You helped women fight forward this year - Thank you!

I am pleased to share Take The Lead’s current impact report. It is a small way to say thank you for your support, without which we could not do our work as a mission-driven nonprofit organization determined to achieve women’s fair share of leadership positions in every sector.

You can skip over my message and read the full report here.

When I did research for my book, No Excuses: 9 Ways Women Can Change How We Think About Power, 15 years ago, ago, leadership parity for women seemed a solvable problem. Progress seemed inevitable with the now-proven interventions I developed.

We were wrong.

When Take The Lead was founded, the organization set an ambitious goal: help accelerate gender parity in leadership by 2025. At the time, more women were entering professional fields, and leadership development was gaining traction across industries. Many believed change would continue moving forward on its own.

The past 12 years showed how fragile progress can be.

During the pandemic, many women were pushed out of the workforce as caregiving and childcare responsibilities intensified. Even after the crisis eased, returning to leadership tracks proved uneven, with lost momentum at critical stages of career growth.

Subsequent waves of layoffs, driven by government cuts and rollbacks of organizational support for women's leadership development, reshaped organizations just as quickly. When institutions contract, leadership opportunities narrow first for those who fought hardest to gain access to them—women and underrepresented minorities.

At the same time, renewed legal and political pressures reopened debates many once assumed were settled. Roe v. Wade, which guaranteed women reproductive freedom and enabled them to have careers, was overturned. Younger generations entering the workforce find leadership opportunity is not guaranteed

Progress did not stop.
But strong headwinds are blowing.

Take The Lead’s mission and work are more necessary than ever, not just to fight back, but to set an ambitious agenda to fight forward to achieve the mission for the good of women, men, families, and communities.

Thanks to your support, we are doing just that. And we will not waver.

GLORIA FELDT is the Co-founder and President of Take The Lead, a motivational speaker, and a global expert in women’s leadership development and DEI for individuals and companies that want to build gender balance. She is a bestselling author of five books, most recently Intentioning: Sex, Power, Pandemics, and How Women Will Take The Lead for (Everyone’s) Good. Honored as Forbes 50 Over 50, and Former President of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, she is a frequent media commentator. Learn more at www.gloriafeldt.com and www.taketheleadwomen.com. Find her @GloriaFeldt on all social media.