You probably see her on daytime TV and love her or not, she has to be one of the funniest people on the planet… Today we’ll go squinty eyed and look at Ellen.

Ellen Lee DeGeneres was born in New Orleans Louisiana on January 26 1958. She found the best way to get through a fear of public speaking was to use humor to get her audience to enjoy themselves.

At 23 she started doing stand-up comedy at a local coffee house until Jay Leno pointed Johnny Carson in her direction, and she was booked to appear on the Tonight Show starring Johnny Carson. That one performance led to many other doors opening for her, and she quickly bcame a household name.

For the woman who didn’t study to be a veterinarian because she ‘wasn’t book smart’, Ellen was still on the rise, landing a job in 1994 on a sitcom called These Friends of Mine, later to be renamed Ellen.

1997 was a HUGE year for American talk show and Sitcom history, with Ellen and her sitcom character becoming the first openly gay lead character on TV, both in their private and make believe lives. For those who lived in Alabama, it was an ABC executive who decided the controversy far outweighed the value of showing the episode where Ellen’s character came out of the closet. Continuing on with the gay themes brought on a storm of criticism. The show was axed in 1998.

Bring on the new millennium and 2001 saw CBS pick up Ellen, in a new sitcom, aptly named The Ellen Show. Unfortunately it didn’t garner the ratings she needed to make it a runaway hit. It was axed after one season.

The Ellen DeGeneres Show began airing in 2003, in competition to plenty of other celebrities having their own talk shows. Her wit, individuality and kindness has led to this show running strong now for almost a decade.

And just in case you’ve lived under a rock for the last 10 years, Ellen was the voice for the ditzy fish Dori in the Disney/ Pixar film Finding Nemo in 2003. She was also the voice of the prologue dog in the 1998 20th Century Fox film, Dr. Dolittle.

Outside TV and movies, Ellen is an advocate for many wonderful charities and causes; it amazes me she has any private time. She’s a spokesperson against animal cruelty.  Gentle Barn; they rescue and rehabilitate abused farm animals, is a commonly mentioned organization on her show. She’s a proactive supporter of anti-bullying through her website and the Untied Against Bullying movement, also it goes without saying she’s an ambassador for Gay Rights.

Find out more from the links below, and in the words that will forever be this magnificent woman’s legacy, “Be Kind To One Another.”

Seriously…I’m Kidding by Ellen DeGeneres

Hardcover, 241 pages

Published October 4th 2011 by Grand Central Publishing ISBN 0446585025 (ISBN13: 9780446585026) ***There are other books, but we’re running out of room here***

http://www.biography.com/people/ellen-degeneres-9542420

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellen_DeGeneres

http://ellen.warnerbros.com/ellens_life/ellens_organizations/ellens_pet_initiative/

http://ellen.warnerbros.com/resources/united_against_bullying/

http://gentlebarn.com/page.php?id=Emergency%20Ohio%20Dog%20Rescue

Sometimes we wonder how strong we are. I’m not talking lifting weights; I’m talking strength in the face of adversity. One of the best quotes I believe in highly is, ‘Women are like teabags. You don’t know how strong they’ll be until you put them in hot water.’ Someone who fits the build perfectly in this instance is Katie Piper.

Kate “Katie” Elizabeth Piper was born in Andover, Hampshire, on October 12^th 1983. Following in similar footsteps to her father, a barber, Katie trained as a beautician after leaving school. The choice was mostly driven by her love of fashion and respect for beauty.

A career with modelling seemed a natural transition for someone as pretty as Katie. She was photographed for national newspapers, took part in beauty pageants and carried out publicity duties as a promotional model. She even spent time as a ring-card girl for Mixed Martial Arts fixtures.

You’d think she’d stop there, but no, Katie also spent time in her career as a digital television presenter. So far her entire life was based around her appearance and didn’t rely very much on her personality. This would all change in 2008 when she met Daniel Lynch through Facebook.

Unknown to Piper, Lynch had a colourful criminal past, and it wasn’t until a fortnight into their relationship that Lynch let his sick nature come through; raping and stabbing Katie.  In absolute fear Katie sought medical help without allowing the true nature of her attack to be documented. This was a move she would later regret.

Two days after this initial attack Lynch convinced Katie to head to a local Internet café to check her messages on Facebook. Unbeknownst to her, he had given her details to Stefan Sylvestre, with the purpose of harming the girl. Sylvestre approached Katie and threw sulphuric acid in her face.

