Shonda Rhimes
In 2007, Rhimes was named one of
TIME’s 100 People Who Help Shape
the World on the strength of her
monster success as a TV producer,
writer and showrunner. The Chicago-
born daughter of university educators,
she got her start as a scriptwriter and
hit pay dirt as creator-producer of the
long-running medical drama Grey’s
Anatomy; through her production
company, Shondaland, Rhimes also
turned out the suspenseful political
series Scandal and the legal drama
How to Get Away with Murder. In
2017, she signed a production deal
with Netfl ix. Addressing young female
professionals and adolescent girls at
the Dove Girl Collective conference
in 2018, Rhimes, now 49, stressed
swagger. “We all have something
about ourselves to brag about,
something that is amazing or special
or interesting. Something that we are
proud of, something brag-worthy,” she
said. “So how come we don’t brag on
ourselves? I mean, Beyoncé deserves
it, but so do you. So you should go
brag on yourself, brag on your friends.
I say we need to start a bragging
revolution. I’ll go fi rst: I’m a talented
writer with a very good booty and a
good sense of humor.”
George Washington Carver
Carver (early 1860s–1943) was born into slavery—in what year, he
wasn’t sure—and despite overwhelming odds in a fundamentally racist
society, he became a world-esteemed agricultural scientist. Trained at
what is now Iowa State University, where he was the fi rst black student,
Carver studied plant pathology and earned a national reputation as a
botanist. Carver would remain in academia, teaching for 47 years at the
Tuskegee Institute. There, he developed methods of improving soils
depleted by the unremitting cultivation of a single crop (cotton) and
advocated alternative cash crops that helped restore depleted nitrogen,
such as sweet potatoes, soybeans and peanuts—the latter of which he is
most associated with. In his later years, Carver met with world leaders—
Gandhi, for one, was a friend—and was regarded as something of a sage.
For Carver, simplicity and altruism were guiding principles. “It is not the
style of clothes one wears, neither the kind of automobile one drives, nor
the amount of money one has in the bank, that counts,” he said. “These
mean nothing. It is simply service that measures success.”