In January, we're celebrating the birthdays of the following women trailblazers and leaders:

• Betsy Ross, seamstress who is credited with making the first American flag (January 1)

• Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander, first Black woman to practice law in Pennsylvania (January 2)

• Juanita Jackson Mitchell, first Black woman to practice law in Maryland (January 2)

• Lucretia Mott, suffragist and abolitionist who helped organize the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention (January 3)

• Zora Neale Hurston, author of Their Eyes Were Watching God (January 7)

• Fanny Bullock Workman, explorer and writer who was one of the first professional women mountaineers (January 8)

• Betsy DeVos, 11th U.S. secretary of education (January 8)

• Carrie Chapman Catt, suffragist leader who founded the League of Women Voters (January 9)

• Alice Paul, suffragist, abolitionist, and one of the leaders of the American women's suffrage movement (January 11)

• Charlotte Ray, suffragist and the first Black woman lawyer in the United States (January 13)

• Edith Green, politician who represented Oregon in the House of Representatives and helped pass the 1972 Equal Opportunity in Education Act ("Title IX") (January 17)

• Ava Belmont, American suffragist who co-founded the National Woman's Party and served as its president (January 17)

• Michelle Obama, a lawyer who became the first Black First Lady of the United States when her husband became president (January 17)

• Kay Granger, politician who was the first Republican woman to represent Texas in the House of Representatives (January 18)

• Dolly Parton, singer and humanitarian whose children literacy nonprofit program has donated more than 100 million books to children (January 19)

• Nimrata "Nikki" Haley, politician who served as South Carolina's first woman governor and as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations (January 20)

• Bessie Coleman, the first Black woman to obtain a pilot license (January 26)

• Georgia Neese Clark Gray, first woman Treasurer of the United States (January 27)

• Jeanne Shaheen, politician who was the first woman to represent New Hampshire in the United States Senate, the first woman elected governor of New Hampshire, and the first woman to win elections for both governor and U.S. Senator (January 28)

• Muna Lee, writer, feminist, and activist (January 29)

• Oprah Winfrey, talk show host and philanthropist who was at one point ranked the most influential woman in the world (January 29)