What you see is what you get. And what you don’t see is what you don’t get.
Nina Menkes, award-winning filmmaker, director and creator of the new documentary, “Brainwashed: Sex-Camera-Power” anchored a recent panel following a screening in Chicago at Facets on the historic visualization of characters identifying as women and how that mandates how systems treat half the world.
Read MoreHow do you go from grief to joy?
This week I write about how the examples of recent moments of communal grief--the 21st anniversary of 9/11 and the death of Queen Elizabeth II—can inform us as we grapple with personal grief. And I share a phone call that helped me process my grief by creating a lasting legacy in memory of my husband, and the resulting joy. Read the full story here...
Read MoreJust one day a year is designated Women’s Equality Day in the U.S.
The other 364 days a year, Take The Lead is also working to prepare, develop, inspire and propel women across all industries and sectors to reach parity in leadership by 2025. And on Women’s Equality Day, August 26, the 2022 Power Up Conference, The Big RE: REthink, REwire, REcreate, kicks off virtually and in person to address the solutions possible to succeed on the path to equity.
Read More“I weigh fear against, ‘What if I didn’t try that?’”
Being what she calls risk-tolerant has worked well for Kate Isler, co-founder and CEO of TheWMarketplace, who also calls herself an “activist, wife, mother, partner, friend, businessperson and sister.”
“I never want anyone to think I go into this blindly, especially when you are the breadwinner and have responsibility for five people,” says the married mother of three sons, 31, 27 and 23.
Read More“All of a sudden whispers become large shouts,” Marie Yovanovitch, former ambassador to Ukraine, told a crowd recently at the Chicago Humanities Festival.
Talking about her politically-forced firing from her position as U.S. ambassador to Ukraine in 2019 after 33 years of foreign service and three ambassador posts, Yovanovitch adds, “This is not anything I imagined would happen to me.”
Read MoreShe has always liked moving fast.
At seven years old, growing up in greater London, Rita Kakati-Shah told her physician father and zoologist mother (who was also a classically trained singer and dancer) that she intended to be a formula race car mechanic or race car driver.
Read More“I was the kid who loved all kinds of things.”
As a girl growing up outside Trenton, New Jersey at Fort Dix, where her father was based in the U.S. Army, Lily McNair loved books—a biography on Harriet Tubman especially, plus a psychology textbook—and a chemistry set that taught her how to make little volcanoes.
The miniature chemistry set her parents gave her one Christmas ignited McNair’s love of science. Tubman’s story inspired her to live a life helping others. And the psychology textbook her father bought (though he had not attended college) showed her she wanted to pursue a career in psychiatry or psychology.
Read More“What we don’t see, what we don’t hear, we cannot humanize,” says Nakisha M. Lewis, the new president and CEO of Breakthrough, a global nonprofit that uses the power of media, technology and popular culture to transform systems around gender, race, sexuality and immigrant rights.
Read More“We are determined to take this opportunity, to take the losses and turn them into gains,” says Gloria Feldt, co-founder and president of Take The Lead in the opening introductions of the Women’s Equality Day Concert featuring internationally renowned composer and pianist Marina Arsenijevic.
Read MoreWomen’s Equality Day is one day on the calendar, but for Take The Lead it is the forever goal on the horizon—moving closer each day. Progress is in process, but so are biased hinderances and backsliding internationally for all those identifying as female. So take the day—Women’s Equality Day—to continue toward the goal by joining in for Take The Lead’s Women’s Equality Day Concert August 26.
Read MoreThe Tokyo 2020 Olympics kicking off this month are notable not just for what is missing—the crowds in the stands, many athletes who tested positive for COVID and Sha’Carri Richardson due to a positive marijuana test—but what gains have been achieved for competitors identifying as female.
Read MorePerhaps the seed for Lisa Ann Pinkerton’s career as founder and chair of Women In Cleantech & Sustainability has something to do with the fact that she was born in Hyden, Kentucky near the Daniel Boone National Forest.
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