Issue 147 — November 2, 2020
The leaves are starting to turn in New York’s Central Park. Daylight savings time has given us back the hour it stole last spring. The pandemic rages on.
And a momentous election is taking place. The world is watching. Americans have cast more early votes than any time in history. You can feel the anxiety in the air.
Read MoreThe 2020 election season has been divisive, distressing, uplifting, unprecedented and crucial for American women and their families and communities.
“During this moment, I feel that we still need to be emancipated. There are still freedoms that need to be protected. There are still laws that need to be revised. There are more people that need to be included. There are more things to achieve. There is more space for change and growth.”
Read MoreIssue 146 — October 26, 2020
Save the date! Thursday October 29, at 8 pm eastern time — celebrate your right to vote with a brilliant performance by Ari Afsar and Lauren Gunderson from their new “Jeannette: the Musical.”
Jeannette Rankin was the first woman elected to Congress and an ardent suffragist.
Read MoreCourtney McKenzie Newell in 2011 named her first agency Crowned Marketing & Communications, where she is founder and CEO because she was a crowned beauty pageant winner as a student at Florida International University.
Winning Miss Palm Beach County, and later competing in Miss Florida as part of the Miss American pageant series, McKenzie Newell says, ““I took that money and started my business and paid homage to where ti came from.”
Read MoreIssue 145 — October 18, 2020
A physicist friend once told me that everything in the world is ultimately just energy particles. In my non-scientifically trained mind, I visualized tiny pieces of matter dancing around amiably and without focus.
While my friend was referring to the physical world, the principle that everything is ultimately energy applies as well to leadership and to our individual career arcs. That’s because everything we give our time and attention to takes — energy.
Read MoreDr. 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.
Read MoreAn 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.
Read MoreGrowing 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.”
Read MoreIssue 144 — October 5, 2020
I’ve gotta tell you, I get really tired of people complaining to me about something they saw in the news coverage of women. Whether it’s criticizing or loving Kamala Harris’s Chucks or the tone and timbre of a female leader’s voice, and don’t get me started on Hillary Clinton’s ankles and yellow pantsuit, women in leadership roles are scrutinized and stereotyped much more often than men. That’s surely true.
Read MoreOctober is Women’s Small Business Month, so Take The Lead honors the 11.6 million women small business owners in this country who are earning $1.9 trillion in revenue and employing 9.1 million people. Every day 825 women launch small businesses in the United States.
Yes, the numbers tell a story of perseverance and success. One quarter, or 20 % of all companies with $1 million in revenue are women-owned, with 39 % pf all small businesses owned by women. The fastest growth areas are Florida, Georgia, Texas, Michigan and South Carolina.
Read MoreNever mind your cat crawling over your keyboard or a partner walking behind you in pajamas—or less. But the new realities of working from home and zooming for most of your business day present challenges. And not just when you get the alert that your Internet connection is unstable.
When body language is literally unseen, and all someone can ascertain from you are facial expressions, business communication is fraught with possible landmines—and it is particularly perilous for women, who are judged more harshly on their appearance, their responses, even tone of voice.
Read MoreIssue 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.”
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