To Each Her Own

By Wendy Cole

Elizabeth Watson

Police Chief

Earlier this year the mayor of Houston admitted to having some "trepidation" about appointing Elizabeth Watson as the chief of police. "I was concerned about the support she would get. I had a little experience along those lines myself," said Kathryn Whitmire, who also happens to be the city's first female mayor. But eight months after becoming the first U.S. woman to head a big-city force, Watson, 41, has shown she can hack it. She took over a department reeling from low morale caused by widespread staff reductions and paltry salaries and quickly won the force a 6% raise. Lauded as a hard worker who came up through the ranks, Watson will never forget being handed a dress pattern and told to sew her own uniform as a rookie cop 18 years ago. She went on to serve with distinction in practically every division from auto theft to the SWAT team, and insists that macho behavior in the department never bothered her. "Look where I am now. Heck, obviously I haven't been too put- upon," says Watson, who's expecting her third child in December. Her planned maternity leave: just six weeks.

Lynn Hill

Rock Climber

She has been called the First Lady of Rock, but Lynn Hill wows the crowd with graceful moves instead of music. In fact, her best licks are performed dangling from a 70-ft. sheer limestone cliff. Hill, 29, is the world's best woman rock climber. Her vertical inclination dates back to her California childhood, when she displayed an early enthusiasm for climbing walls, telephone poles and trees. Before long she graduated to scaling cliffs in the Sierra Nevadas. "I think I'm a really fortunate person, because what I'm doing for a career is also my passion," says the 5-ft. 2-in., 100-lb. Hill. Her long-term plans include finishing her book, The Art of Free Climbing, making a climbing video and designing a line of fitness togs that "bridge the gap between functional clothing for sports and leisure wear." Meanwhile, she will continue seeking new ways to defy gravity -- and sexual stereotypes.

Mathilde Krim

AIDS Activist

Ever since her stint as a gun smuggler for the Zionist underground movement in Europe during World War II, Mathilde Krim has not flinched at taking bold action. Over the past decade the New York City-based virologist has concentrated on fighting AIDS. Although her involvement began in the lab, - where she studied the effectiveness of the protein interferon in treating an AIDS-related cancer, these days Krim, 64, works mostly in the public arena as a fund raiser and lobbyist. Her mission: to replace ignorance with knowledge and compassion. As the wife of movie mogul Arthur Krim, she has also enlisted the likes of Elizabeth Taylor and Barbra Streisand. "I use my contacts because it's my duty," says Krim, who so far has raised $40 million for research. After all, she adds, the way wealthy societies deal with AIDS "will measure to what extent they have the right to call themselves civilized."

Marge Schott

Baseball Owner

Most successful people who want to give something back to their community settle for contributing money to a museum or joining the board of the town library. When Marge Schott decided to fulfill her civic duty, she invested in the local baseball team: the Cincinnati Reds. Schott, who had taken over her late husband's GM dealership, bought the club in 1984 for an estimated $11 million, and has become one of the game's highest profile owners. "It's really more than a 24-hour-a-day job," says Schott, 62. Nonetheless, she has managed to turn around the fortunes of the red-hot team, which lost $4 million the year before she came aboard. Attendance has jumped 85% during her tenure, to 2.4 million this season. An intrepid cost cutter, she canceled Riverfront Stadium fireworks displays, and signs all checks for the team herself. "Daddy always taught us it wasn't right to waste money," says the chain-smoking Schott. "When I see someone cheat for two bucks it makes me want to throw up." She was devastated by the conviction of former Reds manager Pete Rose for tax evasion, but it has not slowed her pace one whit.

Queen Latifah

Rap Artist

Rap music hasn't exactly been kind to women, portraying them mostly as malleable sex objects or manipulative money grubbers. But that hasn't stopped Queen Latifah, 20, from finding her voice amid a crowded field of sexist, street-smart men. The Newark-born singer-songwriter has been called the Aretha Franklin of rap for her creative fusing of reggae, soul and jazz. A professional rapper for five years, she sees herself as a role model for young people, and she's as committed to raising consciousness as she is to having fun. "I try to slip in a few lines about something serious. But I'm not a preacher," says Latifah, a.k.a. Dana Owens. As she chants in her hit song Latifah's Law, "BMWs and gold rope chains don't impress me, won't get you closer to the point you could undress me." The name Latifah, she notes, is Arabic for delicate and sensitive. As for calling herself Queen, "it has nothing to do with rank. I believe all black people came from a long line of kings and queens that they've never really known about." The title was simply Latifah's way of paying tribute to them.

