue. Then she made an unsuccessful attempt for the governorship of the state of California (which could have springboarded her to candidacy for the US presidency) before taking the reins at HP. She is a billionaire with an impressive track record, but she has been accused of lacking the clear vision for HP like she had in her previous positions.

Golda Meir -- Fourth Prime Minister of Israel, she was known as the “Iron Lady”, a term which was later applied to Margaret Thatcher. She was often portrayed as the "strong-willed, straight-talking, grey-bunned grandmother of the Jewish people". (1898-1978)

Marie Curie – (1867 – 1934) was a Polish-born physicist and chemist, working mainly in France, who is famous for her pioneering research on radioactivity. She was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, the only woman to win in two fields, and the only person to win in multiple sciences. She was also the first female professor at the University of Paris (La Sorbonne), and in 1995 became the first woman to be entombed on her own merits in Paris' Panthéon.

Dame Anita Roddick -- (1942 – 2007) was a British businesswoman, human rights activist and environmental campaigner, best known as the founder of The Body Shop, a cosmetics company producing and retailing beauty products that shaped ethical consumerism. The company was one of the first to prohibit the use of ingredients tested on animals and one of the first to promote fair trade with third world countries.

Roddick was involved in activism and campaigning for environmental and social issues, including involvement with Greenpeace and The Big Issue. In 1990, Roddick founded Children On The Edge, a charitable organization which helps disadvantaged children in eastern Europe and Asia.

Benazir Bhutto – Pakistan PM – (1953 –2007) was a politician and stateswoman who served as the 11th Prime Minister of Pakistan in two non-consecutive terms from November 1988 until October 1990, and 1993 until her final dismissal on November 1996. She founded the Pakistan People's Party (PPP), which she led. She survived an attempted coup d'état in 1995, and her hard line against the trade unions and tough rhetorical opposition to her domestic political rivals and to neighboring India earned her the nickname "Iron Lady".

She was assassinated in a bombing on 27 December 2007, after leaving PPP's last rally in the city of Rawalpindi, two weeks before the scheduled 2008 general election in which she was a leading opposition candidate. The following year, she was named one of seven winners of the United Nations Prize in the Field of Human Rights.

Emmeline Pankhurst – British Suffragette – (1858 –1928) was a British political activist and leader of the British suffragette movement which helped women win the right to vote. In 1999 Timenamed Pankhurst as one of the 100 Most Important People of the 20th Century, stating: "she shaped an idea of women for our time; she shook society into a new pattern from which there could be no going back." She was widely criticized for her militant tactics, and historians disagree about their effectiveness, but her work is recognized as a crucial element in achieving women's suffrage in Britain.

In 1898, Pankhurst founded the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU), an all-women suffrage advocacy organization dedicated to "deeds, not words." The group placed itself separately from–and often in opposition to–political parties. The group quickly became infamous when its members smashed windows and assaulted police officers. Pankhurst, her daughters, and other WSPU activists were sentenced to repeated prison sentences, where they staged hunger strikes to secure better conditions.

Hillary Rodham Clinton – Resigned as United States Secretary of State, having served in the administration during the first term of President Barack Obama. She was a United States Senator for New York from 2001 to 2009. As the wife of the 42nd President of the United States, Bill Clinton, she was the First Lady of the United States from 1993 to 2001. She was the unsuccessful Democratic candidate for President of the United States in the recent election.

Clinton co-founded the Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families in 1977. She was twice listed as one of the 100 most influential lawyers in America. As First Lady of Arkansas from 1979 to 1981 and 1983 to 1992 with husband Bill as governor, she successfully led a task force to reform Arkansas's education system. During that time, she was a member of the board of directors of Wal-Mart Stores and several other corporations.

In 1994, as First Lady of the United States, her major initiative, the Clinton health care plan, failed to gain approval from the U.S. Congress. However, in 1997 and 1999, Clinton played a role in advocating the creation of the State Children's Health Insurance Program, the Adoption and Safe Families Act, and the Foster Care Independence Act.

Sheryl Sandberg – American businesswoman. She has served as the chief operating officer of Facebook since 2008. In June 2012, she was also elected to the board of directors by the existing board members, becoming the first woman to serve on its board. Before Facebook, Sandberg was Vice President of Global Online Sales and Operations at Google. She also was involved in launching Google's philanthropic arm Google.org. Before Google, Sandberg served as chief of staff for the United States Department of the Treasury. In 2012, she was named in Time 100, an annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world assembled by Time.

