Held in conjunction with the National Conference for College Women Student Leaders, the Women of Distinction Awards Ceremony pays tribute to women leaders who have made extraordinary contributions in their professions or their communities. The award winners are leaders in their fields, innovators of unique programs and services, and lifelong advocates for promoting equity for women and girls everywhere.

The Women of Distinction Awards Ceremony honors not only excellence but also ingenuity and the ability to overcome barriers that still exist for women. The women selected for this honor represent a diversity of professional fields, personal characteristics, and life experiences. This inspiring awards ceremony is followed by a dessert reception and a chance to mingle with these exceptional honorees.

The Barbara Fetterhoff Honorary Fund is a platinum sponsor of the 2012 NCCWSL Women of Distinction Awards Ceremony and reception. AAUW of Maryland, many generous friends of Barbara’s, and AAUW donors from across the country, are contributing to this fund to honor AAUW member, Barbara Fetterhoff, for her leadership, vision, and commitment.

AAUW and NASPA are proud to announce the 2012 Women of Distinction:

Noorjahan Akbar
Writer and Activist

Born in Kabul, Afghanistan, in 1991, Noorjahan Akbar has had the rare opportunity of receiving an education, something not available to the majority of women in Afghanistan. She earned scholarships to attend two years of high school at the George School in Pennsylvania, and she is currently a freshman at Dickinson College, where she is studying sociology and music.

Akbar learned English and computer skills when her family moved to Peshawar, Pakistan, after the Taliban entered Afghanistan. In 2001, her family returned to Afghanistan and started an English-language center for about 400 women in the Qala-e-Fatullah region of Kabul.

At a very early age, Akbar started working with Radio Azadi (Radio Free Europe) as a writer for children’s programs. In the ensuing years, she worked as a writer and a translator at several organizations. Through her job at a German education program, she worked with children to write a book of six short stories for kids. The collection, which was printed and distributed in Afghanistan, inspired Voices for Hope, an effort focused on teaching children to write and think creatively. She later designed a program called Stories to Heal, which worked with 100 Afghan orphans on creative writing projects.

In summer 2011, Akbar co-founded Young Women for Change, an organization of volunteers who work for gender equality in Afghanistan. Since then, YWC has gained nonprofit status, formed a male advocacy group, organized monthly lectures on gender and women’s studies, collected books to build libraries in Kabul and Helmand, and began conducting research on street harassment in Kabul, thanks to a new grant.

Alison Cohen
President, Alta Bicycle Share

Alison Cohen is president of Alta Bicycle Share, the only company in the world focused on operating urban bike-share systems. She oversaw the launches of Melbourne (Australia) Bike Share, Washington, D.C.’s Capital Bikeshare, and Boston’s Hubway, and currently is leading the effort to build a 10,000-bike system in New York City.

Originally from Philadelphia, Cohen earned her bachelor’s degree in physics from the University of Virginia and then embarked on a career in professional tennis, during which she was ranked 400th in the world in singles and 300th in doubles. She then moved to New York and worked for Goldman Sachs in real estate investment banking. After a short stint in the nonprofit world, she earned her master’s degree in geophysics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and worked for four years in environmental consulting on soil and groundwater cleanup projects.

A daily bike commuter, Cohen became interested in bike sharing, which was being tested in France but was not yet up and running in the United States. She started her own small business in Cambridge called Bloo Bike, which operated small, employer-sponsored bike-share programs.

Cohen soon became the flag-bearer for bike-share programs in Boston and partnered with Public Bike System Company of Montreal, creator of the first solar-powered and wireless bike-share system in the world, and Alta Planning, which was looking to expand into the bike-share arena. She later joined Alta and started Alta Bicycle Share in 2009.The company’s success has since skyrocketed; it was recently selected to develop New York City’s bike-share program, which will be the second largest in the Western world.

