We introduce to you our marvelous Team who adds quality and expertise to Women of Courage.

AdlandPro's very own Women of Courage:

LaNell  http://community.adlandpro.com/go/44064/default.aspx

Carla Cash
http://community.adlandpro.com/go/245569/default.aspx

Pauline Raina           http://community.adlandpro.com/go/301079/default.aspx

Branka Babic  http://community.adlandpro.com/go/BrankaBabic/default.aspx

Our very own Man of Courage

Georgios Paraskevopoulos  http://community.adlandpro.com/go/Genesis/default.aspx

Our Sweethearts of Courage

Shirley Caron http://community.adlandpro.com/go/scaronpoet2005/default.aspx

Michael Caron        http://community.adlandpro.com/go/192260/default.aspx

Businesswoman, Humanitarian, Activist. 

I present to you.

Anita Roddick

October 23, 1942 - September 10, 2007

 Anita Roddick, was a crusading entrepreneur who used the Body Shop chain of cosmetics stores she founded to promote causes like ending animal testing and supporting the environment.

A woman of fierce passions, boundless energy, unconventional idealism and sometimes diva-like temperament, Ms. Roddick was one of Britain’s most visible business executives, and not just because of the ubiquitous and instantly recognizable Body Shop franchises. Working on behalf of numerous causes — the rain forest, debt relief for developing countries, indigenous farmers in impoverished nations, whales, voting rights, anti-sexism and anti-ageism, to name a few — Ms. Roddick believed that businesses could be run ethically, with what she called “moral leadership,” and still turn a profit.

At times, her anti-establishment philosophy seemed to clash with her stature as a successful businesswoman. She joined the front lines of protesters at the World Trade Organization talks in Seattle in 1999, for instance.

Anita did more than run a successful ethical business: she was a pioneer of the whole concept of ethical and green consumerism. There are quite a few business people today who claim green credentials, but none can come anywhere near Anita in terms of commitment and credibility.

Anita Lucia Perilli was born in Littlehampton, England, in 1942, to Italian immigrants who ran a cafe and who put their four children to work there after school and on weekends.

Ms. Roddick worked for a time as a secondary school teacher and then quit to travel to Tahiti, Australia and South Africa, among other places, where she absorbed customs and ideas she would later apply to the Body Shop.  “When you’ve lived for six months with a group that is rubbing their bodies with cocoa butter, and those bodies are magnificent, or if you wash your hair with mud, and it works, you go on to break all sorts of conventions, from personal ethics to body care,” she once said.

She married Gordon Roddick, a Scottish poet, in 1970. When her husband later announced that he wanted to fulfill his dream of traveling on horseback from Buenos Aires to New York (and that, by the way, it might take a couple of years), Ms. Roddick took out a modest loan and in 1976 opened the Body Shop.  It proved an unexpected success and the business began to grow. Within 15 years, Body Shop stores had blanketed Britain and moved beyond, eventually numbering more than 2,000 in about 50 countries.

Ms. Roddick, who rejected conventional marketing, used her stores to spread her philosophy and promote causes, while urging franchise owners and customers to do the same.

In 1990, she helped establish the magazine The Big Issue, produced and sold by homeless people. She also set up Children on the Edge, a charity for children in Europe and Asia.

Prior to her death, she campaigned to raise awareness of hepatitis C, which she contracted from a blood transfusion while giving birth to her younger daughter.

The Body Shop went public in the mid-1990s, and although the company was sold to the French cosmetics giant L’Oréal, the Roddicks remained on as nonexecutive directors.

In 2003, Ms. Roddick was made a Dame of the British Empire.

On December 13, 2005, the National Post reported that Anita Roddick had decided to turn her back on the world of commerce and give away her fortune, worth some £51 million ($104 million).

Dame Anita Roddick was a close friend of the Littlehampton Community School. In 2003, it successfully applied to become a Business and Enterprise specialist school. Much of the money that was required was donated by Anita Roddick. As a result of this donation, a new building that was built with this money was named 'The Roddick Enterprise Centre' (normally abbreviated to 'REC'). The Littlehampton College also hosts 'Roddick Days' such as 'Day of Action' and 'One World'; these events allow students to give something back to their local community and learn about what is happening around them.

The school is currently planning a future academy to be built. Following the death of Dame Anita Roddick, it was widely suggested that any future academy should be given her name in memory of the local entrepreneur.

Ms. Roddick received the following awards during her lifetime.

• 1984 - Veuve Clicquot Business Woman of the Year
• 1988 - Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE)
• 1988 - Honorary Doctorate from the University of Sussex
• 1991 - Center for World Development Education's World Vision Award, USA
• 1993 - Banksia Foundation's Australia Environmental Award
• 1993 - Mexican Environmental Achiever Award
• 1993 - National Audubon Society Medal, USA
• 1994 - Botwinick Prize in Business Ethics, USA
• 1994 - University of Michigan's Annual Business Leadership Award, USA
• 1995 - Women's Business Development Center's First Annual Woman Power Award, USA
• 1996 - Women's Center's Leadership Award, USA
• 1996 - The Gleitsman Foundation's Award of Achievement, USA
• 1997 - United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), Honouree, Eyes on the Environment
• 1999 - British Environment & Media Award
• 1999 - Chief Wiper-Away of Ogoni Tears, Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People, Nigeria
• 2001 - International Peace Prayer Day Organisation's Woman of Peace
• 2003 - Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE)
• 2004 - Honorary Doctorate of Public Service, The Sage Colleges

Complied from Wikipedia and the New York Times