How 9 Incredible Women Landed Their Dream Jobs

Good Morning America anchor Robin Roberts made her dream of being at Wimbledon come true—she just took a different path to get there.

"I wanted to be a professional athlete. But there's something called ability that you must have. I knew that for me to be a professional athlete was to be a sports journalist. Tennis was my real love. I used to dream about one day being at Wimbledon. I could taste the strawberries and cream I could see myself curtseying there at center court. And I didn't make it there, obviously, as a tennis player, but let me tell you -- even though I had a mic in my hand instead of a tennis racket for ESPN when I went to cover it for the first time, to me it was like 'check! Wimbledon.' You have to be creative in reaching your goals and I think that's what really helped me so much in my life both professionally and personally. Just not being too rigid. Having goals and setting goals, but being flexible with them and knowing that it might not quite look like I think it's going to look and that's OK."

When legendary actress Cicely Tyson saw Geraldine Page's moving performance in the 1985 film The Trip to Bountiful, she told her agent that she would happily retire if he could get her a role like that. From time to time, she would remind him, "Where's my Trip to Bountiful?"

"Years later this woman came in and she said to me, 'I'm planning to produce one of my father's plays. With an all-black cast.' And she said, 'My father was such an admirer of you and your work that I know that there isn't anyone else that he would want to do this role.' So I said, 'Who's your father?' She said, 'Horton Foote.' And the play is The Trip to Bountiful."

In high school, Genevie Kocourek dreamed of becoming a doctor, until a guidance counselor insisted that it wasn't "appropriate" for a woman. Then in 2000, she enrolled in a wilderness first-responder course and had an epiphany.

"It was 38 degrees and raining," she recalls of the course, "and I was having the time of my life!" When she learned that her employer was offering early retirement, she mulled "retiring" to a brand-new career. She first took premed courses such as chemistry on her lunch break while working as an information technology director or at night. But by 2004, she'd retired from her IT job, taken out a loan and enrolled as a first-year student at the University of Wisconsin's medical school. She nearly quit during her third-year rotations, when she worked two days at a stretch, with no time for exercise and little contact with friends and family. She stuck it out and in 2011, after finishing her residency, she founded her own holistic medicine practice, which combines traditional medicine with alternative therapies like massage and acupuncture. Says Kocourek: "The process of getting here was exactly what it needed to be—humbling, exhausting and wondrous."

Ice cream connoisseur Jeni Britton Bauer, of Jeni's Splendid Ice Cream was an art student in Ohio, working at a pastry shop by day and studying perfumery by night, until one fateful afternoon, while eating chocolate ice cream, she mixed in cayenne pepper oil.

"It was so good, it was like the sky opened up," she says. "I knew right then that creating flavors was all I wanted to do." Bauer made good on her new obsession, quitting school and opening an ice cream parlor. "My family thought I was crazy," she says; considering how little she knew about pasteurization and cash flow, maybe they were right. The shop closed after four years. But two years later, after completing Penn State's famed week-long ice cream course and devising a smarter business plan, she opened Jeni's in Columbus. Today Bauer, presides over a mini empire of shops from Chicago to Nashville.

When Whoopi Goldberg struggled to find her place as a woman of color in show business, she decided to take matters into her own hands and create her one-woman show, The Spook Show.

"I had to write a show so they could see what I was capable of doing. So I came to New York and I did it. And for the first few days nobody came. And then an amazing review got written and the next thing I knew Bette Midler was in the audience and then there was 15 people in the audience, and then 30, and then full capacity and then we were able to expand. Then Mike Nichols came and he said, 'I love the show and I'd love to produce it for you.' I thought he was kidding, but my phone rang a month-and-a-half later. And then six months later we were at the Lyceum."

Growing up in a Northern California family of baseball nuts, Renel Brooks-Moon spent many a weekend cheering at Oakland A's or San Francisco Giants games. Then her fandom led her to live out her baseball fantasy.

In 2000, when she was working as a morning radio show host and local sports correspondent, the Giants tapped Brooks-Moon—and her booming, throaty voice—to be the ballpark's public address announcer. She's the only woman in Major League Baseball holding the coveted position (and the third ever in the sport's history to do it fulltime).

Political strategist Donna Brazile landed her dream job, which ended up leading her in a new direction.

"In 2000, I achieved my dream of managing a presidential campaign—Al Gore's. Though I really believed he could make a difference, the job was stressful and thankless. A few months after we lost, I found a new calling as a commentator and critic. Now I can give my opinion without taking a poll."

While honing her comedy chops, Cecily Strong of Saturday Night Live, worked in the box office at iO, a famed Chicago improv theater, and waited for her big break.

When SNL creator Lorne Michaels held auditions there, Strong tried out. "My family came and sat in the front row," she says. "Afterward they looked like they'd seen a murder. I was positive I'd done terribly." But soon Michaels called her back and, following screen tests in New York, offered her a spot. "I was so happy, I left the studio and wandered around Manhattan by myself—sobbing."

Professional sand sculptor Jenny Rossen treasured sand castles since she was a child, but didn't know she could turn that passion into a career.

"I've loved sand castles since I was a kid, so even as a grown-up I'd build them on my hometown beach in Australia. At some point people started tossing money on my towel, which I found offensive. I wasn't begging! But local malls, and then car shows and festivals in other countries started commissioning me. Twenty-seven years later, it's my main gig."