Advocates of Human Rights

As an international film star, Audrey Hepburn (1929-1993) personified chic, cosmopolitan elegance, but she spent the last decades of her life traveling to the corners of the earth most afflicted by poverty, hunger and disease. Born in Belgium to a Dutch mother and a British father, she grew up in the Netherlands during the German occupation, and her memory of the hunger and deprivation of those years motivated her later efforts as a champion of the world's children. She received the Best Actress Oscar for her first appearance in an American film, Roman Holiday. After a dazzling career as the star of films such as Sabrina, Breakfast at Tiffany's and My Fair Lady, she traveled the world as Goodwill Ambassador for UNICEF, the United Nations Children's Emergency Fund. In 1991, she addressed the Academy of Achievement at the United Nations, where she shared her views on the responsibility of service to the world's children.

The arrival of Wynton Marsalis on the music scene in 1982 could not have been more unexpected. Barely out of his teens, this trumpet prodigy from New Orleans recorded jazz and classical music with seemingly equal facility. Even more startling was his dedication to a self-defined mission to restore jazz music to a central place in American life, and with it, the values he believes jazz embodies: freedom and discipline, romance and responsibility, pride and respect for both the African and the European components of our musical heritage.

In the following decade, Wynton Marsalis almost single-handedly initiated a revival of interest in mainstream jazz tradition among young musicians. In 1987 he co-founded Jazz at Lincoln Center to sponsor jazz performance and educational programs at New York's premier performing arts center. In addition to his busy schedule of composing and performing, Marsalis produces music education programs for public radio and television. His four-part, Peabody Award-winning TV series "Marsalis on Music," introduces young viewers to the adventure of making music. In 1997, he became the first jazz musician to win the Pulitzer Prize in Music, for his epic oratorio on the subject of slavery, "Blood on the Fields."

Wynton Marsalis continues to compose, to tour, and to bring his message to a new generation as Artistic Director of Jazz at Lincoln Center and leader of the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra. When Hurricane Katrina devastated his native city in 2005, Marsalis swung into action, organizing benefit concerts in both New York and New Orleans to raise money for relief and reconstruction efforts. Beyond his achievements as an artist, Wynton Marsalis has matured into a public figure of courage and conviction.

He spoke to students at the 1990 Academy of Achievement Summit in Chicago.

Herman Wouk left a successful career as a radio comedy writer to enlist in the United States Navy after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. He served as an officer throughout the war in the Pacific. While serving in the reserves after the war, he wrote his celebrated novel, The Caine Mutiny. The book ruled the best seller lists for a year and won him the 1952 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Wouk adapted it successfully for the stage as The Caine Mutiny Court Martial in 1954 and a successful film version appeared the same year. To date, he has written over a dozen novels, along with plays and non-fiction works on Judaism and Jewish history. Wouk spent nearly 16 years writing two monumental novels following a pair of fictional families through the actual events of World War II and the Holocaust -- The Winds of War and War and Remembrance. Exhaustively researched, the books were praised by historians and loved by readers. When they were brought to the home screen in mini-series format, they were the most elaborate films ever made for television.

Ambassador Sol Myron Linowitz (December 7, 1913 �Ŭ March 18, 2005) was a Senior Partner of the international law firm Coudert Brothers in Washington, D.C. Linowitz emerged from an immigrant Jewish household during the Great Depression to become a Phi Beta Kappa college graduate who earned his law degree from Cornell in 1938, where he was first in his class. He rose to the Chairmanship of Xerox Corporation in its early days of spectacular growth. By 1966, the little company had become one of the 12 largest corporations in the United States with $4.5 billion in market value. Sol Linowitz went on to accept President Lyndon Johnson's appointment as the U.S. Ambassador to the Organization of American States. In 1976, he was appointed by President Jimmy Carter as Co-Negotiator of the Panama Canal Treaties, and then became the Personal Representative of the President for Middle East Negotiations from 1979 to 1981. Ambassador Linowitz was also Co-Chairman of the National Urban Coalition and served on innumerable corporate and university boards. He wrote two books, "The Making of a Public Man: A Memoir" and "The Betrayed Profession." Sol Linowitz, a forceful advocate for legal ethics, was awarded more than 35 honorary degrees, and, in 1998, received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Bill Clinton, the nation's highest civilian honor. Ambassador Sol M. Linowitz participated in the 1985 Achievement Summit and spoke to the student delegates about the personal satisfaction he received from serving his country.

Mother Antonia, or Madre Antonia as she is known in Spanish, is an American-born Roman Catholic nun and activist, who resides in a Mexican maximum security prison. Born as Mary Clarke in 1926, she has lived for the past three decades in a 10�Ŵ x 10�Ŵ concrete cell at La Mesa penitentiary in Tijuana, Mexico, one of Mexico�Ŵs most notorious prisons, caring for the inmates. In the 1970s, she chose to devote her life to the Church after she had a nightmare, in 1969, that she was a prisoner at Calvary and about to be executed when Jesus appeared to her and offered to take her place. She refused his offer, touched him on the cheek and told him she would never leave him, no matter what happens to her. She had been married twice and had seven children, living in affluent Beverly Hills, but both her marriages ended in divorce. As an older, divorced woman, Clarke was banned by church rules from joining any religious order, so she went about her work on her own. She sold her home and all her possessions, and founded an order for those in her situation in life: the Servants of the Eleventh Hour. Sister Antonia provides not only spiritual guidance to the guards and inmates, but she also helps with basic material comforts such as blankets, toiletries and medicines. The church has since blessed her mission and in 2009, she received the Peace Abby Courage of Conscience Award. She is profiled in the book �źThe Prison Angel�Ź written by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists Mary Jordan and Kevin Sullivan. Sister Antonia condemns crime, but loves the sinners and the victims. Her love and guidance have made a difference at the prison and, as a result, many who were imprisoned there have sought a better life. Mother Antonia Brenner participated in the 1983 Achievement Summit at Coronado, California, nearby the prison in Tijuana, Mexico, and spoke to the Academy student delegates about her inspiring ministry of caring for, and living with, the poorest prisoners in one of Mexico�Ŵs most dangerous and squalid jails.