Mary Abigail Wambach is an American retired soccer player, two-time Olympic gold medalist, a FIFA Women's World Cup champion and a member of the National Soccer Hall of Fame. A six-time winner of the U. S. Soccer Athlete of the Year award, Wambach was a regular on the U. S. women's national soccer team from 2003 to 2015, earning her first cap in 2001. As a forward, she stands as the highest all-time goal scorer for the national team and is second in international goals for both female and male soccer players with 184 goals, behind Canadian Christine Sinclair. Wambach was awarded the 2012 FIFA World Player of the Year, becoming the first American woman to win the award in ten years, she was included on the 2015 Time 100 list as one of the most influential people in the world. Wambach competed in four FIFA Women's World Cup tournaments: 2003 in the United States, 2007 in China, 2011 in Germany, 2015 in Canada, being champion of the last edition. All together, she scored 22 goals at these five international tournaments.

She played college soccer for the Florida Gators women's soccer team and helped the team win its first NCAA Division I Women's Soccer Championship. She played at the professional level for Washington Freedom, magicJack, the Western New York Flash. Known for scoring goals with diving headers, a technique she began honing as a youth in her hometown of Rochester, New York, one of her most notable header goals occurred in the 122nd minute of the 2011 FIFA Women's World Cup quarterfinal match against Brazil. Wambach scored the equalizer in stoppage time helping the Americans to progress to the championship final against Japan after defeating Brazil in penalty kicks, her last-minute goal set a new record for latest goal scored in a match and was awarded ESPN's 2011 ESPY Award for Best Play of the Year. Following her performance at the 2011 World Cup, she was awarded the tournament's Bronze Boot and Silver Ball. In 2011, she became the first soccer player of either gender to be named Athlete of the Year by the Associated Press.

Wambach announced her retirement on October 27, 2015. Her last game was played on December 16 in New Orleans when the United States played its last match of its 10-game Victory Tour following its win at the 2015 FIFA Women's World Cup, her autobiography, released in September 2016, became a New York Times best seller. Her second book, Wolfpack: How to Come Together, Unleash Our Power and Change the Game, based on her viral commencement speech at Barnard College, was a New York Times Bestseller in 2019. Born in Rochester, New York, Wambach was raised in the Rochester suburb of Pittsford, she is the youngest of seven siblings born to Judy Wambach. She began playing soccer at the age of four, their mother checked out a book from the library explaining how to play the game, from on soccer became part of their family tradition. "I think I was bred to do what I do now", Wambach said in an interview. "Growing up as the youngest of seven was like being in a team environment, you learn all kinds of things...

I learned how to compete, my brothers and sisters always played with me on the same level and they never let me win until I was better than them and deserved it. Being in such a big family makes you humble. You might have a certain skill or talent but there is always someone, better at something than you." Wambach recalls being toughened up by her elder brothers firing hockey pucks at her for target practice. While playing in her first youth soccer league at age five, she was transferred from the girls' team to the boys' after scoring 27 goals in only three games; as a pre-teen, she began eluding defenders by running around them. Wambach attended Our Lady of Mercy High School in Rochester from 1994 to 1998, where she lettered in soccer and basketball. During her high school career, she scored 142 goals, including 34 in 1997 alone. Mercy's soccer coach, Kathy Boughton, recalled that Wambach would stay after practice to practice diving headers – a skill that would become her signature as an international player.

Following her senior season, Wambach was named to Parade Magazine's High School All-America Team. She was voted national high school player of the year by Umbro and the National Soccer Coaches Association of America. In 1997, she was named NSCAA Regional Player of the Year, NSCAA State of New York Player of the Year, Gatorade Circle of Champions New York Player of the Year, cited by USA Today as one of the nation's top 10 recruits. Wambach was a three-year captain for the Rochester Spirit club team and named All-Greater Rochester Player of the Year in 1995 and 1997, she was a member of the Olympic Development Program U-16 National Team in 1996, the 1997 National U-20 Player Pool, trained and played with the U. S. women's national soccer team while competing in the 1997 U. S. Soccer Festival in Blaine, Minnesota. In 1997, she traveled to Beijing, China, as a member of the first American youth soccer team to compete there. Considered the top college recruit in 1997, Wambach was intensely sought after by numerous colleges, including top soccer programs such as the University of North Carolina, UCLA, the University of Portland, the University of Virginia.

After sticking with her commitment to her parents to visit five schools, Wambach accepted a full athletic scholarship to attend the University of Florida in Gainesville, where she would play for coach Becky Burleigh's Florida Gators women's soccer team from 1998 to 2001. Florida's program had only been in existence for three years.

