Business

We, A Manifesto for Women Everywhere by Gillian Anderson and Jennifer Nadel

Recommendation

Actor Gillian Anderson and writer-activist Jennifer Nadel, longtime friends, collaborated on this step-by-step guide designed to help women create better lives. Starting with a foundation of gratitude, meditation and self-care, they outline nine principles for daily living. The first four address issues within yourself, including being honest and accepting life as it is. The last five address being in the world with humility, peace, love, joy and kindness,which they define as “love in action.” Anderson and Nadel offer exercises in each ideal to help you connect with yourself. Women seeking ways to move beyond societal – or self-imposed – stereotypes will find an open door and a clear path.

Take-Aways

• Reconnect to yourself to build your strength and to strengthen other women.
• You need four fundamentals to begin the path of self-discovery: be grateful, be gentle, be responsible for yourself and meditate.
• Four principles can help you remove the emotional scar tissue that impedes your growth: “honesty, acceptance, courage and trust.
• The principles of “humility, peace and love” help you forgive, be more centered and connect to others.
• The principles of “joy and kindness” allow you to access and share your spirituality.
• Apply the WE spiritual precepts to yourself and the world.

We Book Summary

Reconnect to yourself to build your strength and to strengthen other women.

You can lose touch with who you are. The me-culture ideals of material wealth, success and competition can corrupt your self-esteem. Reorient your life by adopting an approach that melds your spiritual, political and psychological self and benefits not only you, but also women around the world.

“WE is…a female-led revolution: a quiet, peaceful about-face that doesnt require the consent of those in power.”

Envision bolstering and emboldening yourself and other women without judgment to heal wounds and foster compassion. To reconnect with yourself, apply the following nine principles.

You need four fundamentals to begin the path of self-discovery: be grateful, be gentle, be responsible for yourself and meditate.

Gratitude shines a light that allows you to see your life anew. Acknowledging what you are grateful for changes your perspective, how you think and how you interact with other people. Gratitude focuses your thoughts on the real, positive aspects of your life.

You may think the voice in your head criticizing some plan or problem-solving idea is pragmatic, but more likely it springs from trepidation and self-doubt. Recognize and change your thoughts when you’re being unkind to yourself. Taking responsibility includes nurturing your physical, mental and emotional well-being. You may not see your physical body in a positive light. People spend billions of dollars in the erroneous belief that their lives will improve if they alter their appearance.

“We can think we’re trying to solve a problem…usually were digging ourselves deeper…into a painful mental rut.”

Become your own friend  by performing one self-nurturing act each week. Consider your body and how it serves you as you walk, breathe and live. Take two minutes daily to sit quietly alone in silence and observe, rather than dwell on, any thoughts that arise. Even this short respite provides a refuge from daily concerns. If you perform this ritual daily, your mind and body will grow accustomed to being calm.

Four principles can help you remove the emotional scar tissue that impedes your growth: “honesty, acceptance, courage and trust.”

Use the four principles of being honest with yourself, accepting what you can’t change, having the courage to rewrite false stories, and choosing trust over fear to cement your connection with yourself. You probably lie to yourself consistently. This can be as simple as saying you’re okay, when you’re not, or as complex as molding yourself into a socially defined ideal woman. People create sub-personalities to protect themselves. Acknowledge those personas, thank them and let them go.

The principle of honesty includes unveiling truths about what you enjoy and what makes you happy. Identify even rustlings of emotion that connect to an activity or aspect of your life that you find uplifting. Think of this as being “an archeologist in your own life.”

When you find a truth about yourself, notice and name it. Writing down what you’ve excavated helps keep it from slipping away. This applies to negative and positive discoveries. Celebrate who you are instead of cowering behind social or parental messages you may have internalized. Learn to identify what you can’t change, and accept it. This doesn’t mean being passive in the face of something you dislike. You can’t change reality, but you can change your actions to give yourself peace, and improve your behavior and emotions.

Many women experience mentally generated apparent pain that derives from past incidents. This is the opposite of genuine pain you might feel – for example, regarding the death of a friend – and it is part of being human. Experiencing actual pain leads to growth and emotional strength. Accept the reality of a situation, and acknowledge where you may lack control over it. Otherwise, denial can cause you to rerun difficult episodes in your mind, generating dream alternatives.

