The WNBA’s all-time leading scorer and a two-time Olympic gold medalist, tells More that being a mom has deepened her strength. Her guiding principle: “You can’t expect people to be anything other than themselves. Accepting that reality is half the battle.”

“I Feel strongest when I have given until I know I have no more to give.”

—Tina Thompson

Lori Proctor, a nurse, worked as a hospital performance-improvement coordinator. She thought an MBA would make her more credible with doctors, and she wrote off the tuition on her taxes. The IRS said no. She appealed, argued the case herself and won—inspiring all women who want to do their work better.

Carla Franklin was anonymously stalked online. She wanted to learn her tormentor’s identity in order to track him down, but Google at first refused to give her the information. Franklin went to court, and a judge compelled Google to release the man’s IP address. Now she’s advocating for a New York State law to protect people from cyberharassment.

Yep: lots of drama (the Oscars, Brangelina), lots of kids (six), lots of ink (tabloids, tattoos), lots of lips. But Angelina Jolie puts her money where her pout is, touring hot spots as Goodwill Ambassador for the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees—and donating more than $10 million to vital causes from restoring Haiti to building girls’ schools in Afghanistan.

Aung San Suu Kyi,pro-democracy heroine of Myanmar, was recently freed after 15 years under house arrest, held by a repressive regime.

Gloria Allred is an attorney whose sleaze detector sometimes seems askew. But for every tiresome celebrity mistress or murderer’s girlfriend she represents, there’s a big discrimination case that she’s taken on, from forcing the male-only Friars Club to accept women in the 1980s to an ageism suit against an electronics chain. For this, and for her tough ’tude, crusader Allred makes our grit list.

“Weakness is a luxury that neither my clients nor I can afford.”
—Gloria Allred

Joia Mukherjee, MD, chief medical officer of the global charity Partners in Health, rallied local staff in Haiti to treat victims of the 2010 quake. She also oversees programs in Africa, Latin America, Russia and Kazakhstan. “The coolest thing ever,” she’s said, “is to change the world.”

To be Mrs. Buck-Stops-Here is tough enough. Add hands-on parenting and a rigorous agenda that includes championing military families and fighting childhood obesity, and you have a very full plate (but one with a nice healthy serving of veggies). First Lady Michelle Obama manages to balance it all with dazzling authenticity and warmth.

Someday there’ll be an opera called The Wrap Dress in China. Diane von Furstenberg is opening DVF boutiques in Beijing and Shanghai in hopes of conquering the huge Chinese market. And she and her husband, Barry Diller, have taken “The Giving Pledge,” committing to donate the majority of their wealth to charity.

In 2004, when her son, NFL football star turned Army Ranger Pat Tillman, was killed in Afghanistan, Mary Tillman was devastated—and dubious about the military’s murky official account of the event. Her relentless investigations not only forced the Army to disclose that Pat was killed by friendly fire but also exposed a high-level ­cover-up and led to congressional hearings. Tillman, a former special education teacher, subordinated her intense pain and cherished privacy to her search for the truth. Especially galling was what she saw as officials’ attempts to exploit her son by presenting him as a martyr while concealing the facts of his death. “I know that Pat was heroic,” Tillman has said, “and I didn’t need their deceptions to confirm it.”

Meghan McCain campaigned for her dad, John McCain, but Pop’s GOP doesn’t do it for the Daily Beast columnist and author of Dirty Sexy Politics. A supporter of gay people’s rights to marry and serve openly in the military, McCain wants her party to be a bigger, much more fabulous tent. “I love punk rock,” she’s said. “I have a tattoo... and, yes, I am a Republican.”

Elizabeth Scharpf was alarmed to learn that the lack of affordable sanitary pads causes millions of girls in the developing world to miss school, then drop out. So she founded Sustainable Health Enterprises (SHE) and is launching a women-run factory in Rwanda to make inexpensive, comfy pads from the fiber of local banana trees. The Harvard MBA hopes to open similar factories elsewhere, keeping girls in school, providing eco-friendly sanitary protection and creating jobs—a rags to riches story.

Gabrielle Giffords, Democratic congresswoman from Arizona, was meeting with constituents in a supermarket parking lot in January when a gunman opened fire. Six people died, and Giffords took a bullet to the brain. The nation was shocked and shaken—then elated by her steps toward recovery. In early February, she spoke her first words, and as of this writing, she hoped to be in Florida in April when her husband, U.S. Navy Captain Mark Kelly, lifted off in the space shuttle Endeavour. Kelly has said, “She’s a strong person, a fighter... like nobody else that I know.”  