Jean Margaret Davenport Mrs. Frederick William Lander, was an English actress with a career in both England and the United States, her father was a lawyer, but he left the bar for the stage, became the manager of the Richmond Theatre, where Jean made her first professional appearance, in 1837, as Little Pickle in The Manager's Daughter — a piece, known as The Spoiled Child, and, in Dion Boucicault's version, as The Young Actress. She played in King Richard the Third, being the first representative of that play seen in Richmond Theatre since the death of the great actor Edmund Kean, she played in other cities prior to coming to America in 1838. Her first appearance in America occurred at the National Theatre, New York, under the management of James William Wallack, the Elder. Afterward she played star engagements in other cities. In 1842 she traveled in Italy and France, her education, at that time, was conducted by private tutors. In Paris, she decided to pursue a career in drama. In 1846 she went to the Netherlands, taking an English company, with whom she acted at Amsterdam and The Hague, and, in Germany, at Hamburg and Hanover, receiving adulation and adoration.

That tour was remunerative. In England in 1848 she made her appearance as a public reader, being one of the first women to give readings from Shakespeare since Sarah Siddons, who died in 1831, her second visit to America was made in 1849, she determined to make it her home. Her father died at Cincinnati, Ohio on July 5, 1851, and, in the following year, she went once more to England, there to settle the affairs of her parents’ estate and to study for the next dramatic season. In 1853, she returned to her adopted country made her first visit to California in 1855 and again traveled to England a few times. In San Francisco, she became the wife of transcontinental explorer and civil engineer Frederick W. Lander on October 12, 1860, her married life was brief. President Abraham Lincoln attended the funeral at the Church of the Epiphany. For two years, Jean Lander subsequently served as a supervisor in charge of the nurses working in the Union Army hospitals at Beaufort, South Carolina. On April 19, 1861, at midnight — when Washington, D.

C. was expecting the Confederate Army to invade at any moment — Jean Davenport Lander knocked on the door of the White House. She met with John Hay, Lincoln's assistant secretary, told him she'd heard from a Virginian that he and several other men "would do a thing within forty-eight hours that would ring throughout the world." Jean believed he meant that the gang intended to capture or assassinate the president, she came to warn him. On February 5, 1865, Jean Davenport Lander reappeared, acting at Niblo's Garden Theatre, New York, in a drama called Mésalliance; the arrival of Adelaide Ristori to America brought a new set of characters into vogue — Queen Elizabeth, Queen Mary Stuart, Queen Marie Antoinette, etc. — and Lander availed herself of that new predilection of popular taste. Her performance of Queen Elizabeth was first seen at the National Theatre, Washington, in April 1867, she was the original representative, in America, of Marguerite Gauthier, a part which she named Camille, — acting it in a play that she had adapted from La Dame aux Camélias, by Alexandre Dumas, fils.

She was the original representative in America of Legouvé's Medée, in English, of Colombe. Her last appearance was made at January 1, 1877, in The Scarlet Letter; the years of her life were passed in retirement, in Washington. She died at her summer residence in Lynn, Massachusetts on August 3, 1903, she is buried at Oak Hill Cemetery in Washington. The Tiffany glass window which she donated to St. Mark's Church in 1889 remains on display. Davenport was most the inspiration for the character of Ninetta Crummles, the "infant phenomenon" child actress in the Charles Dickens novel Nicholas Nickleby, her father the model for theatre-manager Vincent Crummles, though the Davenport family issued denials of the claim. Brown, T. Allston. History of the American Stage. New York: Dick & Fitzgerald. Pp. 210–11, "Lander, Mrs. F. W.". Gilman, D. C.. "Lander, Frederick William". New International Encyclopedia. 11. New York: Dodd, Mead. P. 733. Ireland, Joseph N.. Records of the New York Stage, from 1750 to 1860. II. New York: T. H. Morrell.

Pp. 227–28. Wemyss, Francis Courtney. Twenty-six Years of the Life of an Actor and Manager. New York: Burgess, Stringer & Co. p. 295. Winter, The Wallet of Time Media related to Jean Margaret Davenport at Wikimedia Commons

Michael J. Petrucelli is the Founder and Chairman of Clearpath Immigration, was deputy director, acting director, of U. S. Citizenship and Immigration Services from 2003 to 2005. Between 2005 and 2008, Petrucelli was president of government affairs at GridPoint, he was the senior vice president for operations and chief of staff at the Export-Import Bank of the United States, from November 2002 to March 2003. Before joining Ex-Im Bank in June 2001, Petrucelli worked on economic and business issues at the Federal Communications Commission in both the Office of Commissioner Harold Furchtgott-Roth and the FCC's International Bureau, he was executive director of the U. S.-Thailand Business Council, encouraging trade between the two countries. Prior to that he was director for Thailand and financial services at the U. S.-ASEAN Business Council, promoting U. S.-Asia trade relations. As a U. S. State Department Foreign Service officer from 1991 to 1996, Petrucelli was assigned to the U. S. Embassy in Bangkok, the Bureau of Intelligence & Research in Washington, D.

C. and the U. S. Consulate General, Netherlands Antilles. Petrucelli is an immigration advisor to Blueseed, a company that plans to create a startup community off the California coast in international waters, close to Silicon Valley while working around what they claim are onerous difficulties for startup entrepreneurs to get visas to work in the United States. Petrucelli holds a master's degree in business administration from Goizueta Business School, Emory University, with concentrations in leadership and international business, he received a bachelor of arts degree in political science from Trinity College in Hartford, CT