Helen Thomas

The legendary journalist Helen Thomas holds the honorific title of dean of the White House press corps, and in February 2009, President Barack Obama became the 10th president to call on her at a White House news conference. Thomas, who has now been restored to a front row seat in the press room, is well known for her intrepid questions and her signature "Thank you, Mr. President," signaling the close of press conferences. White House bureau chief for United Press International (UPI) and a columnist for Hearst News Service, Helen Thomas was the first female officer of the National Press Club, the first female member and female president of the White House Correspondents Association, and the first woman member of the Gridiron Club. She has written four books, including Thanks for the Memories Mr. President: Wit and Wisdom from the Front Row at the White House, Front Row at the White House: My Life and Times, and most recently, Watchdogs of Democracy (2006).

Brad Cohen

As a child with Tourette Syndrome, Brad Cohen was ridiculed, beaten, and shunned. As an adult, he has responded to the challenge of Tourette Syndrome by living life to its fullest. With a bachelor's and master's degree in elementary and early childhood education, Cohen has been a highly respected teacher near Atlanta, Georgia for 13 years. He not only teaches reading, math and computers, but he also teaches his students and colleagues how to accept people who are different. He was given Georgia's First Class Teacher of the Year Award, in recognition of his service as an outstanding teacher and positive role model. In December 2008, Brad Cohen's story was featured in a Hallmark Hall of Fame movie based on his inspirational book Front of the Class: How Tourette Syndrome Made Me the Teacher I Never Had."

What Everyone Should Know About Tourette Syndrome

Julia Bolz

Julia Bolz is an award-winning Madison native and social justice activist who left a successful legal career to engage, educate and empower the poor in one of the world's most oppressed and impoverished regions. Just months after 9-11, Bolz launched Journey with an Afghan School, a grassroots project organized to build schools for children in Afghanistan. With funds raised across America, she and her teammates have built and repaired dozens of schools, supplied them with textbooks, libraries and athletic equipment, and provided teacher training. In addition to building the schools, which now serve about 25,000 students, mostly girls, Julia Bolz is also committed to building relationships between Afghans and Americans and to demonstrating how each of us can make a difference.

Jacki Lyden

As a longtime senior correspondent for National Public Radio, Jacki Lyden is a familiar and respected voice. Her interviewees include significant world leaders as well as intriguing individuals from all walks of life. Less well known to most of her listeners is her life off the air. Although she has traveled around the world as a foreign correspondent, Lyden's childhood was spent in Menomenee, Wisconsin. In her critically acclaimed 1997 memoir Daughter of the Queen of Sheba, Lyden describes her unpredictable childhood in a small town with a mother who suffered from manic-depression. Jacki Lyden's many honors include the National Mental Health Award Grand Prize for her investigative reporting about Montana's mental health system. Her stories ultimately led to separation of the state's prison and mental health systems.

Dr. Timothy Cordes

Valedictorian of his class at the University of Notre Dame, Timothy Cordes went on to earn a Ph.D. in biomolecular chemistry and an M.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is the first blind person ever to earn these dual degrees and among a handful of visually impaired physicians. As part of his graduate work, Dr. Cordes wrote computer software that now allows blind individuals to study protein structures using musical tones. He is currently training to be a psychiatrist in a residency program at the UW-Madison. In addition to his academic pursuits, Dr. Cordes has carried the Olympic torch and earned black belts in jujitsu and tae kwon do, while still making time to be a husband and father.