At the Power Up Conference 2025 (L-R): Dr. Lily McNair, board chair of Take The Lead; Kelsey Nicole Nelson, sportscaster and radio host; Christine Brennan, *USA Today* columnist and author, receiving the Leading Media Award; and Gloria Feldt, Take The Lead co-founder and president,

The goal of gender parity needs the efforts and energy of everyone across gender identities. Equity is not just a women’s issue. Nor is it just an issue in one business arena.

“We’re here to talk about how men are an important part of this journey moving things along to gender parity,” said Vada Manager, founder and CEO of Manager Global Holdings, as he introduced the winners of the Alex Barbanell Leading Man Award at Take The Lead’s recent Power Up Conference 2025 in Washington, D.C..

Announcing the winners, who are authors and co-founders of Workplace Allies, W. Brad Johnson, PhD, and David Smith, PhD, Take The Lead Co-founder and President Gloria Feldt said, “It takes men and women working together to get to a just world. The award is named after my late husband --the strongest man and strongest feminist I have ever known.”

“It takes men and women working together to get to a just world. The award is named after my late husband —the strongest man and strongest feminist I have ever known,” said Gloria Feldt @takeleadwomen co-founder, president #powerup #leadership ”

“Dave and I don’t call ourselves good guys,” said Johnson, co-author with Smith of the 2020 book, Good Guys: How Men Can Be Better Allies for Women in the Workplace. “We have women in our lives who have opened our eyes to the gender headwinds we don’t encounter,” says Johnson, who credits his sister, Shannon, who spent three decades in the U.S. Marines, but had a completely different experience than he did.

“It is curious what keeps men on the sidelines,” said Johnson, a clinical psychologist who served as a psychologist at Bethesda Naval Hospital and the Medical Clinic at Pearl Harbor, where he was division head for psychology, and who for 20 years was a clinical faculty associate at Johns Hopkins University.

Co-author with Johnson of the 2016 book, Athena Rising: How and Why Men Should Mentor Women, Smith said his experience as a 1987 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, in the “early years of integration of women,” was “eye-opening to see how women were treated.”

Witnessing his future wife, Erica’s experience in the military was unsettling, said Smith, co-director of the Gender & Work Initiative at Johns Hopkins Carey Business School, where he is associate professor.

“I grew up seeing women equally and I was always looking for ways to level the playing field.” He added, “How do we start to engage more men in this conversation?”

“I grew up seeing women equally and I was always looking for ways to level the playing field.How do we start to engage more men in this conversation?” asked David Smith, #GoodGuys #workplaceallies #LeadingMan Award @takeleadwomen #genderparity”

Manager, the 2022 winner of the Leading Man Award, offered, “Men have a crucial role to play.” This approach to work aligns with the conference theme of Courage To Lead.

Johnson, whose next book with Smith, Fair Share, comes out in 2026, said, “Too many organizations make gender parity, fairness and inclusion a women-only issue, so men don’t think they’re united in this.”

A recent study from the Pew Research Center shows that in 20 years, the gender pay gap in the U.S. has barely moved. “In 2024, women earned an average of 85% of what men earned, according to analysis of median hourly earnings of both full- and part-time workers. In 2003, women earned 81% as much as men.”

“Too many organizations make gender parity, fairness and inclusion a women-only issue, so men don’t think they’re united in this,” said W. Brad Johnson, author #GoodGuys, @takeleadwomen #genderparity #workplace #allies ”

One issue that shows a gender divide in the workplace is caregiving at home—for children, for elders, for spouses. “For too long, leaders in organizations have devalued caregiving. It’s time to put an end to that. Men have to do the same at home,” Smith said. “They have to do the unpaid labor, the cognitive labor the emotional labor. Leaders have to begin valuing that in an organization.”

This is a worldwide trend of a caregiving chasm, according to the World Economic Forum’s 2024 Global Gender Gap report. “Women carry out nearly three times more of the daily care of children, homes and the elderly than men.”

The report continues, “Getting to full economic and political equality for women and girls, requires men and boys to do their share of the care work and to be advocates for the care economy. Men’s caregiving pays forward in women’s workforce participation, in gender equality and in men’s happiness and well-being,” according to the WEF.

