Meet Sargeant Major Teresa King.  She's the first woman ever to be named Commandant of the Army's elite training school for drill sargeants.  

As is always the case with pioneers -- regardless of their gender or ethnic background -- the ones to break the barriers need to be the Cream of the Crop.   Sargeant King drives a black corvette and scored a perfect 300 on her most recent physical training test.   

Click here for the NY Times profile on one impressive soldier!  

Can't wait to see the new Amelia movie, in which Hillary Swank plays American aviator Amelia Earhart.   I'm noticing a pattern here in the roles that Academy Award winner Swank is choosing.   She won her academy award for her role as a female boxer in Clint Eastwood's  Million Dollar Baby.  She also stars in one of my all-time favorite movies:  Iron Jawed Angels, in which she brings Alice Paul leaping out of the history books.   Paul  was the college-educated suffragette who finished (and won!) the fight Susan B. Anthony had started over 50 years earlier:  the right for American women to vote.

And now, she brings us another tremendous example of an American shero.    "A Different Kind of Chick Flick" is how Dan Glickman, CEO of the American Motion Pictures Association describes it.  I like that!   I'm taking my 17-year old son to see Amelia.  He really liked Iron-Jawed Angels, by the way.

We're going through wrenching, agonizing cuts of funding for our public schools as Michigan wrestles with a demoralizing budget crisis.  When you're hung up on the grim details right in front of your nose, it's hard to take a big picture look.  That's why I loved Tom Friedman's column today on positioning ourselves -- and the next generation -- for better days ahead.   Here's his insight on what he calls:  The New Untouchables.

Maria Shriver's uncle, President John F. Kennedy, stirred a nation with his call for the torch of leadership to be passed to a "new generation."  Today, over four decades later, she has become a a forceful voice and catalyst for women to pick up the torch.   Perhaps you've been watching Shriver on THE TODAY SHOW all this week as they focus on how the U.S. -- long a "man's world" -- is becoming a woman's nation.   And, the implications of that seismic cultural change for men, our families and our entire culture.  Perhaps you've seen this week's TIME Magazine, with its cover story and Special Report on The State of American Women.   Shriver's hand was behind that, as well.  The trigger for all the recent national media coverage on this issue is a groundbreaking study:  THE SHRIVER REPORT:  A Woman's Nation Changes Everything.  Just released, the comprehensive study was done by the Center for American Progress. 

It's loaded with fresh facts and fascinating insights.  It is a powerful resource and trigger for the work that lies ahead -- the next chapters of what Shriver calls The Unfinished Revolution.   The battle of the sexes, reportedly, is over.  It's all about the genders negotiating how to work together for stronger families, more effective companies and public institutions and a culture that taps the power and potential of all of its citizens.  My favorite quote came from a man who put it like this, "We haven't thrown some switch to go from a man's world to a woman's world.  It's more like we're finally, for the first time, in a position where it's no longer only a man's world.  Now what does that mean?"

Click here for:  The Shriver Report:  A Woman's Nation Changes Everything. 

I'm delighted to see the new General Motors take a significant step in a new direction:  they've just named Susan Docherty, a 46-year-old sales executive with deep global and operational experience, Vice President of U.S. Sales.  Never before in GM's 101-year history has a woman held this key spot.   Here's more in this morning's Detroit Free Press. 

It's about time.  One of the Achilles Heels of the auto industry for decades has been that their senior leadership has not reflected the marketplace.   Early reports show the 2010 U.S. Census will confirm that our nation of nearly 300 million people has become a complex, multi-cultural, multi-generational market -- with no such thing anymore as "the average Joe.  Advertising Age commissioned Ogilvy & Mather advertising to do a white paper on the topic.  And another thing:   for the first time we now have a RECORD 70 Million grandparents in this country.  That number is growing and they are deeply involved with financial decisions for their children as well as their grandchildren.    For example, increasingly grandparents are footing the bill for private schools or college.  So, naturally they have their opinions!   Here's a link to the fascinating results.