“A voice that can reach the stars.” -The Washington Post
Born in Piet Retief, Mpumalanga, South Africa, Pretty Yende, grew up in a close-knit family where singing was interwoven into the fabric of the familial culture. A timid child, Yende would reluctantly sing in church at the insistence of her grandmother.
One day at age 16, after seeing a British Airways television advertisement that featured the Flower Duet from Lakmé, Yende became intrigued by the sound of the singers’ voices. She went to her high school teacher the next day to ask what the sound could have been. “Opera,” he responded. Yende’s next question was, “‘Can human beings do it?’ because it didn’t sound like anything I’d known.” Her teacher answered by telling her she’d never sing like that. Yende insisted on being taught. At that moment, she knew what she would do with her life.
We are so glad that she did.
Today her career as an operatic coloratura soprano has taken her around the globe many times over and has earned her too many accolades and awards to name. Some of the most notable include the Mbokodo Award in the category of opera, the Best Recording Solo Recital Award in the International Opera Awards, the International Achiever Award in the 23rd South African Music Awards, the Readers' Award in the International Opera Awards, and the Cologne Opera Award. In 2023, she sang at King Charles III’s coronation in Westminster Abbey, further solidifying her elite standing in the opera world and making her the first black woman and first African citizen to sing at a British monarch’s coronation. An avid human rights activist, Yende has a passion for serving youth from the marginalized sections of society and to that end, has founded a youth foundation in South Africa.
This text is excerpted from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pretty_Yende, https://prettyyende.com/biography/ and https://www.dorchestercollection.com/the-edit/pretty-yende-trailblazing-soprano.
To hear Yende’s amazing voice, visit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FtdLk-78MUA, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ar7HGBg5o3k, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvkMvmaYyfc and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yG5MujmmSnk.
Viola Davis was born August 11, 1965, in Saint Matthews, South Carolina, to father Dan, a horse groomer and trainer, and mother Mae Alice, who, in addition to working as a domestic and factory worker, was also a civil rights and welfare reform activist. The family moved to Central Falls, Rhode Island while Viola was an infant. Growing up in abject poverty, her parents’ income was frequently insufficient to support the family. School lunches were often her only meal of the day.
Davis fell in love with acting at the age of six, when she saw Cicely Tyson in a television adaptation of The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman. Inspired, Davis soon began acting in school productions and theater competitions. After high school, she enrolled at Rhode Island College, where she majored in theater and graduated in 1988. She proceeded to the Young People's School for the Performing Arts in Rhode Island on scholarship before attending the Juilliard School, graduating in 1994.
In 1996, Davis made her Broadway debut in August Wilson’s Seven Guitars, in which she played the long-suffering paramour of a musician recently released from prison, a performance that earned her a Tony Award nomination. She made her film debut the same year with a bit part in the drama The Substance of Fire. In 1999 Davis played opposite Phylicia Rashad in the Off-Broadway drama Everybody’s Ruby, based on writer Zora Neale Hurston’s investigation of a murder.
Davis has been acting for nearly three decades and her filmography is one of the most impressive in Hollywood. To date, she has 96 acting credits and 27 producing credits. She has received four Academy Award nominations, winning in 2016 for her role in Fences. She has received seven Golden Globe Award nominations, again winning in 2016 for her role in Fences. She has received five Emmy Award nominations, winning in 2015 for her role in How to Get Away with Murder. She has received 10 Screen Actors Guild Award nominations, winning in 2011 for her role in The Help, 2014 and 2015 for her role in How to Get Away with Murder, 2016 for her role in Fences, and 2020 for her role in Ma Rainey's Black Bottom. She has received three Tony Award nominations, winning in 2001 for her role in King Hedley II, and in 2010 for her role in Fences. Davis’s memoir, Finding Me, was published in 2022. The following year she won a Grammy for the audio version of the book. With that award, she achieved “EGOT” (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, Tony) status.
