Job: Deputy Director of the Pawnee City Department of Parks and Recreation (later Governor of Indiana)

Golden words of advice: "We need to remember what's important in life: friends, waffles, work. Or waffles, friends, work. Doesn't matter, but work is third."

Whether she is challenging senseless bureaucracy, seeking vengeance on the privileged inhabitants of Eagleton or organising an idyllic wedding in a matter of hours, this is a woman who stops at nothing to get things done. Nothing, that is, bar ever falling into the tired TV cliché of the ruthless, ambitious boss willing to walk all over people to get to the top . Quite the contrary.

Leslie is proudly ambitious and ruthlessly determined to be the best but never at the cost of the people who work for her. To both Anne Perkins and April Ludgate she is a mentor, supporter, friend and champion; encouraging them to take risks, cheering them on at every turn and being there to fall back on when things go wrong. And to the relentlessly grumpy Ron Swanson, Leslie’s sunny demeanour provides a much needed antidote to the standard bureaucratic bore he is used to working with (though he’ll rarely admit it).

This is a woman’s woman in the very best sense of the term, doing all in her power to make the world a better place for the sisterhood and calling at double standards or inequality no matter what it takes. Leslie, we salute you!

Tough and caring fictional female mentors who prove the Queen Bee myth is exactly that