Barbara Harris

Bishop

There seem to be fresh winds blowing across the church. Things thought to be impossible a short time ago are coming to be," preached Barbara Harris in the fall of 1988. She was referring to her own imminent consecration as the first woman bishop in the history of the Episcopal Church. But traditionalists weren't upset just about Harris' sex. She also happened to be a black, non- college-educated divorcee with some fairly radical beliefs. While still a laywoman, Harris led the procession at the 1974 protest ritual in which her church's first women priests were illicitly ordained. Continuing to rail against the church for its racism, sexism and homophobia, Harris, who used to work as the top public relations executive at Sun Oil, had become a champion of the downtrodden and disparaged. "I would bring a sensitivity to the needs of different kinds of people, including minorities, women, the incarcerated, the poor and other marginalized groups," said the Philadelphia native shortly before her narrow victory in an acrimonious election as assistant bishop. Since her precedent-shattering achievement, however, the 60-year-old Harris has managed to quiet even her harshest detractors. Refusing to become an "international Anglican gadfly," she says her priority is to carry out her Boston-area pastoral and sacramental duties. Amen.

Josie Natori

Fashion Tycoon

Before Josie Natori married, her father told husband-to-be Ken that there were "two things that you have to know in this family. One, that my wife is the commander in chief and, two, that my mother-in-law is the supreme commander in chief." Natori, 43, must rank as at least a five-star general. Merrill Lynch's first female investment banker, Natori rose to vice president of the company before leaving in 1977 to create her own firm. She started small, working in her New York City apartment, designing and selling fine lingerie. In a pinch, she even packed the orders herself. Today Natori Co. has splashy headquarters in midtown Manhattan, a boutique in Paris and sales of over $25 million annually. Surrounded by models showing off her pricey fashions, Natori has lost none of her enthusiasm. She is on many boards, including the Committee of 200, a group of women entrepreneurs who head multimillion-dollar companies. She keeps close ties to her native Philippines, and helped raise relief funds after this summer's earthquake. "I play many roles," she says. "I'm head of this business, a wife, a daughter with family obligations, and mother of a 14 1/2-year-old son. I have a lot of jobs, but each has been by my own choice." Four years ago, as business was rapidly expanding, the president talked a top Wall Street executive into leaving his post to become her company's chairman. His name: Ken Natori.

Jane Ira Bloom

Saxophonist

What does America's space program have in common with a soprano saxophone? Quite a lot, when the instrument is played by Jane Ira Bloom, 35, a jazz virtuoso who was the first musician commissioned to create a work for NASA's art program. Witnessing a Discovery shuttle launch close up inspired her to compose a four-part suite entitled Rediscovery, which premiered at Cape Canaveral last fall. Long fascinated by the links between music and motion, Bloom has also composed scores for the famed Pilobolus Dance Theater and the repertory theater at Yale, where she earned a master's in sax in 1977. She uses a synthesizer, controlled by foot pedals, to amplify her ethereal solos into swirls of sound that evoke the Doppler effect, the drop in pitch that occurs when a train rushes by with its horn blaring. Bloom has six times been cited in Down Beat's annual critics' poll as a talent deserving wider recognition. As to why she first took up the notoriously cranky instrument, she has a winning answer: "It looked so shiny."

Martha Clarke

Choreographer

With three major highly touted theatrical productions to her credit, Martha Clarke, 46, is indisputably at the top of her profession. The problem is that no one, including the Manhattan-based choreographer-directo r herself, can easily describe what that profession is. "If I knew what I was doing, I wouldn't do it," says the avant-garde artist, paraphrasing her idol Samuel Beckett. Her productions are always an evocative blend of dance, music, words and light, but to her latest piece, Endangered Species, she brings something + entirely new: live animals, including Flora, a baby elephant, and Clarke's own horse, Mr. Grey. She maintains that they're being used as "sentient creatures" rather than beasts of burden or embarrassed icons. Finishing the work, which focuses on mankind's domination of nature, has given the former modern dancer little chance to use the $285,000 MacArthur fellowship that she won in July. Says Clarke: "When the call came, I was so busy I had my assistant take a message." While getting the money was nice, in her business the real reward doesn't come until opening night.

Wilma Mankiller

Indian Chief

Perhaps it was the name that gave them the willies, but male voters seem to have got over their squeamishness about Wilma Mankiller. She is the first female chief of the 108,000-member Cherokee nation, the second largest U.S. tribe after the Navajos. But it took the men a while to come around after her 1987 election. "I've run into more discrimination as a woman than as an Indian," says Mankiller, 44, whose unusual last name was inherited from an 18th century warrior ancestor. She has likened her job to "running a small country, a medium-size corporation, and being a social worker." With an annual budget of $52 million, the Oklahoma-based tribe operates industries, health clinics and cultural programs employing about 1,700 people. In July, while recovering from a kidney transplant, Mankiller signed an unprecedented agreement with the U.S. government that gives the tribe direct control of $6.1 million in federal funding. Mankiller, who attended college in California before returning to Oklahoma 14 years ago, is more optimistic than ever about her fundamental goal: seeing Indians solve their own economic problems.