By Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

Last week, Accenture launched a new online Military Career Coach tool for veterans transitioning from military roles to the private sector. Rupali Deshmukh, Military Sourcing Lead at Accenture, considers the tool an extension of one-on-one coaching she has been doing for veterans. Now, she says, the online tool will be able to reach many more men and women who are transitioning to work in the private sector.

She knows first-hand the kinds of challenges members of the military face in making that adjustment. Deshmukh, who moved to the United States in 1999, was stirred to action after the September 11th terrorist attacks, and joined the Army as an HR administrator. In 2001, she joined the Army Reserves, and after a tour of service in Kuwait, and two more as a contractor, she came back to the US looking for a civilian job. Eventually, in 2011, she was hired as a military recruitment expert at Accenture.

She said, “In the 8 years of my career with the military, as well as with Accenture and other companies, my proudest achievement is the workshop I created for my candidates. We provide them with a resume and tools to help them get hired with us or someone else. When I get those emails thanking me and saying they’ve been hired – it’s pure joy.”

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By Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

Until the early 2000s, Jacki Zehner was focused on building a stellar career on Wall Street. When she was named partner at Goldman Sachs, she was the youngest woman and the first female trader to have done so.

But upon getting involved in leadership, she began to develop a passion for equality that led to a fixation on the DC Comics superheroine Wonder Woman, who was famously portrayed by Lynda Carter in a 1970s television series. Zehner began questioning why a feature film on the character has never been produced.

“We should care that we see images and stories on the big screen that inspire us, rather than just entertain us, and superhero stories do this. Little kids walk out of a movie theater wanting to have super powers and save the world. The fact that there are no female super hero films in 2013 makes me crazy. I want to take my daughter to one.”

That passion for equality led her to an entire new career in philanthropy, as President of Women Moving Millions, and an outspoken commitment to fighting the status quo. It’s also opened doors to the world of film and entertainment. “I never thought about a career in film,” she explained. “My first desire was with the Wonder Woman film. It was the only thing I thought about doing until I got involved in a much bigger way. I’m now proud to be an advocate and an investor in Gamechangers, a fund that invests in women directors of feature films.”

Last week, to coincide with a new PBS documentary on Wonder Woman, Zehner and her cousin Laura Moore released a report called “Why No Wonder Woman” [PDF] on the history of the character, and why the feature film production has yet to happen. Zehner still holds out hope that it will – even if she has to write the screenplay herself. She’s asking people to help create a groundswell of support by liking the report’s facebook page and signing the petition.

She said, “Let’s ask for what we want in the world, ladies. I’m asking for it and I’m asking others to ask for it with me.”

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By Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

“At 11 years old, I realized I wanted to be in money management,” said Kimberly Foss, Founder and President of Empyrion Wealth Management. “I was the youngest of six kids and all I had were hand-me-downs. I wanted Jordache Jeans so bad,” she recalled with a laugh. “I was hooked on the capitalism thing.”

Foss went on to study business at California State University at Chico and joined Merrill Lynch. After a few years, she says, she was ready to strike out on her own. “I left Merrill at 25 and started my own practice in capital markets with the philosophy to really do right by people. It was either sink or swim.”

“And 25 years later, I still have a business, so I must be doing something right.”

After growing her business and finding success in the financial markets, Foss is committed to helping empower all women to take control of their own money management.

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By Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

According to Theresa Payton, President and CEO of Fortalice and co-author of Protecting Your Internet Identity: Are You Naked Online, one of the most important things she has learned throughout her career sounds simple, but it’s something many women find challenging. “Saying no sometimes is actually okay. It’s not a sign of not being a team player. “

Payton, who spent 16 years in technology in the banking industry before becoming the first female Chief Information Officer at the White House, continued, “Early in my career, I felt I needed to rush in, grab the ball, and do it all. I quickly became overloaded. There’s a difference between not letting a ball drop and feeling as if I needed to take on everything myself.”

“Fortunately, I had mentors say to me that it’s okay to say no and recommend someone else,” she added.

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By Jane Carruthers (London)

How do you define a thoroughly modern heroine? Brave, candid, funny, kind and fantastically good at her job? Well, that’s certainly part of it. It was a job that demanded Marie Colvin took more risks than most people would consider sane, and one that she made peculiarly her own. By her sheer professionalism, personal bravery and awe-inspiring energy Marie Colvin became a legend in the hard-bitten world of war reporting. The newspapers and websites are abuzz with praise for a woman who lived her life to the maximum, working in places closer to a vision of hell than many of us can imagine, and telling the stories of ordinary people so that the world could know about the horrors and the atrocities they faced on a daily basis.

Along with Kate Adie, Christiane Amanpour, and Janine di Giovanni, Colvin crashed the almost exclusively male world of war reporting. Ground-breaking in the latter part of the last century, these women have shown the way to other women who want to pursue their chosen careers without fear of discrimination. Colvin did not do so as a quasi-male. She brought her own brand of femininity to her work, and liked nothing more than having a ritzy manicure and a night out in designer clothes, partying with her large circle of friends when home from an assignment.

Her friends and colleagues speak of someone full of fun, who knew the world’s darkest corners but also how to party – hard. East Timor, Sri Lanka (where she lost an eye), Chechnya, Libya. A roll-call of the horror centres of recent years, and she was there, telling it like it is, like always. Syria was to be her downfall. Murdered in a run-down press HQ in Homs, along with her French photographer Remi Ochlik, she had ‘one more story to file’ and died doing it. Two of her colleagues are still stranded in the bombed-out press centre, injured and desperate to get out.

Yale educated Colvin started her career as a night police reporter with UPI, eventually moving to Europe where she worked in Paris as Bureau chief. She moved to The Sunday Times in 1985 and became Middle East correspondent in one of the most turbulent periods in the region. She could be relied upon to get the scoop, even winning an unheard-of interview with Colonel Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.

Award-winning and highly respected around the world for her hard-hitting coverage, her successes came at great personal cost: she lost an eye when she came under fire from the Sri Lankan government forces in an RPG attack, and suffered post-traumatic stress disorder for a year, requiring hospitalisation. Her three marriages failed. Vaughan Smith, founder of the Frontline Club in London, where Colvin and her friends would congregate to relax between assignments, said: “She had a tough time. You cannot live a normal life with her job.”

Friend Virginia Bonham Carter, who knew Colvin for over 30 years, said that she managed to combine being brave and serious with incredible joie de vivre and energy for fun: “Marie connected with virtually every person she met.”

Colvin was not shy of using her considerable style and charm to gain entry to some of the most influential offices in the world. When working in the Middle East, she followed the more modest dress code required. A Moslem friend taught her how to tie the hijab around her neck properly, but Colvin insisted that she got better interviews if she showed a bit of cleavage. With Colvin, it was never a sacrifice of personal integrity – but she would – and did – push with every fibre of her determination to get the quote, get the story, file the scoop.

To ask the question “what does it mean to be an intrepid woman?” you need to little more than to read Marie Colvin’s resume. She embodied excellence, passion and humanity.

Much of the coverage of her death dwells on her gender, which is perhaps not surprising given her working world. Perhaps the greatest honour we could do her would be to ensure that it is not her gender for which she will be remembered, but her professionalism and her passion.