Linda Wertheimer

According to Linda Wertheimer, getting a scholarship to go to Wellesley College, where all the students were women,"gave me the sense that women could run things...And I just never thought that it made sense to give that up." After an internship at the British Broadcasting Corporation, she was turned down by NBC because she was a woman, which turned out eventually to be a very bad decision on their part, when she joined National Public Radio where ten million listeners made her one of the most respected news anchors in modern media.

Her coverage of Watergate, the Iran/Contra Scandal, the attacks on 9/11, no less than twelve different election nights, and her development of the hugely famous news and features show, "All Things Considered," marks the career of an in-your-face woman who dives into complicated issues without a second glance. Still, she doesn't find any of it remarkable. In fact, she once observed, "Any working woman my age can probably tell you the times she was first woman to do something in her workplace: make partner, work through pregnancy, become chief of surgery, curator of painting, the first woman in a newsroom, the first woman hired...and there are still some big firsts out there I'm hoping someone will crack." Any takers?