Best 10 (or 12!) of 2015 from Take The Lead’s Blog

How many Top 10 lists can dance on the head of a pin?

As 2015 disappears into the sunset, my email box and social media feeds, like yours, swarm with retrospective lists—the top 15 best books of the year, the best gender lens investing articles, the 5 best and 5 worst movies, the 22 most badass feminist tweets.

You name it. Somebody has created a category and judged it.

Well, I thought, why not choose Take The Lead’s Top 10, well OK 12, posts from The Movement Blog?

There are so many people who believe in the cause of women’s leadership parity and we get amazing contributions from them for our blog articles.

I quickly realized it’s a formidable, possibly impossible, task to choose the best. Instead, I’ll take this opportunity to thank all of the people who have contributed and try to select a cross section. Taken collectively, these are either a leadership primer or a refresher course.

Apologies if I missed you—feel free to comment below with a link to your post and send a raspberry my way.

Except for the first one, they are in no particular order—please enjoy, and if you are so moved, share:

First of all, props to Julianne Helinek who created and writes our much-acclaimed “Take The Lead This Week” newsletter (you definitely want to subscribe here if you don’t already find it hitting your inbox every Tuesday) and posts the top stories from it on the blog.
Megan Finnerty, storyteller extraordinaire, told us a lot about how to use storytelling to be more effective leaders. Here’s a sample encouraging everyone to tell our stories: “What’s Your Story? People Are Telling It Even if You’re Not.”
A favorite analysis of racism and sexism on campus, and some solutions, was Dr. Nancy O’Reilly’s “Lessons from Mizzou: What if Women Played Like the Football Team?” We love all Dr. Nancy’s posts so it was hard to pick a favorite, but I really like this title.
Joanne Tombrakos’s “6 Personal Branding Tips I Learned from My Mother” had me at “mother.”
Topping the Facebook like charts for all of our posts in 2015 was, hands down, Linda Hirshman’s beautifully written “Sister-in-Law: How Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sandra Day O’Connor Went to the Supreme Court and Changed the World.” It broke all the title length rules. But who was counting when the story from her book of that same name was so captivating?
We love Leon Silver’s commitment to building a fully diverse law firm even more than we love his series on how he’s going about doing that. Here’s his post that outlines the challenges and opportunities of his vision.
Clearly not a #notmyabuelita post, Emmelie De La Cruz opined during Hispanic Heritage Month about “The Career Advice I Wish My Abuela Told Me.”
There’s a particularly soft spot in my heart for Lex Schroeder’s most recent post “ The Big Leadership Flip: From Empower to Power” because I believe so strongly that in my own work, I can’t empower you but I can help you find and embrace the power you already have.
As someone who not so long ago made a major career transition herself, Avis Jones-DeWeever know of whence she speaks in “Hitting the Reset Button: Five Key Components to Career Reinvention.” We’re thrilled that Avis will be our February Virtual Happy Hour special guest – be sure to sign up for it.
Josey Borman teaching with Take The Lead
And taking the prize for the most comments received was Vincent O’Keefe’s touching must-read commentary on being the stay-at-home dad to his two daughters in “’Men Working’ vs ‘Women’s Work’: a Father-Daughter Story .”
Great tips for mentors and mentees from Kamy Wicoff in “Want a Great Mentor? Be a Great Mentor.”
And since in 2015 we reduced the gender pay gap by (big whoop!) one cent, it’s important to read Josey Borman’s “Why Asking for a Raise Is Hard, and How to Do It Anyway .”

All in all 2015 was a great year with so much content worth reading on The Movement Blog. And 2016 promises to continue apace, thanks to all of you wonderful contributors. Thank you again for your thought leadership.

If you have something you’re burning to say here about women and leadership—contact blog editor Nishita Tamuly.

About the Author

Gloria Feldt, Co-Founder and President of Take The Lead, is the author of No Excuses: 9 Ways Women Can Change How We Think About Power. She teaches "Women, Power, and Leadership" at Arizona State University and was named to Vanity Fair's Top 200 women Legends, Leaders, and Trailblazers.