In addition to her acting pursuits, Davis is a philanthropist. She has a passion for giving back and has become an advocate for social justice and equality for women of color in Hollywood. As a first generation college student, she highly values access to education. As such, she donated funds to her hometown public library in Central Falls, Rhode Island, to assist in preventing its closure due to a lack of city funding in 2011. She donated to her alma mater, Central Falls High School, to support its theater program in 2018. And since 2014, she has collaborated with the Hunger Is campaign to help eradicate childhood hunger across America by starting the $30K in 30 Days Project with the organization.
Davis has been quoted as saying, “The reason I became an actress is because I wanted my acting to reflect life as it is. I want to put truth on the screen. I want real women to see real women on the screen.” Known for her precise, controlled performances and her regal presence, Davis has been considered one of the best actresses of our time.
Dr. Gladys Mae Brown West was born in Sutherland, Virginia. Her mother worked in a tobacco factory and her father worked for the railroad. Her family also owned a small farm and she spent much of her childhood harvesting crops. Dr. West saw education as a tool that would set her on a path to a different life, and at school, she quickly excelled.
At Dr. West's high school, the top two students from each graduating class received full scholarships to Virginia State College (now Virginia State University), a historically black public university. Dr. West graduated as valedictorian in 1948, and was awarded the scholarship. Dr. West graduated from VSU in 1952 with a Bachelor of Science degree in mathematics. She immediately became a teacher and began saving money for graduate school. She returned to the university a few years later and earned a Master’s degree in mathematics.
Shortly thereafter, Dr. West was hired to work at the Naval Proving Ground in Dahlgren, Virginia, (now the Naval Surface Warfare Center) as a computer programmer. There, she was the second Black woman ever hired and one of only four Black employees, one of whom was Ira West, the man who would later become her husband. Dr. West became a project manager for processing systems for satellite data analysis, and concurrently studied for and earned a second Master's degree, this one in public administration, from the University of Oklahoma.
In the early 1960s, Dr. West participated in an award-winning study that proved the regularity of Pluto’s motion relative to Neptune. Subsequently, she began to analyze satellite altimeter data from NASA's Geodetic Earth Orbiting program, to create models of the Earth's shape (a field known as geodesy). She became project manager for the Seasat radar altimetry project, the first satellite that could remotely sense oceans. Dr. West's work cut her team's processing time in half, and she was recommended for a commendation.
At Dahlgren, Dr. West programmed an IBM 7030 Stretch computer to deliver increasingly precise calculations for the shape of the Earth; an ellipsoid with additional undulations known as the geoid. To generate an accurate geopotential model Dr. West needed to use complex algorithms to account for variations in the gravitational, tidal, and other forces that distort Earth's shape. Dr. West's model became the basis for the Global Positioning System (GPS).
After working at Dahlgren for 42 years, Dr. West retired in 1998 and set her sights on earning her Ph.D. Despite suffering a stroke soon thereafter, she persisted in her pursuit of her doctorate. As soon as she was discharged from the hospital, Dr. West focused on rehabilitation and resumed her studies. She soon completed her dissertation and earned her Ph.D. in public administration and policy affairs in 2000 at the age of 70.
Dr. West was inducted into the United States Air Force Hall of Fame in 2018, one of the highest honors bestowed by the Air Force Space Command (AFSPC). The AFSPC press release hailed her as one of "the 'Hidden Figures' …who did computing for the US military in the era before electronic systems." Of her contributions, Dr. West has been quoted as saying "When you’re working every day, you’re not thinking, 'What impact is this going to have on the world?' You're thinking, 'I've got to get this right.'”
Dr. West was named the Virginia State University “Alumna of the Year" in 2018. In the same year, the BBC selected her as one of the “100 Women of 2018.” In 2021, she was awarded the Prince Philip Medal by the UK's Royal Academy of Engineering, their highest individual honor. The same year, she was also awarded the Webby Lifetime Achievement Award for the development of satellite geodesy models.
This text is excerpted from: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/nov/19/gladys-west-the-hidden-figure-who-helped-invent-gps, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gladys_West, and https://www.britannica.com/biography/Gladys-West. To view footage of an interview with Dr. West, visit: https://www.dvidshub.net/video/645644/magnificent-gladys-mae-west.
