Elizabeth Holmes (February 3, 1984 - Present)

At age 31, Elizabeth Holmes is the world's youngest self-made female billionaire. Her uncle's death from cancer moved her to develop a way to detect diseases earlier. She dropped out of Stanford University her sophomore year and founded Theranos in 2003 to make cheaper, easier-to-use blood tests. With a virtually painless prick of the finger and a few drops of blood, her labs can quickly run a multitude of tests at a fraction of the price of commercial labs. Holmes raised $400 million from venture capitalists in 2014, valuing the company at $9 billion; her 50% stake is worth $4.5 billion. Some scientists have criticized Theranos for not publishing peer-reviewed studies, but the company got FDA clearance in July 2015 for a herpes test, and a waiver allowing non Theranos or Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments (CLIA)-certified locations to use its test.

As of 2014, Holmes had 18 US patents and 66 non-US patents in her name and is listed as a co-inventor on over one hundred patent applications. She is the youngest self-made female billionaire on the 2014 Forbes 400 list, with an estimated net worth of $4.6 billion!

Juliana Rotich

Juliana Rotich is Executive Director and co- founder of Ushahidi Inc, a non-profit tech company, born in Africa, which specializes in developing free and open source software for information collection, interactive mapping and data curation. Ushahidi was originally designed as a crowdsourced map to track violence after the troubled Kenyan elections in 2007-8 but now it builds tools for democratizing information, increasing transparency and lowering the barriers for individuals to share their stories. Through Crowdmap.com, Swiftly.org and accompanying mobile applications, Ushahidi is expanding its global footprint and making crowdsourcing tools available and useful. She is also an advisor to the iHub in Kenya.

Juliana has worked in the telecommunications and data warehousing industry for over ten years. She is originally from Kenya, with a Computer Science degree from the University of Missouri, Kansas City. She is a Technologist, TED Senior Fellow & MIT Media Lab Director’s Fellow. She is chair of the Global Agenda Council on Data Driven Development with World Economic Forum.

She was named one of the Top 100 women by the Guardian newspaper and top 2 women in Technology 2011, and Social Entrepreneur of the year 2011 by The World Economic Forum.

Janet Emerson Bashen (February 12, 1957- Present)

Janet Emerson Bashen is an American inventor, entrepreneur, and business consultant. She patented a software program to assist with web-based equal employment opportunity investigations. She founded a human resource consulting firm focusing on equal employment opportunity compliance, which investigated civil rights violations and employee misconduct. From 1997 to 2001, according to Inc magazine, her firm's revenue grew 552%, at which time it had 43 employees. In May 2000, she argued before Congress that civil rights and employee misconduct investigations should be exempt from the Fair Credit Reporting Act. In 2012, she was named to Ebony magazine's list of the 100 most influential African-Americans in entertainment, politics, sports and business, called the Power 100 List.

Ruth Handler (November 4, 1916 – April 27, 2002)

Perhaps one of the most famous toys in American history, the Barbie doll is a staple in the toy chests of little girls everywhere. Along with co-founding the renowned toy company Mattel, woman inventor Ruth Handler also designed the doll that would become an American cultural icon.

While watching her daughter play with paper dolls, Ruth Handler noticed that she and her friends used the dolls to act out the future rather than the present. So, she set out to invent a grown-up, three-dimensional doll that girls could use to act out their dreams. This, of course, included the presence of breasts (and what many would later call "unrealistic body proportions"). The female inventor named her new Barbie doll invention after the nickname of her daughter Barbara. Later on, a male counterpart doll would be named after her son: Ken.

After premiering at the Toy Fair in 1959, Barbie became an instant sensation. The success of the doll propelled Mattel to become a publicly owned company that soon made Fortune's list of the 500 largest U.S. industrial companies. Handler served as the company's president for several of its most successful years. Along with being an inventor and businesswoman, Ruth Handler is also a breast cancer survivor – an experience she used to start another company, Nearly Me, which manufactured realistic-looking breast prostheses.

To this day, the Barbie doll invention remains one of Mattel's best-selling products.