Forbes just put out their list of the Top 10 World’s Most Powerful Women. And while I am 100 percent in support of promoting women in the workforce, especially in the corporate workforce (where most of the listed ladies are and often ladies are not recognized for), I am not 100 percent in support of what a lot of big corporations (like the ones listed) do.

And more than that, there are a ton of awesome powerful ladies using their power for good! In fact I’ve listed 10 of them below - in no particular order.

1) Michelle Bachelet - Hillary Clinton’s (a powerful woman in her own right) opening paragraph to the piece she wrote on Bachelet for Time Magazine’s 100 Influential People, says it all,

“When I heard that Michelle Bachelet a doctor who devoted her life to helping the people of Chile, a daughter who lost her father to the violent regime of Augusto Pinochet and a leader who experienced personally the brutality of dictatorship but never lost hope in the people of her nation or the promise of democracy was running for the presidency of Chile, I was enthralled.”

Bachelet went on to become the first woman president of Chile. Before that she was also the Health Minister and then Defense Minister - she was the first woman in Latin America to hold those posts. A breaker of barriers, Michelle Bachelet has used her internal power to gain actual power and inspire young girls everywhere.

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2) Oprah Winfrey - We all know Oprah, we all know that she does tons of good and inspires people daily. She has a TV show in which to reach bazillions of people and a magazine that even my Mom subscribes to. Her mere presence on TV and around the world sends the message that girls and African-Americans can do anything they put their mind to.

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3) Diane Weyermann - As the Executive Vice President, Documentary Films for Participant Media, Weyermann spends her days helping to make films that are well made, well told stories and more importantly, that can change the world. She knows that movies can be more than just powerful sources of income or beautiful moving images, they can also inspire people to get up and make the world a better place.

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4) Susan Solomon - a co-chair of the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Solomon was vital in the producing the report that has helped the world to grasp how serious global warming is. She also was on the team (along with Al Gore!) that won the Nobel Peace prize in 2007. Saving the world - now that’s power.

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5) Angelina Jolie - Anyone that can get millions of dollars to let a magazine publish pictures of her children has power. Luckily for us, Angelina Jolie uses that power for good. She has spent years working for the UN and visiting refugee camps. She has spoken and worked for numerous human rights organizations and used her celebrity to make that work and the issues that are important to her known.

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6) Katrina vanden Heuvel - As the editor and publisher of The Nation, vanden Heuvel has given America a news source that isn’t owned by a large corporation. Alternative news sources are so important and while on a ratings scale she might not have gallons of power, standing up against the big guys - the news companies that aren’t reporting on what’s really happening, takes an incredible amount of strength.

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7) Aung San Suu Kyi - Is 62 years old and has been held under arrest for 12 years in Burma. She’s a courageous human rights advocate for and is the world’s only imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize recipient. Her power inspires the people of Burma and anyone who has had to fight for what they believe in.

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8 ) Wendy Kopp - The founder of Teach for America, Kopp has been working to improve the educational system from the bottom up. She thought it would be a good idea to try to “recruit young teachers straight out of college and sign them up for a two-year hitch working in some of the country’s more disadvantaged schools. Since income too often determines where you live, and where you live too often determines whether you’ll go to a failing school or a good school, Kopp saw more than a simple problem of educational inequity at work. She saw what she considered the most important civil rights issue of her generation.” [Time]

Education is power…

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9) Alicia Keys - You gotta love Alicia. She is an amazing singer (Bond theme her she comes) and has used the celebrity she acquired through her singing to help start Keep a Child Alive, an AIDS charity devoted to children in Africa. This past year she went to Africa with KAC’s founder Leigh Blake and make a movie about it and distributed it for free.

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10) Mia Farrow - She stood up to the Olympics and has been fighting for Darfur for as long as I can remember. Also, if you can get Paul Rusesabagina( Hotel Rwanda) to say this about you, your power is endless

“She is saving people who have lost everything. People without food, without water. Children without schools, children without parents. Women who have lost their homes, women who cannot gather firewood without being raped by the janjaweed militia.

For her work on behalf of these people, for her many years of hard work as a UNICEF goodwill ambassador, for her efforts to get China and the rest of the world to stop supporting the government of Sudan and to pay attention to the genocide in Darfur, I salute her.”

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takepart with us and Diane Weyermann in using movies to help advocate change!