March is Women’s History Month, and Cambridge in America pays tribute to University of Cambridge women who challenged the status quo in the past and who are changing the course of history now.
We celebrate Gates Cambridge Scholar Emily Kassie (St John’s 2016), an Oscar nominated filmmaker and investigative journalist from Canada. She studied at Brown University and was awarded the Gates Scholarship to the University of Cambridge where she completed her masters. She is one of eight recipients of the Gates Cambridge Impact Prize, created to commemorate Gates Cambridge's 25th anniversary in 2025.
Her feature documentary Sugarcane, directed alongside Julian Brave NoiseCat, follows an investigation into abuses at a former Indian residential school. Sugarcane, on which Kassie also served as a producer and cinematographer, premiered at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival where it won the Directing Award for Documentary. The film was also nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary. Sugarcane garnered over 30 international awards, including the National Board of Review award for best documentary, a Cinema Eye award and two Critics Choice awards as well as Director’s Guild and Indie Spirit award nominations. Read more.
We celebrate Gloria Claire Carpenter (Girton 1945), a Jamaican barrister, educationist, and social reformer. She is among the first Black women to study at the University of Cambridge. Born in Jamaica, she was educated at Wolmer's School and St Hilda's Diocesan High School, before moving to England in 1936, where she attended Mary Datchelor School in London. She returned to Jamaica when World War II made it hard to study for the bar at the London Inns of Court.
She continued to study for the bar at the University of Toronto, under wartime regulations allowing Caribbean students to study for the bar there. She went on to study law at Girton College in 1945. At Cambridge she met the future economist George Cumper, and they married in the late 1940s. Called to the bar from the Middle Temple on June 18, 1947, she was admitted to practice in Jamaica on July 17, 1948. That same year she was appointed a Resident Tutor at the new University of the West Indies in Jamaica, where she helped found the Law Department there. Gloria's life was celebrated in a biographical novel, “One Bright Child” (1998), by her daughter, the playwright Patricia Cumper. Her papers are held in Jamaica at the University of the West Indies, Mona. Read more.
We celebrate Arianna Huffington (Girton 1968), a Greek-American author and entrepreneur. Arianna studied economics at Girton College. While at Cambridge, she also became president of the famed debating society, the Cambridge Union, which ultimately led to her career as an author, producing many articles for The National Review. Arianna is the co-founder of the Huffington Post, which became the first commercially run United States digital media enterprise to win a Pulitzer Prize.
She is the author of fifteen books. Her last two books, Thrive: The Third Metric to Redefining Success and Creating a Life of Well-Being, Wisdom, and Wonder and The Sleep Revolution: Transforming Your Life, One Night at a Time, both became international bestsellers. She stepped down from her role at The Huffington Post in August 2016 to focus on a new startup, Thrive Global, a behavior change technology company with the mission of improving productivity and health outcomes. Read more.
We celebrate U.S. Representative Yassamin Ansari (St John's 2016), an American politician and climate policy expert currently serving as the U.S. Representative for Arizona's 3rd Congressional District.
Born on April 7, 1992, in Seattle, Washington, she is the daughter of Iranian immigrants and was raised in Scottsdale, Arizona. Ansari holds a bachelor's degree in international relations from Stanford University and a master's degree in international relations and politics from the University of Cambridge.
Ansari announced her candidacy for Arizona's 3rd Congressional District in April 2023 and won the Democratic primary by a narrow margin. She was elected to Congress in November 2024, taking office on January 3, 2025. At 32, she is the youngest woman serving in Congress and the first Iranian American Democrat in Congress. She was also elected as the Democratic freshman class president. Read more.
To learn more about Women's History in Cambridge, visit https://www.cam.ac.uk/topics/International-Women%27s-Day