Carolyn McCarthy, Giffords’s congressional colleague from New York—whose husband died in a mass shooting in 1993—introduced legislation that would ban the kind of large-capacity ammunition magazine Maisch wrested from the assailant.

Meg Whitman made her estimated $1.3 billion fortune as CEO of eBay—and spent some $144 million of it on her unsuccessful 2010 bid for the governorship of California. Never mind. “I try to focus on the positives of what I’m doing and not get drawn into being negative and defeatist,” she told us. “I look for humor in the current challenge and try not to take myself too seriously.”

Tina Brown, former editor of the New Yorker, has merged her news website the Daily Beast with the moribund Newsweek, a magazine she plans to revitalize. She also created the annual Women in the World: Stories and Solutions summit, which perhaps was on her mind when she told More:

What keeps me strong is...

the humbling stories of the courage of women in places like Afghanistan and Congo who face insuperable odds every day but still keep their dignity and humor.

The strong woman who’s my role model is...

Dr. Hawa Abdi. She is a Somali-born doctor and lawyer anda fearless advocate for social justice. Dr. Abdi is the founder of a hospital where 90,000 Somalis seek shelter and medical help each day. Last year a militia tried—unsuccessfully—to take control. When the militants shouted that “women can’t do things like this,” she refused to back down, demanding, “What have you done for society?” She is a true testament to the power of female ­determination!

Bindi Irwin, 12, has the animal magnetism of her late dad, “Crocodile Hunter” Steve Irwin—and his dedication to protecting endangered species. The singer, actress and Emmy-winning host of a wildlife series for children donates a chunk of her earnings to conservation charities.

Stephenie Meyer has sold over 100 million copies of her Twilight quartet; the three movies grossed over $1.7 billion. Another metric: At Elena Kagan’s Supreme Court confirmation hearings, one senator asked whether she supported Team Jacob or Team Edward.

Nora Ephron, known for such witty films as Julie & Julia and Sleepless in Seattle, has now made it chic to embrace, or at least chortle defiantly at, aging. I Feel Bad About
My Neck and I Remember Nothing are ­divinely—what were we saying? We’ll let Ephron do the talking:

I feel strongest when...

I stand up straight, which I don’t always do.

What keeps me strong is...

my fantastic gift for denial.

When i feel my strength flagging, I...

drink a Coke Zero.

My mantra is...

1. Get over it. 2. Life is too short to live without bread. 3. Never buy a flag lot.

The strong woman who’s my role model is...

Christiane Amanpour.

The first time I knew my own strength was…

I have a clear memory: I am running up a steep flight of stairs. I’m in high school. I trip and skin my knee. I start to cry. I realize it doesn’t hurt enough to cry. I stop crying.

In 2009 she was a second-term congresswoman appointed to fill the New York Senate seat vacated by Hillary Clinton when she decided to run for president. But Kirsten Gillibrand, who handily won re-election last year, has dramatically raised her political profile (and healthfully dropped the more than 40 pounds she put on when she had her sons, now seven and three). Hard to pigeonhole—she gets top marks from both the NRA and the League of Conservation Voters—she has helped win compensation for ailing 9/11 first responders and introduced legislation thatled to the repeal of “Don’t ask, don’t tell.”

Would we notice talented musician and songwriter Stefani Germanotta if she hadn’t changed her name and donned a dress made of meat? Well, probably her “Poker Face” video on YouTube would have gotten only 73,349,161 hits instead of the 73,349,162 it’s scored as of press time.

Esperanza Spalding caused fans of Justin Bieber to have a cow when she snatched this year’s Grammy Award for Best New Artist away from him. The bassist-vocalist, who’s just 26, is the first jazz singer ever to win that coveted title.

Aerin Lauder, senior vice president and creative director of Estée Lauder, has a great eye (overseeing visuals from packaging to ads), a fine nose (successfully reviving archival fragrances) and a head for business (adding designer Tom Ford to the team). Like her Grandma Estée, she’s chic, classy
and canny.

Penelope Cruz has beauty, passion, talent— and Javier Bardem. This month the new mom (who has demonstrated that she has the guts to take on an eclectic array of roles—whatever intrigues her, large or small) cavorts as a bad girl in the fourth Pirates of the Caribbean.

Click here for 12 Men We Love-- Whose Wives We Envy

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