What a Week: Making Women’s History and Future Every Day

Issue 254 — March 18, 2024

I absolutely love Women’s History Month. I love it as an opportunity to write into the generally known history the many women who have been overlooked or under-recognized for their accomplishments.

And increasingly, I focus on tomorrow’s history that we each make by our actions today.

Know your history and you can create the future of your choice.

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Pick up Steam: Are Efforts To Get More Women, Girls in STEM, Tech Working?  

The Oscar-winning film, “Oppenheimer,” that recently won Best Picture, has stirred national interest in the STEM career of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the nuclear physicist who is called the “father of the atomic bomb” as well as the field of physics.

With a predominantly male cast, in the film set in the 1940s, the closest a woman gets to sharing in scientific work and notoriety is his wife, Kitty, a traditional non-working spouse. Lisa Meitner, a prominent German nuclear Scientist, was asked to work on the project and she refused.

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Get Out The Vote: Women Are A Crucial Element in 2024 Election

As the 2024 presidential election in November nears, the importance of voting is heightened and the efforts to increase voter turnout become crucial.

Voters identifying as women are key to the election, as more women than men turn out to vote. Efforts to get more women elected and also for more women to vote in the 2024 election are in full swing.

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The #1 Action You Can Take Today To Make Life More #GenderFair

Issue 254 — March 3, 2024

How many clip art flowers and pink figures, celebratory Women’s History Month posts have you seen already this March — and we’re just a few days into it? Somehow it seems that many people have forgotten (if they ever knew) that women needed this special month, just as February was Black History Month for the same reason — because the narratives of history have not been written with our lens, and often our accomplishments have been downright ignored — or stolen.

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Celebrate Women’s History Month: Knowing Your History Is Key

It’s Women’s History Month, a time of the year to acknowledge all that women have contributed to advance society and change the world.

Being familiar with your history is the first of the nine power tools created by Gloria Feldt, co-founder and president of Take The Lead, and part of the 9 Power Tools To Advance Your Career Online Course.  It tops the list because it is the foundation of your life and career. “Know Your History: And you can create the future of your choice.”

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How Are We Doing? 10 Years of Take The Lead

Issue 253 — February 26, 2024

The late bombastic New York mayor, Ed Koch, was famous for going around the city asking, “How am I doing?”

So as Take The Lead kicks off its 10th anniversary year, exactly 10 years after its first big public launch event at Arizona State University’s Gammage Auditorium, we’re asking you, “How are we doing?”

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Living Up To Their Dreams: Gloria Feldt and Gloria Steinem on Making Movements

For Gloria Feldt, founder and president of Take The Lead, it was watching Dorothy in “The Wizard of Oz,” in the theater as a young girl that taught her anything was possible.

“It was the first movie I saw where the female was the protagonist. Dorothy was a role model when girls did not have role models,” Feldt said in the recent lively conversation with Gloria Steinem and Jamia Wilson, author and activist.

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Must Reads: 17 Great Books From Women Leaders for 2024

It’s time to get your reading list ready and Take The Lead is here with recommendations from 17 authors. The books range from memoir to essays, historical overviews and several practical guides to being the best leader you can be.

In her first book, Legacy: A Black Physician Reckons with Racism in Medicine, author, ER physician and former professor of medicine, Uche Blackstock writes about growing up in Brooklyn with her twin sister, Oni, watching their mother, a Harvard Medical School grad, deal with patents and workloads. She and her sister became the first mother and daughters legacy from Harvard Medical School, and she writes of the inequities in healthcare and health disparities in a country where only 2 percent of all U.S. Physicians are Black women. Blackstock is the Founder and CEO of Advancing Health Equity.

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TAKE THE LEAD® CELEBRATES 10th ANNIVERSARY ACCELERATING GENDER PARITY

NEW YORK (February 14, 2024) — Take The Lead® , a nationally recognized non-profit dedicated to achieving gender parity in leadership by 2025, launches its 10th anniversary year with a free virtual event on Monday, February 19 at 2:00pm ET that will convene leading voices in the women’s movement in a candid discussion: Women, Power, and Leadership: A Conversation with Gloria Feldt and Gloria Steinem, Facilitated by Jamia Wilson.

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From Lucy to Leadership Part 2: Our Origins’ Central Question

Issue 252 — February 11, 2024

Last weekend, I went to see the movie I think should win Academy Awards in every category: Ava DuVernay’s rendition of Pulitzer Prize-winning author Isabel Wilkerson’s Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents.

After writing last week about the discovery of the 3.2 million year old hominid fossil Lucy in Hadar, Ethiopia 50 years ago by paleoanthropologist and founder of the Institute of Human Origins Donald Johanson, I wanted to explore further the question of why we humans are the way we are.

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See How She Runs: Emerge America President On Urgent Need For Women To Run For Office

As a young girl of 7,  A’shanti Gholar discovered C-SPAN and was hooked on watching political discussions. Now president of Emerge America, Gholar says, “I didn’t see a lot of people who look like me—women, Black or Brown people.”

Her parents were not politically minded she says, though they voted. But she got encouragement at school. “I took an 11th grade government class and the teacher brought in the candidates to come speak to the class.”

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