Emergency services were forced to wait an hour or more before treating Katie thanks to the potential risk of the, until then, unknown acid. Piper was blinded in her left eye and had extensive damage to the rest of her face. With over 40 surgeries to minimize scarring and skin contraction, Katie needed to find another way to make her life worthwhile.

2 years of treatment and soul searching led this incredibly brave woman to take part in a documentary on Channel 4 entitled Katie: My Beautiful Face. She also wrote books about her struggle to relearn how to live with purpose, in the hopes to inspire and show support for other people in dark moments of their lives.

To add icing to the cake, Katie also started her own foundation aimed at raising awareness of the plight of victims of burns and other disfigurement injuries. With Simon Cowell as patron of the foundation, they campaign for the specialist treatment Piper received to be more widely available to British patients.

Just as an aside not both Lynch and Sylvestre were later arrested and imprisoned. Lynch is now serving a minimum of 16 years, and Sylvestre a minimum of 12, in jail.

Katie is allowing her inner strength and beauty overcome her scars. She is an inspiration in the true sense of the word.

http://www.katiepiperfoundation.org.uk/

Beautiful by Katie Piper

Paperback, 314 pages

Published September 14th 2011 by Ebury Press (first published January 1st 2011)

ISBN 0091940761 (ISBN13: 9780091940768)

Things Gets Better by Katie Piper

Paperback, 320 pages

Published May 24th 2012 by Quercus

ISBN 1780874774 (ISBN13: 9781780874777)

I want to take a step back in time to bring you today’s incredible woman. The most heart-breaking thing about this is that she never got to see the awareness she brought to the world just by keeping a diary.

Annelies Marie “Anne” Frank was born June 12th 1929 in an assimilated community in Frankfurt, Germany.

Between 1933 and 1939 over 300,000 Jews fled Germany; the Franks were among them, heading to Amsterdam to take advantage of business prospects and a life free of persecution.

The war came knocking again in 1940 when Germany invaded the Netherlands, and new decrees were passed for Jewish children only to attend Jewish schools. Despite the segregation, Anne still managed to make friends and excel in her studies. This was not the only act of segregation to take place.

It was in a small autograph book given to her for a 13th birthday present that Anne began her diary. She wrote of the restrictions placed upon the Jewish community, her dreams and her seemingly mundane life.

When the family was given a call-up notice in 1942 with orders to relocate to a work camp, they decided instead to go into hiding in rooms behind the offices where Anne’s Father had worked. This is where the Franks stayed for a little over 2 years only to be arrested by the German Order Police on August 4th 1944.

By September 1944 the family was transported to their next destination, the infamous Auschwitz concentration camp. On arrival the men, women and children were separated and the old, the sick the weak and the children under 15 were marched to gas chambers. Anne survived this fate but was chosen instead for hard manual labor. She was stripped naked, disinfected, had her head shaved and her identification number was tattooed on her arm.

Anne finally passed away at the age of 15 in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, merely weeks before the British troops liberated the camps. She had always believed her father had been lost to the gas chambers in Auschwitz, but this was not the case. He was given the diary and a lose bundle of notes written by Anne. He was moved by the detail in which his daughter had recorded their lives.

Otto handed the diary over to Annie Romein-Verschoor and her husband Jan Romein and the road to publication began.

Germany and France published the writings in 1950, the UK picked it up in 1952 but it was out of print due to low sales by ‘53. The US changed the title but also published Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl in 1952 and surprisingly more than 100,000 copies were sold in its first edition in Japan.

Since the 50’s there have been movies and plays adapted from the diaries. There are trees, roses and statues created in Anne’s memory.

In 1999 Time magazine named Anne Frank among the heroes and icons of the 20th century on their list The Most Important People of the Century,

stating, “With a diary kept in a secret attic, she braved the Nazis and lent a searing voice to the fight for human dignity”. Even Madame Tussaudes Wax Museum unveiled a likeness of Anne on March 9th 2012.

So though she lived a short and at times, tortured life, Anne’s legacy to the world is an insightful look at the affect of war on children.

You can pick yourself up a copy of The Diary of Anne Frank from any book shop with decent stock.

Paperback, 224 pages

Published February 1968 by Macmillan General Books (first published 1947) ISBN 0330107372 (ISBN13: 9780330107372) *note this is just one option of MANY of the publications of this memoir* Source

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Frank#CITEREFFerguson2012

This time around we’re gonna peel back the layers of the Order of Australia medalist Doctor Fiona Wood.

