Isadora (Izzy) Cerullo

Izzy Cerullo may have been born a premature triplet, but she certainly grew to be quite the mighty woman. The daughter of two Brazilian immigrants who moved to the U.S. after fleeing military dictatorship in the 1970s, Cerullo is currently the co-captain of the Brazilian women’s national rugby team. She is also a graduate of Columbia University in New York City, where she studied biology and human rights and wrote a thesis about the evolution of women’s reproductive and sexual rights before shifting and becoming a full-time athlete. Cerullo, who is a 2015 Pan-American bronze medalist and four-time South American champion, was also a Rio 2016 Olympian. It was there that she and her then-girlfriend (now wife), Marjorie Enya, did something unprecedented at the end of the medal ceremony for the women’s rugby sevens match: she proposed. The news of their engagement went viral, and, since then, Cerullo has used her platform to speak up about LGBTQ and women’s rights by starring in a United Nations “Free and Equal” Campaign video; being vocal in publications about combating homophobia in sports; and participating in university panels and symposia to champion diversity, inclusion, and women’s empowerment. “You deserve to be happy, to be successful,” Cerullo says. “To build a family if that is what you want, to love and be loved, to be who you are and to be proud of it.”—JDG