Dominique Crenn, Atelier Crenn, San Francisco

Though she has been cooking professionally since the 1990s, Dominique Crenn rose to international fame only five years ago when her San Francisco modernist restaurant Atelier Crenn was awarded two Michelin stars, making her the highest-ranking female chef in the U.S.

In the short time since, she delivered a TED Talk on “defining success,” was profiled in an episode of Netflix’s "Chef’s Table," led a group of chefs working to restore agriculture in Haiti and, of course, published a cookbook. Though she sits on the board of Spain’s new Basque Culinary Center with the renowned Ferran Adrià and Massimo Bottura, she says her role models are “not chefs but women like Coco Chanel, Simone de Beauvoir, Nina Simone.”