The women are ice-skating scientists, models-slash-engineers, published authors who happen to be D1 athletes, Rhodes Scholars, and small business owners. They are first-generation Americans, first-generation college students, future Ph.D.s, airline pilots, public servants, educators, and mentors. They have stared greed and power in the face and won. They have demanded more—more accountability from institutions, more truth-telling in the media, more humanity in systems that seek to treat humans like objects. They have taken up space and used it well in a world that was built by and for men.
Glamour’s 2020 College Women of the Year are coming of age in a world bubbling over with sickness, racism, inequity, and environmental devastation. And yet each one has made extraordinary efforts to clean up their share—and then some.