In honor of Mother’s Day this Sunday, Working Mother magazine has named the 50 Most Powerful Moms of 2014, to recognize moms who “inspire us to keep striving for bigger and better,” and there are some very familiar names featured on there.
Working Mother‘s annual list of the Most Powerful Moms from around the globe recognizes those who “have demonstrated the talent, business acumen, innovative spirit and sheer guts to make a formidable impact on the world in so many compelling ways.”
Jennifer Owens, editorial director of Working Mother Media, says, “The 2014 list of ‘Most Powerful Moms’ is a formidable group of women who manage to balance high-octane careers with caring for their families. From tastemakers to titans, these moms are a thriving group of women who revel in the payoff of integrating their work and motherhood lives.”
Shonda Rhimes
[Entertainment/Literature]
Writer, Producer, Director
Children: Harper, 11, Emerson, 3, and Beckett, 1
You can’t list power women in entertainment without including the genius behind the hit TV shows Scandal, Grey’s Anatomy and Private Practice. Chicago-native Shonda earned her MFA from USC’s School of Cinema-Television, having read that it was harder to get into than Harvard Law. After a stint as a film development assistant, she sold her first script and went on to lend her writing skills to such notable films as Introducing Dorothy Dandridge. She then became obsessed with TV and sold her first pilot. Fresh off of winning a Directors Guild Of America Diversity Award, the mom of three is currently at work on a memoir and recently penned a piece describing the arduous process of adoption for The Daily Beast: “…you spend months researching—domestic, international, agency, private, foster, open, closed, older child, newborn, special needs…. There are mountains of paperwork—financial statements, personal essays, biographies, medical reports. You get fingerprinted and photographed and interviewed and examined… and then a birth mother picks you. You get picked. Your hard work pays off.”
Kerry Washington
[Entertainment/Literature]
Actress, Activist
Children: Isabelle, newborn
On Scandal,Kerry’s Olivia Pope on may be the girl most talked about around everyone’s virtual water cooler, but in real life this Emmy-nominated power mom (brand new!) has always had her eye on the prize. An exemplary student, Bronx, NY–born Kerry graduated Phi Beta Kappa from George Washington University. Her first break, a commercial, quickly led to a fledgling film career. But she broke through big with her role opposite Jamie Foxx in Ray, earning an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Actress. Plum roles followed in The Last King of Scotland, For Colored Girls, the Broadway play Race and Django Unchained. Beyond screen time, Kerry is passionate activist. She was honored with the NAACP President’s Award for special achievement in furthering the cause of civil rights and was appointed by President Obama to the President’s Committee of the Arts and Humanities in 2009. She’s also an active member of the V-Counsel, an esteemed group of advisors to V-Day, the global movement to end violence against women and girls. Kerry told Elle she’d still be into playing different roles even if she wasn’t an actress: “I imagined I’d be a clinical psychologist, with a focus on how performance shapes identity. I’d figure out ways to use role-playing in the healing of people.”
Source: Working Mother
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