Liza Donnelly
Cartoonist, New Yorker

Liza Donnelly is a staff cartoonist for the New Yorker. When she first began selling her work to the magazinein 1979, she was the youngest and one of only three women cartoonists to do so. In addition to her work as a cartoonist, Donnelly is a public speaker and has appeared at TED (Technology, Entertainment and Design), the United Nations, and the New Yorker Festival, as well as on CBS Sunday Morning, NBC, and BetterTV. She has been profiled on the radio and in numerous magazines, newspapers, and online. Donnelly’s cartoons and commentary can be seen on CNN.com, the Huffington Post, Salon.com, the Daily Beast, WomensEnews.org, and NarrativeMagazine.com and in the New York Times, Glamour, Cosmopolitan, the Nation, and the Harvard Business Review. Her cartoons have been exhibited around the world.

Donnelly’s most recent book is When Do They Serve the Wine? The Folly, Flexibility and Fun of Being a Woman. Other titles include Funny Ladies: The New Yorker’s Greatest Women Cartoonists and Their Cartoons, which is a history of the women who drew cartoons for the magazine; Sex and Sensibility: Ten Women Examine the Lunacy of Modern Love … in 200 Cartoons; and Cartoon Marriage: Adventures in Love and Matrimony by the New Yorker’s Cartooning Couple, which she co-wrote with her husband, fellow New Yorker cartoonist Michael Maslin.

Donnelly is also the founder and editor of World Ink, a site of cartoons from contributors around the globe. She is a charter member of Cartooning for Peace, an international project that helps promote understanding through humor. In addition, she maintains a website and blog, teaches part time at Vassar College, and is a member of the PEN American Center, the Authors Guild, and the National Cartoonists Society.

Michel Martin
Host, Tell Me More

Michel Martin hosts Tell Me More, an NPR talk radio program focused on the headlines and issues relevant to multicultural life in America. As a host, Martin orchestrates a gathering place for dialogue on important issues facing the country and discusses these challenges and opportunities with a range of guests, regular contributors, and NPR reporters. Martin’s career in journalism spans more than 25 years and includes experience with newspapers, television, and since her start at NPR in 2006, public radio. She has won numerous awards, including seven Salute to Excellence Awards from the National Association of Black Journalists.

Maggie Williams
Founding Partner, Griffin Williams

Maggie Williams is a founding partner of Griffin Williams, a consulting firm that specializes in helping public- and private-sector clients navigate transition, change, and challenging communication environments. A seasoned communications practitioner, strategist, and organizational manager, she led then-Sen. Hillary Clinton’s historic 2008 presidential campaign and served as a senior adviser to Clinton’s secretary of state confirmation and transition teams.

Williams has a long history in politics. She began her career as an aide to late Rep. Morris Udall (D-AZ) and from 1993 to 1997 served in the White House as an assistant to the president. During that period, she also served as chief of staff to the first lady and was the first person to play both roles concurrently.

Williams has held a number of other positions, including director of communications for the Children’s Defense Fund, media relations manager for the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and the Democratic National Committee, president of Fenton Communications, and chief of staff to former President Bill Clinton at the Clinton Foundation. In that role, she guided the early stages of the foundation’s program development, including the launch of the Clinton Health Access Initiative.

In 2005,Williams was a fellow at the Institute of Politics (IOP) at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government and currently serves as a member of IOP’s senior advisory committee. She was a fellow at Harvard’s Center for Public Leadership in 2006. She holds a master’s degree in communication philosophy from the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania and a bachelor’s degree in political science from Trinity College in Washington, D.C. Trinity awarded her an honorary doctoral degree in 2009.

Williams currently serves on the boards of the Scholastic Corporation and CHAI. She is a trustee of the Rhode Island School of Design and an advisory board member of the Eli J. Segal Citizen Leadership Program at Brandeis University and was named a U.S. commissioner to UNESCO in 2011.

You can learn about the origins of the conference and see a timeline of past Women of Distinction honorees at the history of NCCWSL website.