Women Take The Lead: 2020 Sets Records in Representation in U.S.

“Dream with ambition, lead with conviction, and see yourself in a way that others might not see you, simply because they’ve never seen it before. And we will applaud you every step of the way.”

These were the stunning words from the next and first Madam Vice President, Kamala Harris, from a Delaware stage before introducing President Elect Joe Biden after the election results were announced.

“But while I may be the first woman in this office, I won’t be the last. Because every little girl watching tonight sees that this is a country of possibilities,” Harris said.

Within Reach: Ed Tech Co-founder and CEO On Unplanned Steps To Success

A lot of the Greek gods were already taken.

So Sabari Raja, co-founder and CEO of Nepris, an education technology company, settled on the Greek god Nepris as the name of her new company who is the “lord of sustenance.”

“We were looking for unique names to build a brand, so we turned to the Greek gods, and every Greek god was already an education company,” says Raja, whose platform connects 85,000 K-12 educators with experts for instruction to more than 550,000 students in this country.

How To Fight Hate: CEO, Founder On The Positive Way Forward Now

Dr. Joynicole Martinez does not want to talk about her many advanced degrees. For the record, the founder and CEO of The Alchemist Agency has seven. Two bachelors degrees, three masters degrees and two doctorates.

Martinez wants to talk about cultural change, racial, gender and economic equity and her mission to disrupt white nationalism and supremacy, racism, sexism and social injustice.

All They Can Save: Women Climate Leaders, Founders Collaborate To Save The World

An Adrienne Rich poem inspired the title for the nonprofit, All We Can Save Project.

“My heart is moved by all I cannot save: so much has been destroyed/ I have to cast my lot with those/ who age after age, perversely,/ with no extraordinary power,/ reconstitute the world.”

“That is my drumbeat. To have truth, courage and solutions, the trifecta,” says Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, marine biologist, policy expert and founder of Urban Ocean Lab, who also co-founded All We Can Save with Dr. Katherine Wilkinson, author and editor-in-chief of Project Drawdown.

1 Hour To Inspire 1 Billion Girls: CEO Rupa Dash on World Woman Hour

Growing up in rural eastern India, Rupa Dash would be the first girl in her family to get an education.

“The biggest dream girls would ever see and what she deserves is to find somebody or your parents find somebody who would own a truck and you would get married,” says Dash, co-founder and CEO of the World Woman Foundation, with the mission that “Equality for women is progress for all.”

That is an audacious success for someone who as a young girl explains, “I literally never get out of my home and played outside.”

“When there are nine” and other powerful quotes about gender equality from Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Issue 143 — September 28, 2020

She was tiny. She was mighty. She was a brilliant legal strategist. She was lovingly dubbed “notorious” for her groundbreaking advances for women’s equality, autonomy, and therefore our power within society.

Yet U. S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg broke boundaries gently. Never wavering from her revolutionary vision of gender equality, she believed in making big change in small increments.

“Real change, enduring change, happens one step at a time.”

Forever Legacy: Notorious RBG’s Drive For Equality in Law and Life

Thousands gathered for a vigil near the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court following the news of the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, 87, from complications from pancreatic cancer.

Men, women and children carried signs and lit candles in honor of the woman who spent a lifetime fighting for “the end of days when women appear in high places only as one-at-a- time performers.”

Linda Hirshman, author of Sisters in Law: How Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sandra Day O’Connor Went To The Supreme Court and Changed The World, writes in Washington Post, “In her last years, people made songs and movies about her, and the public bought out her bobblehead dolls. None of that mattered to the real RBG. She cared about the Supreme Court, making it again the engine of an expanding legacy of American equality.”

North Star: Soledad O’Brien On Listening, Point of View, Stories, Fairness and Values

“As an organization and an individual, you have to stick to your North Star,” Soledad O’Brien, founder and CEO of Soledad O’Brien Productions, told a virtual convening of two cohorts of Take The Lead’s 50 Women in Journalism Can Change the World.

“The story of one’s arc of one’s life is to figure out what your values are,” says O’Brien, award-winning journalist, speaker, author and philanthropist who anchors and produces the Hearst Television political magazine program, “Matter of Fact with Soledad O’Brien.”

Update: COVID Infects 25 Years Of Progress After Women’s Rights = Human Rights Speech

In 1995, Madonna, Mariah Carey and Janet Jackson topped the pop charts. A new music option called DVD launched. Windows 95 and Ebay were introduced.

And Hillary Clinton gave a world-turning speech in Beijing, China.

“If there is one message that echoes forth from this conference, it is that human rights are women’s rights. And women’s rights are human rights,” First Lady of the United States Clinton spoke to a crowd of 1,500 on September 5, 1995 at the Fourth World Conference on Women by the United Nations Development Program.

Inspired: Author Heather Cabot Unpacks CBD Innovators’ Paths

“Just start.”

That is author and renowned journalist Heather Cabot’s advice to entrepreneurs as well as her own motto.

With her latest book out this month, The New Chardonnay: The Unlikely Story of How Marijuana Went Mainstream, hitting a bestseller list on Amazon recently, Cabot is taking stock of her successes as well as looking for what she will tackle next.

Conventional Women: Non-Partisan RNC, DNC Highlights of Women Leaders

The virtual national conventions for both the Democratic and Republican parties were unprecedented and historic in many ways.

Due to COVID-19, there were no in-person gatherings of throngs of delegates, speakers and supporters wearing funny hats and carrying signs. The handling of videos, recorded vignettes plus live and recorded speeches lent a tone of slick production values to both recent weeks of conventions.

Power To Change Conversations Webinar Series Launches on Women’s Equality Day

It’s much more than talk. It’s about solutions, giving back and changing the present and future.

Diving into the urgent global conversations of racial and gender equality in leadership today, Take The Lead launches “Power to Change Conversations,” a new Zoom-based webinar series devoted to offering substantive solutions from leading experts on race, gender and equity.

“There is much necessary discussion about uncovering centuries of injustice against people of color and women,” says Gloria Feldt, the co-founder and president of Take The Lead. “But we saw a need for dialogue on what can be done immediately to right the wrongs, and ‘Power to Change Conversations’ will offer actionable solutions for the issues of the day.”

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