To identify what you need to accept, write down the issues that bother you, no matter how petty. Ask if you can do anything about each situation. If you can’t affect a particular issue, write an A next to it and put the paper in a container. If you can change some bothersome circumstance, write what you need to do on a separate page. As you review your acceptance list, feel the freedom of acknowledging that you’re not in control of this issue. This will feel like releasing your end of a rope in a tug of war. The rope falls to the ground, and you are still whole.

Learning to accept reality requires the courage to free yourself from tales you retell yourself, whether they are true or not. Often, these tales overlap, making you feel like a victim instead of a heroine in your life.

“Your story is not who you are, but it is often who you think you are.”

You have repeated inaccurate internal stories your entire life, so hold an intervention with yourself. Choose one story. Write it down repeatedly until any emotional jolt of pain is gone. Find the crux of the story, and write an affirmation to counter it. If the crux suggests, for example, that you’re not lovable, write a sentence stating that you are.

Courage calls for feeling, expressing and releasing anger productively. Many women have problems with anger. Expressing anger may not be socially acceptable, and could draw derisive comments from men. Do not let that deter you. Use the process of seeing and naming something to understand when you are angry, identifying the source and releasing it. Discharge the feeling physically by hitting a pillow or by writing the story down. Failing to express your anger can make you more likely to react strongly to smaller issues.

You need courage to let go of resentment. Holding on to it can poison you emotionally. Write a short description of the incident you resent, and how you participated in it or why you’ve held on to it – particularly if you were a child when it happened. Write about how you wish it had been different, and let go of the emotions that arise. Recognize any sorrow while telling yourself, “This is how it is.”

Trust allows you to live freely. You can decide not to give away control to its opposite forces, fear and anxiety. Fear can erode your sense of self and enlarge the importance of other people’s opinions. Two mnemonics illustrate the difference. “FEAR” is “false evidence appearing real,” while “TRUST” tells you “to rely upon spiritual truth.” When you decide to trust, you are embracing the belief that love is stronger than fear.

For a week, assume that things will work out for the best, and you’ll find yourself taking more risks. You’re likely to feel heightened resilience and zest for life. When you’re fearful, you may avoid your emotions. Don’t concentrate on could have beens. Instead, tell yourself that no matter what outcome unfolds, you can handle it.

The principles of “humility, peace and love” help you forgive, be more centered and connect to others.

People’s egos often control their thoughts. Comparing yourself to others or becoming self-critical affects you negatively. When you have a negative thought about yourself or someone else, remember that you can choose serenity over any anger you feel.

Humility balances ego. Instead of being better or less than someone else, or not doing what your ego thinks you should be doing, humility lets you realize you are great as you are. It allows you to be present instead of trapped in recounting a past injury, and it provides an opening to forgive yourself and others. Like acceptance, forgiveness means that you choose to let go of emotions that curtail you. Peace builds on humility to enable you to go beyond your thoughts to a place of spiritual healing. Meditation, a way to be at peace, can be secular or religious. Connect with yourself calmly to create a protective zone to deflect problems when they arise.

“Like gratitude…the more loving you are, the more loved and loving you feel.”

Serenity helps you realize how to define things as good or not. Moving through your day, take time to breathe calmly when you have a strong reaction to something or someone. Love binds you to yourself, your family and all humankind. This love is not a romantic ideal that you center on an individual. By acting with love, you access an endless supply of warmth within yourself. Your childhood and family define your attitude toward love and how you understand it. Don’t expect someone else to heal you. Connect with the child inside you and listen to what she says. Love exists everywhere, and you can experience it if you act lovingly. When in doubt, ask yourself how love would act.

The principles of “joy and kindness” allow you to access and share your spirituality.

Joy helps you care for your spirit or soul. When you’re tired or experiencing stress, joy will replenish you. Enjoying life isn’t indulgent – it’s necessary. Cultivate joy when you’re being creative or spending time in nature. If you access a feeling of wonder, you generate joy. Make room for joy in your daily life. Write down activities that give you joy and when you last did them. Find time to do them again. If dancing brings you joy, take 30 minutes to dance in your house.When you feel restless or dissatisfied, take it as a signal that you need to connect with joy.

