Mother Teresa
'It is not the magnitude of our actions but the amount of love that is put into them that matters.'
Mother Teresa (Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu), Blessed Teresa of Calcutta, (1910 - 1997) was an Albanian Roman Catholic nun with Indian citizenship who founded the Missionaries of Charity in India in 1950. For over forty five years she ministered to the poor, sick, orphaned, and dying. She won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979 and India’s highest civilian honor, the Bharat Ratna, in 1980 for her humanitarian work. Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity continued to expand, and at the time of her death it was operating 610 missions in 123 countries, including hospices and homes for people with HIV/AIDS, leprosy and tuberculosis, soup kitchens, children’s and family counselling programmes, orphanages, and schools.
Mahatma Gandhi
'Be the change that you want to see in the world.'
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869 - 1948) became one of the pivotal figures, if not the main figure, in India’s history in the twentieth century.He is commonly known around the world as Mahatma Gandhi (or “Great Soul”, an honorific first applied to him by Rabindranath Tagore) and in India also as Bapu (“Father”). Gandhi famously led Indians in protesting the British-imposed salt tax with the 400 km (249 miles) Dandi Salt March in 1930, and later in calling for the British to Quit India in 1942. He was imprisoned for many years and on numerous occasions. Gandhi was a practitioner of non-violence and truth, and advocated that others do the same. He undertook long fasts as means of both
self-purification and social protest.
Nelson Mandela
'The greatest glory in living lies not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.'
Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela (born 18 July 1918) was born in Transkei, South Africa on July 18, 1918.Among opponents of apartheid in South Africa and internationally, he became a symbol of freedom and equality, despite the apartheid government and nations sympathetic to it condemning him and the ANC as communists and terrorists.Mandela has received more than one hundred awards over four decades, most notably the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993. In South Africa he is often known as Madiba, an honorary title adopted by elders of Mandela’s clan. The title has come to be synonymous with Nelson Mandela.
Abraham Lincoln
'Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any other.'
Abraham Lincoln (1809 - 1865), the sixteenth President of the United States, successfully led his country through its greatest internal crisis, the American Civil War, only to be assassinated less than a week after the war’s end. Before his election as President, Lincoln was a lawyer, a member of the United States House of Representatives, and an unsuccessful candidate for election to the Senate.He made a great contribution to theabolition of slavery, issuing his Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, which passed Congress before Lincoln’s death and was ratified by the states later in 1865.His assassination in 1865 was the first presidential assassination in U.S. history and made him a martyr for the ideal of national unity.
Helen Keller
'Alone we can do so little. Together we can do so much.'
Helen Adams Keller (1880 - 1968) was an American author, activist and lecturer. She was the first deafblind person to graduate from college.The story of how Keller’s teacher, Annie Sullivan, broke through the isolation imposed by a near complete lack of language, allowing the girl to blossom as she learned to communicate, has become known worldwide through the dramatic depictions of the play “The Miracle Worker”.What is less well known is how Keller’s life developed after she completed her education. A prolific author, she was well traveled, and was outspoken in her opposition to war. She campaigned for women’s suffrage, workers’ rights and socialism, as well as many other progressive causes.
CS Lewis
'You are never too old to set another goal or dream a new dream.'
Clive Staples Lewis - (1898 - 1963) known to his friends and family as “Jack” - is one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century. Author of more than 70 titles, including works of science fiction, fantasy, poetry, letters, autobiography and Christian apologetics, Lewis’s book sales are reported to be more than 2 million annually. His conversion had a profound effect on his work, and his wartime radio broadcasts on the subject of Christianity brought him wide acclaim. Late in life he married the American writer Joy Gresham, who died of bone cancer four years later at the age of 45.His best known works are “The Chronicles of Narnia”, a series of books for children which includes “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe”.
Winston Churchill
'Attitude is a little thing that makes a big difference.'
Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill, KG, OM, CH, TD, FRS, PC, PC (Can) (1874 -1965) was a British politician known chiefly for his leadership of the United Kingdom during World War II. He served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1940 to 1945 and again from 1951 to 1955. A noted statesman and orator, Churchill was also an officer in the British Army, a historian, a Nobel Prize-winning writer, and an artist.At the forefront of the political scene for almost sixty years, he held many political and cabinet positions. Churchill was always noted for his speeches, which became a great inspiration to the British people and embattled Allied forces. His state funeral, saw one of the largest assemblies of statesmen in the world.
Dame Ellen Macarthur
'Courage is not having the energy to go on, it’s going on when you do not have the energy.'
Dame Ellen Patricia MacArthur, DBE (born 8 July 1976) is an English sailor from Whatstandwell near Matlock in Derbyshire, now based in Cowes, on the Isle of Wight. She is best known as a solo long-distance yachtswoman. On 7 February 2005 she broke the world record for the fastest solo circumnavigation of the globe, a feat which cemented her international renown.
In 2003, MacArthur set up The Ellen MacArthur Trust to take young people aged between 8 - 18 sailing to help them regain their confidence, on their way to recovery from cancer, leukaemia and other serious illness.
Marie Curie
'Be less curious about people and more curious about ideas.'
Marie Skłodowska-Curie (1867 - 1934) was a physicist and chemist of Polish upbringing and, subsequently, French citizenship. She was a pioneer in the field of radioactivity, the only person honored with Nobel Prizes in two different sciences, and the first female professor at the University of Paris.The Curies’ research was crucial in the development of x-rays in surgery. During World War One, Curie helped to equip ambulances with x-ray equipment, which she herself drove to the front lines. The International Red Cross made her head of its radiological service and she held training courses for medical orderlies and doctors in the new techniques.
Pelé
'Enthusiasm is everything. It must be taut and vibrating like a guitar string.'
Edison Arantes do Nascimento (born October 23, 1940), best known by his nickname Pelé, is a former Brazilian football player and rated by many as the greatest footballer of all time. He was given the title of Athlete of the Century by the International Olympic Committee. While his birth certificate shows his first name as Edison (after the American inventor), he prefers to call himself Edson. But it is as Pelé that he has become a sporting legend. In addition to being officially declared the football ambassador of the world by FIFA and a national treasure by the Brazilian government, he is also acknowledged for his vocal support of policies to improve the social conditions of the poor (when he scored his 1,000th goal he dedicated it to the poor children of Brazil).
Rosa Parks
'Each person must live their life as a model for others.'
Rosa Louise McCauley Parks (1913 - 2005) was an African American civil rights activist whom the U.S. Congress later called “Mother of the Modern-Day Civil Rights Movement”.On December 1, 1955 in Montgomery, Alabama, Parks refused to obey bus driver James Blake’s order that she give up her seat to make room for a white passenger. Parks’ action sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott. This movement turned Parks into aninternational icon of resistance to racial segregation and launched boycott leader Martin Luther King, Jr. to national prominence in the civil rights movement.
Jesse Owens
'Find the good. It’s all around you. Find it, showcase it, and you’ll start believing in it.'
James Cleveland “Jesse” Owens (1913 - 1980) was an American track and field athlete. He participated in the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin, Germany, where he achieved international fame by winning four gold medals: in the 100 metres, the 200 metres, the long jump, and as part of the 4x100 metre relay team. In 1936 Owens arrived in Berlin to compete for the United States in the Summer Olympics. Meanwhile, Nazi propaganda promoted concepts of “Aryan racial superiority” and depicted ethnic Africans as inferior. Owens was the hero of the games.After a New York ticker-tape parade in his honor, Owens had to ride the blacks-only freight elevator to attend his own reception at the Waldorf-Astoria.
Leadership Gallery
