National NOW Awardees
2024 Victoria J. Mastrobuono Award in Women’s Health – Dr. Marlena Fejzo
A deserving recipient of NOW Foundation’s Victoria L. Mastrobuono’s Award in Women’s Health, Dr. Marlena Fejzo has led a distinguished career focused on researching health challenges most often experienced by women. In March, Dr. Fejzo was honored as one of Time’s Women of the Year and, in May, she was named one of Time’s 100 Health leaders, advancing safe pregnancy. Dr. Fejzo has made significant breakthroughs in research on Hyperemesis Gravidarum (HG – a severe form of vomiting during pregnancy), fueled by her own personal experience with the condition. She successfully identified the gene with the greatest risk factor for developing the condition and is now turning her attention to identifying potential therapeutics.
Marlena Schoenberg Fejzo is a women’s health scientist. She received her Ph.D. in Genetics from Harvard University in 1995. From 2000-2020, she worked on ovarian cancer in the Department of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles, in the laboratory of Dennis J. Slamon. Currently, she is a research faculty at the University of Southern California, Keck School of Medicine in the Center for Genetic Epidemiology.
Dr. Fejzo has published peer-reviewed scientific articles on many diseases of women including ovarian cancer, breast cancer, multiple sclerosis, and discovered the first genes for uterine fibroids, nausea and vomiting during pregnancy, and Hyperemesis Gravidarum (HG). In 2018, Fejzo, in collaboration with personal genetics company 23andMe, Inc. published the first link between the placenta, appetite, and vomiting hormones. Fejzo made the top 10 list of 2023’s Fiercest Women in Life Sciences. In December 2023, Nature published a study by Fejzo et al. that identified ways to potentially prevent and treat both nausea and vomiting in pregnancy and HG.
Fejzo is Research Director and Board Member of the Hyperemesis Education and Research (HER) Foundation, Board Member of the Foundation for Women’s Health, CSO of Harmonia Healthcare, and an advisor for NGM Bio. Dr. Fejzo is currently seeking funding opportunities and grants related to her work on Hyperemesis Gravidarum.
NOW Woman of Vision Award – Jessica Neuwirth
It had been nearly three decades since the arbitrary deadline of June 30, 1982, for ratifying the Equal Rights Amendment had passed. But the National Organization for Women decided in June 2009 to support efforts to seek three additional state ratifications as well as a possible ‘start-over’ bill in Congress for the ERA. Activists began testifying and lobbying in states which had not ratified the ERA. Beginning in 2017, that possibility seemed more realistic when over the next few years three more states: Nevada, Illinois and Virginia ratified the ERA quick succession.
If there is one person we could identify as most instrumental in sparking a renewed and broad interest in ERA’s ratification, it is Jessica Neuwirth, a lawyer and well-regarded international women’s and human rights activist. Her 2015 book, Equal Means Equal – Why the Time for the ERA is Now, laid out the important protections for women that the ERA – once in the Constitution – could provide. The need is even greater now that women have lost the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses – thanks to the devastating Dobbs’ ruling by the Supreme Court.
Jessica has a long and impressive career dedicated to equal rights. She is one of the founders and Honorary President of Equality Now, an international women’s rights organization established in 1992, and the founder and Director of Frontline Women’s Fund, an offshoot project now hosted by the Sisterhood is Global Institute to support women’s rights organizations around the world.
Jessica was a founder in 2014 of the ERA Coalition, an organization that has grown to nearly 300 organizations, including the National Organization for Women. With the help of the Fund for Women’s Equality, the coalition has energized a broad-based effort to pass legislation in Congress that would remove the deadline and declare the amendment in effect. ERA advocates say that the amendment is already in effect with the required three-fourths of the states having ratified it which is all that is required by Article V, the provision in the U.S. Constitution governing the amendment process.
