What does it take to transform challenge into change?

For two outstanding leaders and Take The Lead Power Tool Champions, their stories of advocacy and excellence changed not only their lives, but the lives of so many others as well as systems that now support them.

At the Power Up 2025 Conference on Women’s Equality Day August 26, Dr. Winter Okoth, PhD., ScM, infectious disease scientist, is honored with the Trailblazer Award; and Kathy Jefferson, children’s disability advocate, is honored with The Change Catalyst Award. Both embody the drive and selflessness of entrepreneurs directing effective change.

Yes, women hold up more than half of the sky. And male allies can collaborate efficiently and fairly for everyone to benefit under the full sky.

David Smith, PhD,  and W. Brad Johnson, PhD, co-authors, co-founders of Workplace Allies since 2018, and co-winners of this year’s Alex Barbanell Leading Man Award from Take The Lead, have spent their professional lives focusing on gender parity in the workplace. And their personal lives have had much to do with their collaborative mindsets.

The daughter of Haitian immigrants, Michelle Genece Patterson, grew up on Blueberry Hill Lane in Sudbury, Mass., a suburb of Boston that she describes as “idyllic, but very much a dissonance culturally and experientially as we were the only family of color.”

Her father was a native of LaGonave, an island of Haiti, where there was no electricity or running water, and her mother was from Port Au Prince. It was their tenacity in moving from Haiti to New York City to Boston, that was a “key pivotal turning point for me,” Patterson says.   

The speech class Aly Palmer took her junior year at the University of Maryland where she was studying liberal arts, shifted her life completely.

The award-winning singer, songwriter, producer, performer, artist, activist, philanthropist and founder known globally for her work in the musical trio, BETTY, says, “That feeling of being on stage, feeling something important was happening, is when my entire life changed.”

It’s red carpet season known for awards and applause given to so many deserving winners across entertainment and business arenas.

At Take The Lead, it is also time to celebrate the Power Tool Champions, those entrepreneurs and individuals who will be honored at the Power Up 2025 Concert & Conference with the theme of Courage To Lead. The awards will be given on Women’s Equality Day in Washington, D.C. to deserving entrepreneurs, founders and creators making real change in their lives and the world.

Now more than ever each one of us needs the courage to lead.

In a difficult, divisive cultural environment and a complicated economy, leaders identifying as women face silencing, resistance and erasure as funds disappear and companies, organizations and brands recalibrate to maintain.

In organizations experiencing growth, leaders, colleagues, supporters and collaborators need to define ways to strengthen systems for success and encourage everyone in the network to expand by defining today’s evolving winning strategies.

This year’s Power Up Conference 2025 from Take The Lead held on Women’s Equality Day with the theme, Courage To Lead, offers such strategies, solutions, accolades, insights and learnings from an extraordinary group of experts and leaders in order to assist anyone looking to lead with dynamic innovation and intelligent energy.