Mindy Kaling wears many hats during her 18-hour workdays on the set of the sit-com The Office, but that hasn’t always been the case. When she was hired as a writer/sometimes actor on the show at the age of 24, she didn’t have nearly as much responsibility. Back then she was the only woman on the 8-member writing staff. 8 years and 10 additional writers later, Kaling has written 22 episodes of the popular show, and she now can add executive producer and director to her resume.

We’re all about celebrating strong, empowered women and who better embodies that phrase than the newly appointed editor of the New York Times, Jill Abramson. She is a former investigative reporter and has served as managing editor since 2003. A born and raised New Yorker, she likened growing up with a Times subscription to being a religion.

Ursula Burns is not only the first African-American woman to have been named C.E.O. of a major American Corporation, but she is also the first woman to succeed another woman as head of a company of this size. The company happens to be Xerox, whose name has been established as an everyday verb. Burns began as an intern with the company and over the last 30 years has worked her way up the ranks. When all the fuss was made about her new position, she enjoyed it at first, but quickly turned her attention to the task at hand, steering Xerox to become “more fearless and frank,” but describing one aspect of the corporate culture as “terminal niceness.”