The Colorado Women's Hall of Fame is a non-profit, volunteer organization that recognizes women who have contributed to the history of the U.S. state of Colorado. As of 2020, 170 women have been inducted.
The Connecticut Women's Hall of Fame (CWHF) recognizes women natives or residents of the U.S. state of Connecticut for their significant achievements or statewide contributions.
The Arizona Women's Hall of Fame recognizes women natives or residents of the U.S. state of Arizona for their significant achievements or statewide contributions. In 1979, the office of Governor Bruce Babbitt worked with the Arizona Women's Commission to create the Hall of Fame. The first inductees were in October 1981. During its first decade, the Hall of Fame was overseen by the Arizona Historical Society and the Arizona Department of Library, Archives and Public Records. A steering committee would each year select a varying number of women to be inducted. The 1991 inclusion of Planned Parenthood creator Margaret Sanger resulted in disapproval being heard from some in the Arizona Legislature, and funding dried up. With the lone exception of María Urquides in 1994, there were no Hall of Fame inductees for over a decade. Inductions finally resumed in 2002, when the Hall of Fame has only inducted new honorees every two years. The award returned to being annual in 2018.
Judy Ayotte Paradis is an American politician from Maine. From 1986 to 1994, she represented Madawaska, Maine while serving in the Maine Legislature as a member of the Maine House of Representatives (1986-1992) and the Maine Senate (1992-1994). In 1991, she won the Toll Fellowship from the National Council of State Legislatures.
Eloise A. Vitelli is the majority leader of the Maine Senate. She is a Democrat representing Senate District 24, which serves all of Sagadahoc County and the adjacent town of Dresden, Maine in Lincoln County. Vitelli was first elected to the Maine Senate in a 2013 special election, but lost her re-election bid in 2014. She was re-elected in 2016, 2018, 2020, and 2022. Vitelli began working as an entrepreneurship trainer in the early 1980s and was the director of program and policy for New Ventures Maine for 38 years. She became the Assistant Senate Majority Leader in December 2020, and Majority Leader in February 2021.
Shenna Lee Bellows is an American politician and a non-profit executive director. On December 2, 2020, the Maine Legislature elected her to serve as the 50th Maine secretary of state. She was executive director of the Holocaust and Human Rights Center of Maine between 2018 and 2020, and she served as the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Maine between 2005 and 2013.
Patricia M. Collins was an American civic leader and politician who served as the mayor of Caribou, Maine from 1981 to 1982. She has chaired numerous local and state boards and organizations, including the Caribou School Board, the Maine Committee for Judicial Responsibility and Disability, Catholic Charities Maine, and the University of Maine Board of Trustees. She was inducted into the Maine Women's Hall of Fame in 2005.
Gilda E. Nardone is an American women's employment advocate and nonprofit director. She is the executive director of New Ventures Maine, a career counseling and employment development program for middle-aged and older women who have been thrust into the role of family breadwinner due to the death or disability of a spouse, divorce, or separation. Nardone has been one of the directors of the organization, headquartered at the University of Maine at Augusta, since its inception as the Maine Displaced Homemakers Program in 1978. She was inducted into the Maine Women's Hall of Fame in 1991.
Laurie Gagnon Lachance is an American economist and college administrator. Since 2012, she has been the president of Thomas College in Waterville, Maine, and is the first woman to fill that post. She was previously the first woman Maine State Economist and the first woman president of the Maine Development Foundation. She was inducted into the Maine Women's Hall of Fame in 2014.
Thelma Cowey Swain was an American philanthropist. She contributed significant funds to non-profit organizations in Maine and also established scholarships at Middlebury College, Tufts University, and at each of the seven colleges of the Maine Community College System. In 2010, her estate bequeathed $1 million to The Foundation for Maine's Community Colleges. She was posthumously inducted into the Maine Women's Hall of Fame in 2010.
