2025 Women of Achievement Named

At Convention 2025, NJSFWC President Barbara McCloskey and Dean of Douglass College Dr. Meghan Rehbein, announced the five “Women of Achievement” for 2025. They are:

• Lisa J. Hou, D.O., Major General, Director – Joint Surgeon General, National Guard Bureau, Washington DC
• Tyrese Gould Jacinto, President and CEO – Native American Advancement Corp.
• Virginia “Ginnie” Newman Littell, Founder/Chair – Ginnie’s House, Sussex County Child Advocacy Center; Chair – St. Clare’s Hospital System
• Margaret “Jill” McDonald, Retired RN; Community Volunteer Extraordinaire
• Elena Anastasiou Rossi, Board President – NJ Folk Festival; Reunion Chair of Associate Alumnae of Douglass College (AADC)

Click here to read Women of Achievement 2025 bios.

About WOA

The New Jersey Women of Achievement Awards were initiated in 1981 and are co-sponsored by New Jersey State Federation of Women’s Clubs and Douglass Residential College of Rutgers, The State University.

The Awards represent an opportunity to acknowledge and reflect upon the extraordinary accomplishments of New Jersey Women and the impact these women have made on the lifestyle of our state. Since 1981, more than 150 women from across the state who have made a tremendous contribution to their communities through their professional activities and their volunteer work have been honored. The briefest list representing their activities would show them to have been leaders:

• In politics and in the public sphere of New Jersey
• In non-profit agencies and in volunteer work – making the communities in which we live a better places for all residents
• In the corporate world – opening the doors of the “executive suite”
• In the scientific community – holding open the laboratory doors for women
• In the communication’s world – where the public’s image of women is shaped
• In our schools – nurturing and educating children, and
• In the home – where women traditionally have both excelled as homemakers and have been especially vulnerable when displaced

To be eligible for this honor, each nominee must be a woman who has gained visibility in New Jersey for her distinguished service and outstanding accomplishments. Some past recipients of this prestigious award include; Millicent Fenwick (1982), Mary Higgins Clark (1985), Jeanne Marie Fox (1987), Joyce Carol Oates (1989), Jeannine LaRue (1994), Virginia A. Long (2001), Carole Sampson-Landers M.D. (2002), Loretta Weinberg (2004), Amy B. Mansue (2007) and Suzann Bresler Goldstein (2015).