“Today’s strong women can learn so much by studying the paths of those who came before us,” said Carolyn Cassin, president and CEO, Michigan Women Forward. “These amazing honorees have conquered so many obstacles and accomplished so much throughout their life. We are proud to salute them and want to be sure their stories are told.”

Michigan Women Forward will be celebrating the induction of the 2020 honorees at a ceremony on October 15. Sign up here to receive details about the event. 

Martha Teichner has been a correspondent for CBS Sunday Morning since 1993, where she covers major breaking national and international news stories. Since joining CBS News in 1977, she has earned multiple national awards for her original reporting, including 10 Emmy Awards and won five James Beard Foundation Awards. She was part of the team coverage of the Newtown  elementary school shooting which earned CBS News a 2014 duPont-Columbia Award.

Liz Jackson (1918-2020) was a founding member and officer of the Trade Union Leadership Council, a nationally recognized organization credited with advancing black political development within the UAW. In 1966, she made history when she became the first African American woman to serve as a UAW International representative, and she became the first woman to sit on the national negotiation team during UAW and Ford contract talks.

Ruth Westbrook (1941-2017) was a middle and high school math teacher and counselor in Southeast Michigan. Notably, as part of NASA’s Apollo 11 project, she wrote a program for all the steps used to get a man to the moon and back and see how long it took in real time to be completed. Essentially, Ruth was one of the “Human Math Computers” depicted in the movie Hidden Figures. In 1985, she earned her Juris Doctorate degree from The Detroit College of Law.