Gwen Ifill

Gwen Ifill is the senior correspondent for the daily PBS television program "The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer," and the host of "Washington Week."  Before joining PBS, she was chief congressional and political correspondent for NBC, and was a reporter for several major newspapers.  She moderated the vice presidential candidates debate in 2004.  Ifill has received more than a dozen honorary doctorates and several awards for excellence in broadcasting, including the National Press Foundation and the Radio Television News Directors Association. There are 78,000 news analysts, reporters and correspondents in the U.S.; 4 percent of them are African-American. 

Mae Jemison

Mae Jemison has several distinctions.  She is the first African-American woman to travel in outer space and the only astronaut to have appeared on the television classic, "Star Trek."  She was on an eight-day mission aboard the shuttle Endeavor and appeared in an episode of "Star Trek: The Next Generation" called "Second Chances."  Before being selected by NASA for the astronaut training program, she had earned two undergraduate degrees, a medical degree and served two years as a Peace Corps medical officer in West Africa, all before her 30th birthday.