Jessica received a Bachelor of Arts in History from Yale University in 1982 and a Juris Doctor from Harvard Law School in 1985. Neuwirth has worked for Amnesty International, for the Wall Street law firm of Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton, and for the United Nations Office of Legal Affairs, as well as serving as New York Director for the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. She served as a special consultant on sexual violence to the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda for its landmark Akayesu judgment holding that rape is a form of genocide, and again worked for the Rwanda Tribunal on the Media judgment holding print and radio media accountable for their role in the Rwandan genocide. She subsequently directed the legal team that drafted the judgment of the Special Court for Sierra Leone convicting former Liberian President Charles Taylor of war crimes and crimes against humanity. As a guest lecturer, Neuwirth has taught international women’s rights at Harvard Law School.
Jessica is currently Distinguished Lecturer and Rita E. Hauser Director of the Human Rights Program at Hunter College, part of the Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute, City University of New York (CUNY).
NOW Young Woman of Impact Award – Jess Vosseteig
Jess Vosseteig (Jess Voss Art) is a queer illustrator and writer born and raised in Colorado. Partnering with brands and organizations like Dr. Martens, Lush, Ulta, the Ms. Foundation for Women, Facebook/Meta, and more, her work focuses on inclusivity, empowerment, and creating conversations surrounding feminism and the queer community. Her art has been used by numerous publishing houses, including Simon & Shuster and Penguin Random House. Jess is the author of the recently released book, Affirmations for Queer People, and she has provided cover illustrations for many other popular books.
Jess loves illustrating to empower all genders, break stereotypes, and promote body positivity/neutrality. Jess wants her audience to feel seen and heard in her work, be empowered to be themselves, educate others, and push societal norms. You can find more of that unique artwork and shop at JessVossart.com and on socials @JessVoss_Art.
NOW Woman of Courage Award – Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand
Democrat Kirsten Gillibrand first served in the U.S. House from 2007 to 2009 and she has served as the junior United States senator from New York since 2009. A graduate of the UCLA School of law, Sen. Gillibrand has distinguished herself as a fearless advocate for her chosen issues.
The senator is best known to feminist activists about the work that she has done over the last decade to courageously and determinedly change military policy to better protect the tens of thousands of military personnel – women and men — victims of sexual violence. In 2018, it was reported that about 28,600 active-duty service members reported being having been the victim of a sexual assault; however, by 2021 the total had increased by 25 percent to approximately 35,900 service members. The majority of sexual assault survivors are women, but men also report being assaulted. Only a fraction of victims ever reported the incidents out of a belief that their military supervisors would not take action or that there would not be a fair process. Or worse, there would be retaliation for reporting or speaking out.
Sen. Gillibrand courageously took on the military establishment beginning in 2013 by introducing the Military Justice Reform Act which envisioned a fairer process for investigating and prosecuting claims of sexual assault. The senator had heard from servicemembers that when their own commanders were in control of the investigation and prosecution, the process often was seen as not fair. Gillibrand’s legislation proposed that trained professional military prosecutors outside of the chain of command be assigned to investigate and prosecute claims of sexual assault.
Over nearly a decade, the senators and her many supporters encountered layers of opposition – not only from military brass, but some of her Senate colleagues. Multiple hearings, intense negotiations, successive meetings with military officials and congressional colleagues were part of the long process to reach agreement on all sides. Her 2014 bill grew to become a revised Military Justice Improvement and Increasing Prevention Act which became an amendment to the FY 2023 National Defense Authorization Act. The Senator who by then became chair of the Senate Armed Services Personnel Committee. The legislation now covered 17 additional felony-offenses to the covered list and established a position of Court-Martial Convening Authority. The legislation was adopted as part of the Department of Defense spending bill.
Over the years, Sen. Gillibrand successfully pushed for the repeal of the discriminatory Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy, co-authored and passed the STOCK Act to ban insider trading by members of Congress, and passed the historic 9/11 health bill, giving long overdue support to first responders. And she continues to push for national paid family leave. Kirsten is also carrying on the fight to bring women into the political process, making it her life’s mission to help more women run for office. But her major accomplishment of reforming the military justice system to better protect survivors of sexual assault stands out and we salute her with NOW’s Woman of Courage Award.