What a year it has been—and in a very good way—for Minda Harts, best-selling author and CEO, founder of The Memo, LLC.
This is true in 2020, an exceptionally challenging year particularly for women of color on so many levels. As the country faces COVID-19 fallout, racial justice atrocities and the need to rebuild and create new infrastructures and patterns with fairness, equity and inclusion, hers is a voice and stance validating the power of BIPOC and the urgent need for change.
Read MoreTake The Lead is hosting feminist icon Gloria Steinem and Academy Award-winning actor Julianne Moore as featured speakers in the exclusive virtual event, “Putting Women at the Heart of the Recovery: An Intimate Conversation.”
Read MoreHow many female cultural icons does it take to make a once in a lifetime virtual event just for you?
The answer is two, plus two emerging leaders in journalism, media and entertainment. Plus you.
Read MoreIssue 152 — December 6, 2020
“There are plenty of top-notch people in every demographic group for even the most high-level jobs. You just have to see them and open the barricades that have blocked them from serving.”
— Jodi Enda re Joe Biden and Kamala Harris’s diverse choices of top advisors.
Real change is in the air. And it’s happening fast.
Read MoreIf COVID-19 has not directly affected your mental health, then you are likely a very rare case.
And if the collision of crises in economics, health, injustice, family, work and career have touched you in the last year, then know there is access to steps to improve your mental health.
Moving towards an economic, health and wellness recovery, many women—and men— are strategizing to not only cope with the effects of the pandemic, but to manage a re-emergence and recovery post-COVID that is better than before the crisis hit.
Read MoreIssue 151 — November 29, 2020
Do you sometimes feel powerless in these challenging days?
Let me assure you of this: you have the power to help women recover from the pandemic’s effects on their lives and livelihoods when you make a contribution to Take The Lead.
And — great news — your contribution will be matched by our amazing board members, led by chair Dr. Nancy O’Reilly.
Read More“Half of all children born today in the United States and Europe are going to reach their 103rd or 104th birthday,” Neurologist Claudia Kawas explains to Lesley Stahl on CBS News recently.
Kawas is the leading investigator on the 90+ Study that has been ongoing for six years. She adds, “I have seen several 116-year-olds.”
So I guess, at 62, I am middle aged.
Read MoreIssue 150 — November 23, 2020
Happy Pre-Thanksgiving. I hope you are well and that however you plan to spend the holiday will be enjoyable.
Whatever you have planned, we can all breathe a big sigh and agree on this: It’s been quite a year, hasn’t it? One we can’t even describe yet because it’s not over and every day brings new surprises. But there are a few things we know for sure.
This pandemic has made us more creative.
Read More2020 came dancing in with such hope.
2020 was going to be Take The Lead’s year to scale up after seven years of building our credibility, developing our unique methodology of accelerating women’s advancement in leadership, and proving that it works. We’d earned the opportunity to grow exponentially. We had an amazing year of programming planned. Symbolically, 2020 being the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution giving women the right to vote after seven decades of struggle, seemed like the perfect time.
But just as the suffrage amendment was flawed by not assuring voting rights to Asian, Indigenous, and Black women, 2020 brought to light many deficiencies. Like those punching balloons that keep popping back up for more, it seemed like every time we thought it couldn’t get worse, it did.
Read MoreAmanda Zelechoski not only practices what she preaches; she practices what she researches.
As an attorney, licensed clinical and forensic psychologist specializing in child and adolescent trauma, she co-founded the site and resource, Pandemic Parenting, to help others and herself as a mother of three young boys.
During COVID lockdowns with remote work and remote schooling, “The stress at home can be bad,” says Zelechoski, associate professor at Valparaiso University, where she directs the Psychology, Law and Trauma Lab, and whose sons are 11, 8 and 5.
Read MoreThis graphic circulated around the internet quickly upon breaking news that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris would become the next President and Vice President of the United States. Harris is smashing one of our two highest and hardest glass ceilings. In doing so, she represents so much of our history and more importantly, our future.
Harris Represents Women — the obvious, overarching 51% of the population that has waited since 1776 to see one of its gender represented in the highest halls of power. Her white suit was a nod to the 100 year anniversary of the 19th amendment writing women’s right to vote into the U.S. Constitution — and the decades-long battles afterward to make sure all American women have the unfettered right to exercise that primary civic duty.
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