A no-nonsense negotiator and a canny politician, Randi Weingarten is the former president of the United Federation of Teachers, which represents 74,000 teachers in New York City and 20,000 other school employees, but she's since been elected president of the UFT's national parent union, the American Federation of Teachers.

Brooklyn-born Weingarten first joined a picket line in the 11th grade when her teacher mother went on strike, and headed off to Cornell before enrolling in law school at Cardozo. A stint at corporate law firm Stroock & Stroock didn't last long: Weingarten soon quit to pursue non-profit work. After spending several years as a lawyer for then-UFT president Sandra Feldman, Weingarten gave up the legal profession altogether to become a teacher, spending six years teaching history at Clara Barton High School in Crown Heights. In 1985, she was elected the union's assistant secretary; two years later, she became the UFT's treasurer. In 1998, she took over as UFT president when Feldman left to head up the American Federation of Teachers. Weingarten held the job for over a decade and even took on the role of chairwoman of the Municipal Labor Committee, which coordinates bargaining for all unions in the city.

The UFT has long been a potent political force in the city, but Weingarten became an especially influential powerbroker. Her union's endorsement was something all local politicians coveted and lawmakers regularly paid their respects by stopping off at her office on lower Broadway. Since Bloomberg took office, there's been no shortage of contention between the UFT and City Hall. In 2002, Weingarten went along with a controversial plan to cede more control over the school system to Mayor Bloomberg and former Schools Chancellor Joel Klein. But the two sides battled over everything: the citywide curriculum, pay increases, charter schools, social promotion, the city's new public school grading system—even whether students should be permitted to carry cell phones in school. Weingarten had to face detractors in her own camp, too. Union members occasionally grumbled about her in-class credentials and suggested she's more interested in raising her public profile than actually fixing problems. True to UFT fears, Weingarten stepped into the limelight even more in July 2008 when she ran unopposed for become president of the the UFT's national parent union, the American Federation of Teachers, and she officially resigned from the UFT in 2009. She now says she'll make fighting President Bush's No Child Left Behind law a priority as president of the over 1.5-million-teacher-strong AFT. [Image via Getty]