Not Every leader is Famous

In 1971, Judith Schffler broke ground in corporate America. She passed from this earth near the end of September 2017, but the repercussions of her achievement will last longer than her time on earth.
She may not be famous in the obvious sense of the word, but she pioneered change in the way corporations in America think about female employees. Her talent forced A.T. & T's to promote her to a position of authority.
Judith was born in Canonsburg, Pennsylvania in a time when most teenage girls in American high schools concentrated on home-ec(nomics) courses. Many people - men and women - thought a female went to college to earn not a B.A. but her Mrs. As if that were the crowning achievement for a female. We know such limitations are just B.S. Those letters represent another degree, women of the 1950's and 60's were not expected to earn in college, but Judith had other ideas.
From Canonsburg High School Judith matriculated to the Carnegie Institute of Technology - now called Carnegie Mellon University. She earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Technical Writing and Electrical Engineering. Women engineers in the 1960's were rarer than five-legged camels wandering Madison Square Park.  
In 1965, Judy found a job at A.T. & T. Bell Laboratory. During her employment at Bell Labs, she earned a Master of Science degree in Computer Sciences. She also found time to raise two daughters.
Her management of her time and her education must have impressed the powers that be, because in 1971, she became one of the first female supervisors at Bell Labs.
But that was just the first line to be crossed by Judith.
In 1989, A.T. & T. promoted her to an executive position. Maybe a male who had demonstrated her level of knowledge and talent would have been promoted up the ladder faster, but Judy was an undeniable force that broke through the barrier of sexual bias to achieve the impossible. She was named Chief Information Officer and Vice-President of a large business unit of Lucent Technologies.
Subsequently, she was offered early retirement, when corporate consolidation was under way in 1998.
She took advantage of the offer to retreat from the pressures of work. She lived in Maine and Florida, and maintained a home in Delaware.
In 2004, Judith Scheffler authored an edited collection of essays concerning the challenges a pioneering female executive faced in the male dominated corporate environment, "Beyond the Corner Office," is a history and an memoir and an autobiography of sorts, but mostly, it is a road map disclosing the potholes that threaten to unseat a feminist corporate administrator on her ride to the corner office.
Those who do not know the history of their environment, are doomed to repeat the mistakes and slip into all the potholes on the journey. Judith's legacy is to point them out so they can be avoided. When I was training to be a surgeon, I was often told know your enemies, meaning know where the danger and complications lie in the surgical field. I would offer that advice to any executive on the raise, and Judith describes a whole bunch of enemies that block the way for female executives.

She remains an unknown, unsung feminist pioneer to most, but now she is known to you.

-- L.A. Preschel