Mabel Antoinette Sine Wadsworth was an American birth control activist and women's health educator. Influenced by the work of Margaret Sanger, she organized door to door campaigns in rural Maine in the 1950s and 1960s to teach women about birth control. In the 1960s she established and directed the state's first family planning program which provided contraceptive services, and helped found the Maine Family Planning Association in 1971, serving as its first president. In 1984 she supported the establishment and naming of the Mabel Wadsworth Women's Health Center in Bangor, Maine, a private, non-profit, feminist health center. Wadsworth was in the first class of inductees to the Maine Women's Hall of Fame in March 1990.
Caroline Doris Gentile was an American academic and physical education instructor. The longest-serving faculty member of the University of Maine at Presque Isle, she joined the staff in 1946 and developed the curriculum for the physical education department. She continued as a classroom instructor until her retirement in 2005. She also made the largest-ever gift to the university, a $500,000 donation toward the establishment of a health and physical education complex which was named in her honor. She was inducted into the Maine Women's Hall of Fame in 2000 and the Maine Sports Legends Hall of Honors in 2003.
Patricia E. "Pat" Ryan is a human rights and women's rights advocate. She served as executive director of the Maine Human Rights Commission, a state agency tasked with enforcement of Maine's anti-discrimination laws, for over three decades. Prior to that, she chaired the Maine Commission for Women and the Maine State Personnel Board. She was a co-founder of the Maine Women's Lobby. She was inducted into the Maine Women's Hall of Fame in 2014.
Ethel "Billie" Wilson Gammon was an American educator and living history museum founder and director. In 1974 she founded the Washburn-Norlands Living History Center on the former estate of Israel Washburn in Livermore, Maine, and served as its volunteer executive director until 1991. Her educational and outreach programs brought 40,000 visitors to the site annually by the end of the twentieth century. She was inducted into the Maine Women's Hall of Fame in 1997.
Esther Elizabeth Wood was an American historian, educator, writer, and journalist. She taught history and social science at Gorham State Teachers College for 43 years. After her retirement, she wrote four books, a newspaper column, and numerous articles describing the history of Blue Hill, Maine, where her family had lived for generations, achieving local celebrity as the "town historian". She was inducted into the Maine Women's Hall of Fame in 1994.
Ruth L. Lockhart is an American women's health advocate, women's rights activist, AIDS educator, and feminist. She is a co-founder of Mabel Wadsworth Women's Health Center, was its executive director in Bangor, Maine, from 1992 to 2015, and previously worked in health education and AIDS education for the City of Bangor and the University of Maine. She was inducted into the Maine Women's Hall of Fame in 2012.
Sharon E. Barker was a Canadian-American women's rights activist, women's health advocate, and feminist. She was the founding director of the Women's Resource Center at the University of Maine and one of the founders and first president of the Mabel Sine Wadsworth Women's Health Center in Bangor. For over 30 years she advocated for women and girls in the areas of health care, gender equality, sexual assault, and reproductive rights. She was inducted into the Maine Women's Hall of Fame in 2009.
Ellen Frances Golden is an American nonprofit executive specializing in micro-enterprise and women's business development. She was senior vice president of Coastal Enterprises, Inc. of Wiscasset, Maine, where she directed the Women's Business Center and CEI Investment Notes. She has testified before congressional committees on women's entrepreneurship and micro-enterprise development, and has sat on the boards of policy-making groups in these fields. She was inducted into the Maine Women's Hall of Fame in 2015.
Linda Smith Dyer was an American lawyer, lobbyist, and women's rights activist. After a two-decade legal career, she entered public service as deputy commissioner of the Maine Department of Agriculture. She co-founded the Maine Women's Lobby and was active in the effort to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment in Maine. A member on numerous boards and committees, she was a past president of the Maine State Bar Association and the Family Planning Association of Maine. She was inducted into the Maine Women's Hall of Fame in 2001, a few months before her death.
Laura A. Fortman is an American government employee, non-profit executive, and women's rights activist. Since 2013 she has served as deputy administrator of the Wage and Hour Division at the United States Department of Labor in Washington, D.C. Previously she was commissioner of the Maine Department of Labor, and executive director of the Frances Perkins Center, the Maine Women's Lobby, and the Sexual Assault Crisis and Support Center of Augusta. She was inducted into the Maine Women's Hall of Fame in 2007.
