Lois Elizabeth Bingham knows firsthand what it means to be the first minority leader in an organization. The community-oriented lawyer, who has experience working with both nonprofit and for-profit organizations, said being a lawyer is something she does, not who she is. "My goal is always to strive to be a servant leader and to make positive change in any setting that I might be in," she said.

Bingham, a native of Detroit, recently stepped down from Delta Sigma Theta Sorority Inc., where she'd been executive director for 19 months, to take on a new role, senior vice president, general counsel and corporate secretary of Libbey Inc., a Toledo, Ohio-based maker of glass tableware that sells to customers in more than 100 countries.