Fiona was born on the 2nd of February 1958 in Yorkshire England.

Twenty years later she was already blazing trails being one of only twelve women admitted to the learned halls of St. Thomas’ Hospital Medical School. She graduated in 1981 with an MD., BS. 6 Years later she immigrated to Perth with her family and began training to become a plastic surgeon.

In 1995 the culmination of years of collaborative genius with medical scientist Marie Stoner were brought to a head, when a new treatment method for burns victims was launched. Cellspray® is a spray on solution of skin cells, rather than the previous method of using sheets of skin.  Wood and Stoner founded Clinical Cell Culture (C3) in 1999.  Further developments have shortened the length of time needed to produce the spray on skin from 21 days to only 5. With such advanced exploration of tissue engineering, Wood has been recognized as a pioneer in her field.

This pioneering research really came to light after the horrific bombings in Bali in 2002. A large proportion of the survivors were sent to Royal Perth Hospital. Doctor Wood and her team worked tirelessly to save the lives of 28 survivors who suffered badly from burns ranging from 2% to 98% of their bodies, along with delayed shock and deadly infections.

An Order of Australia medal was awarded to Doctor Wood in 2003, and she was named Australian of the year in 2005. For her contribution to medicine in the field of burns research a Western Australia Citizen of the Year award found its way into Doctor Wood’s possession; but this would all be placed aside in March 2007 after a crash landing of Garuda Indonesia Flight 200, when Fiona assisted in the emergency response to burns victims.

Readers Digest named Doctor Wood as Australia’s Most Trusted Person from 2005 to 2010.

Doctor Fiona Wood looks like she is going to be collaborating and continuing to blaze trails with the treatment of burns for many years to come. Branching perhaps into neurophysiology (the science of the nervous system) and how bone marrow aids in healing.

Hope has been handed to many burns victims who would have little chance of surviving prior to the mid 1990’s. This, in my opinion, makes Doctor Fiona Wood one of Australia’s most treasured people.

Sources

http://www.science.org.au/scientists/interviews/w/wood.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiona_Wood

Time to look at another extraordinary woman doing incredible things to make the world a better place; today Tara Moss is in our cross hairs spotlight.

Tara was born in British Columbia October 2 1973, and holds dual residency between Australia and Canada. We love her as one of our own and the fact that she has written at least 7 riveting books; hosts a plethora of intriguing TV shows and has spent time as a super model (not to mention researches for her books in such a way it makes news headlines, oh, and she’s a Mother on top of all that), hasn’t stopped her from making a difference.

She was a Cadet in the Admiral Rayner Cadet Corp during the 1980’s and was awarded Most Outstanding Cadet in 1986. By 1988 Tara was tall enough and pretty enough to start a modelling career. This lead to amazing opportunities to travel around Europe, the Americas, and goodness knows where else, until she took a step in the direction of becoming an author; walking away from being a model at age 25.

Tara’s researching has given her some extraordinary insight into her characters and into the lives of some unbelievably awesome people. From FBI agents, race car drivers, stunt guys, and ultimate fighters, Tara goes to extreme lengths to get the story straight from the horse’s mouth. She enjoys horse power but riding motorcycles and dealing with the g-forces with the Royal Australian Air-force Roulettes also makes her smile.

Her lifetime achievements have been complemented beautifully by a seemingly ‘normal’ life at home with husband and daughter… and the pet snakes, Thing and Gomez. What else could anyone have left to do? Advocacy and volunteer work, that’s what!

In 2000 she became an ambassador for the Royal Institute for Deaf and Blind Children http://www.ridbc.org.au/ which was founded in 1860. In 2007 Tara was inducted into the ranks of UNICEF Goodwill Ambassadors, and was given the title of Australia Patron for Breastfeeding in 2011 within the UNICEF advocacy umbrella.

Tara was also spotted back on the catwalk for the opening of the Sydney Fashion Festival with and Alex Perry/ Target Breast Cancer Charity Parade in 2011.

While beauty and appearances play a small role in Tara’s career, her life is hinged on her achievements off the runway and the lengths she will go to, to help others while living life to the max.

In my opinion she is a true example of a real life, kick ass woman.

Sources

http://www.taramoss.com/gallery/behindscenes.php

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tara_Moss

http://www.taramoss.com/press/bio.php