In March 2008 Facebook announced hiring Sheryl Sandberg away from Google. According to Facebook, Sandberg oversees the firm's business operations including sales, marketing, business development, human resources, public policy and communications. In 2012 she became the eighth member (and the first female member) of Facebook's board of directors. She is also the author of two much-talked-about books, Lean In and Option B.

Marissa Mayer – American business executive. As of 2012 she is the president and CEO of Yahoo!. Previously, she was a long-time executive and key spokesperson for Google. Mayer joined Google in 1999 as employee number 20. At Yahoo! she is the youngest CEO of a Fortune 500 company, and has been ranked number 14 on the list of America's most powerful businesswomen of 2012 by Fortune magazine.

Mayer was named to Fortune magazine's annual list of America's 50 Most Powerful Women in Business in 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2011. She was ranked 50, 44, 42 and 38, respectively.

As well as sitting on the board of directors of Wal-Mart and Yahoo! Mayer also sits on several non-profit boards such as Cooper–Hewitt, National Design Museum, New York City Ballet, San Francisco Ballet and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. She says her priorities now are "God, family and Yahoo--in that order”.

Rosa Parks – (1913-2005) was an African-American civil rights activist, whom the U.S. Congress called "the first lady of civil rights", and "the mother of the freedom movement". On December 1, 1955, in Montgomery, Alabama, Parks refused to obey bus driver James F. Blake's order that she give up her seat in the colored section to a white passenger, after the white section was filled. Parks' act of defiance and the Montgomery Bus Boycott became important symbols of the modern Civil Rights Movement. She became an international icon of resistance to racial segregation. At the time, Parks was secretary of the Montgomery chapter of the NAACP.

Parks received national recognition, including the NAACP's 1979 Spingarn Medal, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Congressional Gold Medal, and a posthumous statue in the United States Capitol's National Statuary Hall. Upon her death in 2005, she was the first woman and second non-U.S. government official to lie in honor at the Capitol Rotunda.

Gloria Steinem – American feminist, journalist, and social and political activist who became nationally recognized as a leader of, and media spokeswoman for, the women's liberation movement in the late 1960s and 1970s. A prominent writer and political figure, Steinem has founded many organizations and projects and has been the recipient of many awards and honors. She was a columnist for New York magazine and co-founded Ms. magazine. In 1969, she published an article, "After Black Power, Women's Liberation"which, along with her early support of abortion rights, catapulted her to national fame as a feminist leader. In 2005, Steinem worked alongside Jane Fonda and Robin Morgan to co-found the Women's Media Center, an organization that works to amplify the voices of women in the media through advocacy, media and leadership training, and the creation of original content. Steinem currently serves on the board of the organization.

In 1971, Steinem founded the National Women's Political Caucus (NWPC). The next year she became the founding editor and publisher of Ms. magazine, which speedily became a success, bringing feminist issues to the forefront of society and the media, quickly becoming the movement's most influential publication.

In 1984 Steinem was arrested along with a number of members of Congress and civil rights activists for disorderly conduct outside the South African embassy while protesting against the South African apartheid system. Steinem was active in working for civil rights for African Americans, Hispanics, and other minorities, working alongside civil rights leaders like Coretta Scott King and César Chávez, and took a public stance in opposition to the Vietnam War and in favor of gay rights.

In later years, Steinem became an outspoken supporter of animal rights, writing letters to the National Institutes of Health Office of Research on Women’s Health urging the office director to end the "cruelty, fraud, and waste" of NIH-funded experiments on animals purportedly conducted in the name of advancing women’s health. She also became involved in international women's issues such as the campaign against female genital mutilation and human trafficking.

Oprah Winfrey -- American media proprietor, talk show host, actress, producer, and philanthropist. Winfrey is best known for her self-titled, multi-award-winning talk show, which has become the highest-rated program of its kind in history and was nationally syndicated from 1986 to 2011. She has been ranked the richest African-American of the 20th century, the greatest black philanthropist in American history, and was for a time the world's only black billionaire. She is also, according to some assessments, the most influential woman in the world.

I would love to hear your reflections, specifically

Who deserves to be added to this list?
Who would you remove?
What thoughts come to your mind as you read these profiles.

Please add your comments below.

- Herb