National Center of Women's Innovations

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National Center of Women's Innovations

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Our Mission:
Showcase and promote the forgotten achievements of women innovators through high-tech educational platforms and programs which inspire and teach girls to use their technical and innovative skills to solve world challenges

09/04/2026

Carolee Lee’s story reminds us that health advocacy often depends on changing the argument.

For too long, women’s health research has been underfunded, under-prioritized, and treated as a niche issue — despite the fact that gaps in research affect diagnosis, treatment, prevention, investment, and outcomes across the entire healthcare system.

Lee saw that moral urgency alone was not moving systems fast enough.

So she founded Women’s Health Access Matters (WHAM) in 2020 to make the case for women’s health research using data, economics, investment strategy, and cross-sector collaboration. WHAM focuses on accelerating research and investment in women’s health while highlighting the scientific and economic costs of underinvestment.

Her work reframes women’s health not as a special interest, but as a public health, scientific, and economic imperative. It challenges funders, policymakers, investors, researchers, and healthcare leaders to recognize that when women are understudied, everyone pays the price.

For this week’s Fix-It Friday, we honor Carolee Lee — a leader who is helping move women’s health research from the margins to the center of medical innovation.

What area of women’s health do you think needs more research, investment, and urgency?

08/28/2026

Elizabeth Glaser’s story reminds us that advocacy often begins when a system fails the people we love.

After contracting HIV through a blood transfusion, Glaser unknowingly passed the virus to her children. At the time, pediatric HIV/AIDS was dangerously underfunded, under-researched, and overlooked.

She refused to let children remain invisible in the AIDS crisis.

Glaser co-founded the Pediatric AIDS Foundation in 1988 to push for research, treatment, prevention, and public awareness focused specifically on children and families affected by HIV/AIDS.

Her advocacy helped bring pediatric AIDS into the national conversation and pushed medicine, policymakers, and funders to recognize that children needed dedicated research, treatment, and urgency.

For this week’s Fix-It Friday, we honor Elizabeth Glaser — a mother and advocate who transformed personal grief into a movement for children’s health.

Her story asks us to consider: Who is still being left out of today’s health research, treatment, and public policy?

08/23/2026

What happens when a young girl from rural Virginia uses education to open doors that were never designed for her?

She helps change the world.

Dr. Gladys West was born in 1930 and went on to become a pioneering mathematician whose work contributed to satellite technology, ocean mapping, and the systems that made modern GPS possible.

Her story is one of brilliance, persistence, and innovation — and Denver-area visitors can now experience it through NCWI’s traveling exhibit at Auraria Library.

📍 Auraria Library
Northwest stairwell, 2nd floor
On view through September 2026

The exhibit includes four large-scale panels and a video display highlighting Dr. West’s life, career, and legacy.

Thank you to Trimble for supporting this exhibit and helping us bring Dr. West’s remarkable story to new audiences.

Bring a student. Bring a friend. Bring someone who needs to see what innovation looks like.

08/21/2026

Barbara Gittings’ story reminds us that healthcare systems do not just treat people. They also shape how people are seen.

For decades, homosexuality was classified as a mental disorder, reinforcing stigma, discrimination, and harm through the authority of medicine. Gittings understood that this was not only a social or legal issue. It was a health issue — because being mislabeled by the medical establishment affects safety, dignity, access, and belonging.

She refused to accept that diagnosis.

Working alongside other activists, Gittings helped challenge the American Psychiatric Association’s classification of homosexuality as a mental illness, a campaign that contributed to the APA’s 1973 decision to remove homosexuality from the DSM.

Her advocacy helped move medicine away from pathologizing LGBTQ+ people and toward recognizing the harm caused when bias is dressed up as diagnosis.

For this week’s Fix-It Friday, we honor Barbara Gittings — an advocate whose work helped challenge stigma at its source and expand the meaning of health, dignity, and human rights.

Who is a woman innovator in health you think more people should know?

08/14/2026

Cicely Saunders’ story reminds us that health innovation is not only about extending life. It is also about honoring the life that remains.

As a nurse, social worker, and physician, Saunders saw a profound gap in care: people who were dying were often left with unmanaged pain, limited emotional support, and little attention to their full humanity.

She believed medicine could do better.

Her work helped establish the modern hospice movement and advanced the idea of “total pain” — recognizing that suffering can be physical, emotional, social, and spiritual.

Saunders helped change how healthcare understands dignity, comfort, and care at the end of life. She showed that listening, presence, and pain relief are not secondary to medicine. They are medicine.

