Dean, University of Florida’s Engineering College

Age 49. Child: Max, 11
Gainesville, Florida

Women engineers are still few and far between and there are even fewer women engineering school deans, making Cammy Abernathy all the more inspiring. She became the University of Florida’s first woman engineering dean in 2009 on the eve of the school’s 100th anniversary. Inclusivity and recruitment are central to her goals as dean. "We need to do more to recruit from pools of talent we have not done well recruiting, including women, African-Americans and Hispanics," Abernathy told students in her inaugural address. Before landing at the University of Florida, Abernathy had received her doctorate from Stanford University in California and had worked at Bell Labs in New Jersey.