“@WorldEconomicForum 2024 Global Gender Gap report: “Women carry out nearly 3 X more of the daily care of children, homes and the elderly than men.” #caregiving contributes to #genderpaygap @takeleadwomen”

Johnson said heterosexual couples need to be transparent about the work/home divide. “Just showing up in the workplace is performative is not doing equal share at home,” Johnson said. “You have to lead loudly and normalize it.”

For a sense of accountability, men need to do a “domestic audit” of work at home, Johnson said. “When children see a father loudly champion a partner’s career, they take the blueprint into their relationships.”

He added, “We need to stop framing this to men that if women advance, you will lose somehow. We need to change the messaging.”

Expert and authentic messaging is key to the mission of Christine Brennan, award-winning sports journalist and columnist for USA Today, and CNN, PBS, ABC and NPR commentator. She received the Leading Media Award at Power Up. Author of the New York Times bestseller, On Her Game: Caitlin Clark and the Revolution in Women Sports, Brennan has been an advocate for fairness in women’s sports and sports media.

“@USAToday columnist @cbrennansports earned the Leading Media Award @takeleadwomen for her #leadership in #sportsjournalism and #womenssports ”

As founder of the Association for Women in Sports Media, Brennan established a scholarship for young women sports journalists. Named to the Ohio Women’s Hall of Fame, the Hall of Achievement for NCAA and the Women’s Sports Foundation, as well as a member of the Northwestern University Board of Trustees, Brennan has covered 22 Olympic games, and has the vantage point of history witnessing the shifts in women’s sports.

While she had been watching Clark play basketball at the University of Iowa, covering a few games, she says at a July 2024 game where Clark nailed a three-pointer, Brennan said, ‘I had never seen a woman play quite like that.”

So her publisher urged her to write a book on Clark and the phenomenon of women’s sports getting more attention because of her. Her book debuted in July 2025.

Read more in Take The Lead on WNBA

“This was a new level of stardom,” said Kelsey Nicole Nelson, sports journalist, host of “Listen In With KNN,” who interviewed Brennan on stage.

Race had been an historic issue in journalism and sports, Brennan said, as 74% of the WNBA players are Black, and Clark is white. Some attributed to the sudden popularity of women’s sports due to Clark’s race.

“I cheer for the coverage of women’s sports,” said Brennan, who was the first woman to cover sports at the Miami Herald in 1980, then later the first woman to cover an NFL team at the Washington Post.

“Summer 2025 is signaling a remarkable wave of milestones in women’s sports,” Forbes reported. “After a strong-performing 2024 that saw equal representation between women and men at the Olympics for the first time in history, as well as standout college stars Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese making their much-anticipated WNBA debuts, women athletes have only continued to build on their momentum.”

In her discussion with Nelson, comparing Clark as an innovator revving up audience numbers and media coverage to golfer Tiger Woods, Brennan said, “This is an incredible sea change 53 years after Title IX. Today is the greatest day to be a women in sports—until tomorrow.”

““This is an incredible sea change 53 years after Title IX. Today is the greatest day to be a woman in sports—until tomorrow,” said @cbrennansports, author of On Her Game: @CaitlinClark and The Revolution in Women Sports. #powerup ”

As the gender pay gap in professional sports is enormous, attendance is shifting, thanks to women’s soccer, women’s tennis, women’s figure skating and now, women’s basketball. The Marketplace reports, “Thayer Lavielle, executive vice president of The Collective, which advocates for women in sports and recently conducted an audit of the athlete pay gap.

Lavielle explained, “What we found was that women athletes make 21 times less [on average] than men athletes on the field of play.” Additionally, “In professional basketball, the gap is wide. NBA players make 108 times as much as their women counterparts.”

The popularity of women’s sports—tennis, basketball, soccer and golf—is forcing the “branding of players in a different way,” said Nelson. “It’s positive.”

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About the Author

Michele Weldon is editorial director of Take The Lead, an award-winning author, journalist, emerita faculty in journalism at Northwestern University and a senior leader with The OpEd Project. @micheleweldon www.micheleweldon.com

Good Guys And Pioneering Sports Journalist: Leading Award Winners Share Truths

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