For this week’s Fix-It Friday, we honor Cicely Saunders — a pioneer who helped build a more compassionate model of care for patients and families facing the end of life.

Who is a woman innovator in health you think more people should know?

08/07/2026

Fannie Lou Hamer’s story reminds us that health justice and civil rights have always been connected.

In 1961, Hamer went to the hospital for surgery and was sterilized without her knowledge or consent — part of a broader pattern of medical abuse inflicted on Black women and poor women across the South.

She refused to stay silent.

Hamer spoke publicly about reproductive violence, medical racism, poverty, and the ways systems denied Black women control over their own bodies and futures.

Her advocacy helped expose the deep connections between healthcare, racism, gender, power, and bodily autonomy. She challenged the country to understand that health is not only about medical care — it is also about consent, dignity, safety, and justice.

For this week’s Fix-It Friday, we honor Fannie Lou Hamer — a civil rights leader whose truth-telling helped make reproductive justice impossible to ignore.

Who is a woman innovator in health you think more people should know?

07/31/2026

Clara Barton’s story reminds us that health innovation is not always born in a laboratory or hospital. Sometimes, it begins in the middle of crisis — with someone asking, Who is missing care, and how do we reach them?

During the Civil War, Barton brought supplies and support directly to wounded soldiers, often entering spaces where women were not expected to lead. She saw the need for organized emergency response long before the systems existed to provide it.

So she helped build one.

As the founder of the American Red Cross, Barton helped create a model for disaster relief, emergency aid, and humanitarian care that could respond when people were most vulnerable.

Her work helped make care more organized, more mobile, and more responsive — proving that innovation in health is also about infrastructure, coordination, and showing up when systems fall short.

For this week’s Fix-It Friday, we honor Clara Barton — a nurse, humanitarian, and organizer who changed how communities respond to suffering.

Who is a woman innovator in health you think more people should know?

07/24/2026

Dr. Helen Taussig’s story reminds us that innovation often begins with refusing to accept that a devastating condition is simply “untreatable.”

In the 1940s, babies born with certain congenital heart defects — often called “blue babies” because their blood lacked enough oxygen — had few options. Many were not expected to survive.

Taussig saw something different.

As a pediatric cardiologist, she recognized that these children did not just need comfort. They needed a new surgical possibility. Her insights helped lead to the development of the operation that improved blood flow to the lungs and gave children with congenital heart disease a chance to live longer, fuller lives.

Her work helped launch the field of pediatric cardiology and changed how medicine approached children once considered beyond help.

For this week’s Fix-It Friday, we honor Dr. Helen Taussig — a physician whose vision helped prove that children deserve bold innovation, serious investment, and every possible chance at life.

Who is a woman innovator in health you think more people should know?

07/19/2026

Some innovators become household names. Others change the world before the world learns their names.

Dr. Gladys West is one of those innovators.

A pioneering mathematician and one of the “Hidden Figures” of American innovation, Dr. West’s work helped make modern GPS technology possible. Her contributions to mathematical modeling, satellite technology, and ocean mapping shaped systems that millions of people rely on every day.

NCWI is proud to bring her story to Denver through our special traveling exhibit, now on display at Auraria Library on the CU Denver campus.

📍 Location: Auraria Library, northwest stairwell, 2nd floor
🗓️ On view: Through September 2026

We are grateful to Trimble for making this exhibition possible and helping share Dr. West’s legacy with new audiences.

Denver friends, we invite you to visit and help make sure her story is seen, known, and celebrated.

07/17/2026

Mary Engle Pennington’s story reminds us that some of the most important health innovations happen before anyone reaches a hospital.

At a time when unsafe food storage and transportation could make families sick, Pennington focused on a problem hiding in plain sight: how do we keep everyday food safe from farm to table?

Her answer helped shape the modern cold chain.

Through her work in food chemistry, refrigeration, and public health standards, Pennington advanced safer ways to store and transport milk, eggs, poultry, and other perishables.

Her work helped transform food safety into a public health priority — proving that innovation in health is not limited to medicine, surgery, or pharmaceuticals. Sometimes, it is the invisible infrastructure that protects millions of people every day.

For this week’s Fix-It Friday, we honor Mary Engle Pennington — a scientist and public health innovator whose work helped make the food on our tables safer.

What everyday health innovation do you think more people should know about?

Address

215 N Payne Street STE 33049
Alexandria, VA
22314

Telephone

+17576569870

Website

http://www.womensinnovations.org/

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