Book It: 11 Books By and For Women You'll Want To Read and Give Now

Winding down 2025 is a good time to pick up a book for yourself, friend, family member or colleague that they can enjoy as keen insight into their working life, or an inspiration from historic and current women changing history, and an escape into fictional history of times that shape who we are and how we live. All are works that we benefit from as keepers of truth.

Take The Lead is choosing 11 books (for 11 years of operations) new this year that can be respite for your mind and heart, and also offer tangible steps for change through memoir, historical fiction, essays, deep research, strategic step by step nonfiction and deeply emotional biography. Whether you are an ink on paper reader, audiobook listener or digital reader, all are ready to dig in and learn.

Michele WeldonNovember 28, 2025Comment

Risk Taking: Is It Bold or Reckless?

Issue 2867— November 25, 2025

When does a risk stop being bold and start being reckless?

That question has followed me through every chapter of my own leadership.

A friend once talked me into rafting down the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon. So I read about the rapids we’d be navigating; but believe me, reading and doing are two different things.

The Sum, EventGloria FeldtNovember 25, 2025womens leadership, leadership, power, gender parity, lilly ledbetterComment

Thank You: 11 Ways Take The Lead Is Grateful For You

Huge gratitude to you from all of us at Take The Lead for 11 years of successful engagements.

Thank you, supporters, newsletter readers, sponsors, donors, advocates, and especially participants in Take The Lead courses and both virtual and in person events of all kinds. Your support means everything and this Thanksgiving season we send you our most sincere appreciation for the opportunity to serve you, collaborate with you, and/or communicate with you in any way.

Take The LeadNovember 20, 2025Comment

Giving Tuesday Insight: Why & How You Can Help Women Lead

The disruptive challenges of the past year culturally, economically and politically, highlight the fact that independent funding for resources aimed at improving the lives and livelihoods of women and girls makes a difference. More is needed.

Giving Tuesday, December 2, the first Tuesday after Thanksgiving, is the vehicle that powers many non-profits, institutions and movements. That includes Take The Lead, with the mission to “prepare, develop, inspire, and propels all women of all diversities and intersectionalities to take their fair and equal share of leadership positions across all sectors.”

Individual donations make a huge difference.

Michele WeldonNovember 14, 2025Comment

You Bet Liberal Feminists Ruined the Workplace—Let’s Keep Up the Good Work

Issue 2865— November 4, 2025

Whenever a tired columnist runs out of ideas, you can almost set your watch by it: a click-bait essay will soon appear blaming feminists or “uppity women” for whatever’s bothering them that week.

Voila! Out pops the non-topic of feminism’s death—or feminism as the ruination of civilization—to give them some quick clicks.

The Sum, EventGloria FeldtNovember 10, 2025womens leadership, leadership, power, gender parity, lilly ledbetterComment

Required Reading: 6 Journalists Share Truth, Justice, Transformation and Insights

By Dorine Bethea

A desire for better drives Brigid Schulte, director of Better Life Lab, the work-family justice and gender equity program at New America. That desire inspired her to report and report some more and, eventually, to publish her most recent book, Over Work: Transforming the Daily Grind in the Quest for a Better Life.

Speaking at the recent Journalism & Women Symposium CAMP’s Books & Browse session in Washington, D.C., Schulte says, “I wish I didn't have to write this book. I would love to wake up tomorrow and find that the world is a fair and equitable place, and that all people have the opportunity to live a good life and to flourish.”

Guest UserNovember 9, 2025Comment

Change Is In Your Hands: Women In Tech Stand Up For Themselves, Each Other, All

What happens when you host more than 3,000 women in tech from across the globe in one place for the world’s largest conference for women in tech over three days with 300 sessions and more than 300 speakers?

You get unimaginable amounts of applause, laughter, mentorship, collaboration, learning, inspiration, brainstorming, friendship making, energy and action working for the good of women in tech fields and everywhere.

Michele WeldonNovember 7, 2025Comment

What 3 Leadership Qualities Are Essential in These Times?

Issue 2865— November 4, 2025

I’m super excited to share the Highlight reel of Take The Lead’s 2025 Power Up Concert and Conference.

If you were there, enjoy reliving moments that were most special, insightful, or inspirational to you. If you weren’t there, you’ll get an idea of what you missed. If you feel FOMO—well, there’s a remedy for that. Make a plan now to be in Washington DC on August 25 and 26, 2026.

The 2025 theme “Courage to Lead” was chosen with the belief that when the world around us is disrupted and we are dealing with political, social and economic chaos, the leadership quality most needed is courage.

The Sum, EventGloria FeldtNovember 4, 2025womens leadership, leadership, power, gender parity, lilly ledbetterComment

Gay, Female & Iconic: Author Fran Liebowitz Talks Back On Today's Pushbacks

“It is so much harder to be a girl now than when I was growing up,” says Fran Liebowitz, 75, author and outspoken public speaker on the subjects of gender, bias, identity, work, democracy, popular culture and the future.

Today’s culture is perilous, she says, speaking in a packed Northwestern University’s Cahn Auditorium in Evanston outside of Chicago. “It is not perfect, it is not even good. It’s all misogyny. A lot is about being anti-woke.”

Michele WeldonOctober 31, 2025Comment

Letting Go Boldly: What’s Next for Take The Lead

Issue 2864— October 28, 2025

Remember the song from the wildly successful Disney movie “Frozen?” The song Elsa sings called “Let It Go?”

That’s what I’m feeling like right now, as we’re building something powerful that requires me to let go of holding so tightly to the curriculum I developed, now proven by external as well as internal evaluation to be effective in accelerating women’s leadership journey. It’s based on my book No Excuses: 9 Ways Women Can change How we Think About Power.

The Sum, EventGloria FeldtOctober 28, 2025womens leadership, leadership, power, gender parity, lilly ledbetterComment

AI And The Creative Life: Can They Synch For Artists and Leaders?

“You really want to have a reason why you make art,” declares Sally Mann, who was speaking at the University of Chicago’s Ida Noyes Hall, built in 1916 as the women’s clubhouse and gymnasium.

This physical storied past was surrounding hundreds in the audience at the Chicago Humanities Festival, eager to hear from Mann, named America’s Best Photographer by Time magazine in 2001, a Guggenheim fellow, and author of the new book, Art Work: On The Creative Life.

Michele WeldonOctober 24, 2025Comment

Wishing You A Light-Filled Diwali

Issue 2863— October 21, 2025

Wishing all who are celebrating Diwali a meaningful and light-filled holiday. The world needs all that the lights of Diwali symbolize: the spiritual victory of light over darkness, good over evil, knowledge over ignorance.

The Sum, EventGloria FeldtOctober 20, 2025womens leadership, leadership, power, gender parity, lilly ledbetterComment

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