Kindness provides connection to others in your life. Write down an account of your most significant experiences. Which of these do you still make time for in the present? Keeping this list in mind will subtly change what you prioritize.Use kindness as part of your evaluation when you make decisions that reflect your values and beliefs. This might change where you bank or shop, or with whom you work. For a week, write down when you do something that doesn’t reflect your true morals. You can truly be kind only when you care for yourself. Otherwise, even kindness can become co-dependence, an ego boost or an effort to please others.

“Kindness allows love to flow…so that we become channels for a greater purpose than our own limited wants and needs.”

Consciously practice kindness to find ways to influence change in your personal sphere and the larger world. If people around the world followed WE’s spiritual concepts, seeking fairness instead of following the desire to have more, how different might the world be? While living often involves suffering, people working in unison can eliminate a lot of pain.

Apply the WE spiritual precepts to yourself and the world.

As you apply these principles to your life, imagine what would happen if the world did the same. The global obsession with the “me” culture elevates individual material possessions and wealth far above group welfare. Affluent nations fight increasing obesity as 800 million people worldwide go hungry. In the United States, more than 48 million people live in food-insecure families. Extrapolated globally, individual human efforts to achieve a secure, equitable community have resulted in conflict and vast migrations.

“Were no longer prepared to tolerate…that others are suffering due to problems that have solutions.”

Women face additional challenges. The United States has more CEOs named “John” than female CEOs. If caregivers in the United Kingdom earned salaries, their total take would be £119 billion, dwarfing the defense budget. The United States, Oman and New Guinea are the only three countries that don’t provide nationalized paid parental leave. Instead of requesting equality within governments and corporations that don’t account for human needs, create systems that rest on a foundation of fairness, regardless of your beliefs, gender or nationality. If all people accepted kindness as their guiding value, the world’s priorities would change for the better.

About the Authors

The X-Files actor Gillian Anderson is an activist. Writer-activist Jennifer Nadel’s book on domestic violence, Sara Thornton: The Story of a Woman Who Killed, became a BBC movie.

Video & Podcast

Power Moves, How Women Can Pivot, Reboot, and Build a Career of Purpose by Lauren McGoodwin

Recommendation

Career Contessa founder Lauren McGoodwin combines an inspirational call-to-action for working women with an intimate chat packed with career advice. She provides templates, tables and a new vocabulary you can use to identify your goals. Well-organized and methodical, McGoodwin leads you through the maze of corporate hiring and career planning. Her insights and suggestions add up to a powerful plan for changing how you think about your career. Whether you hold an entry-level job or are heading for the executive suite, you can apply McGoodwin’s “Power Moves” to jumpstart or rekindle your belief in your career and your abilities.

Take-Aways

• Learn to distinguish reality from media fantasies about work to create your own professional path.
• Put “Power Moves” to work for your career.
• Take care of yourself.
• Networking still works and can help you achieve your goals.
• Become your own career coach, and forget about your dream job.
• Don’t shy away from money – embrace it.
• Negotiate for the job and salary you want.

Power Moves Book Summary

Learn to distinguish reality from media fantasies about work to create your own professional path.

Many of the expectations millennial women have for their careers come from TV, movies and online media. The work-life scenarios these sources portray are seductive, but unreal.

“Power Moves are…decisions you make to en sure you’re living authentically and staying true to yourself – not some idea of what you should be.”

Lauren McGoodwin graduated from college during the recession in 2009, did all the so-called right things, and still ended up in a dead-end job. McGoodwin realized she needed to look internally to define the career she wanted. This led her to create “Power Moves,” which helped her become a recruiter at Hulu and eventually an entrepreneur when she decided to launch her business, Career Contessa, to support women and their careers.

Put Power Moves to work for your career.

When you make decisions that move you toward the career you want, you are making power moves. Use these actions repeatedly in your life, not just as a one-time attempt to change.

Even subtle power moves can positively affect how you feel about yourself and your life. Your moves could include asking for a raise or promotion, mentoring, volunteering or investing. Smaller actions, such as cultivating your network, changing how you search for a job or taking a class, are also power moves. Integrate these true-to-yourself actions into your life daily by sticking to a budget or speaking up in a meeting.

The power moves strategy puts you in control of your career. To define what actions to take, build up your career awareness, which encompasses your attitude, career track record and lessons learned.

“There’s an undeniably strong relationship between awareness and better decisions.”

Your awareness will grow in time, but you can cultivate and increase it by caring for yourself, and your relationships, career and money. Learning new skills and building more experience as you define your power moves will change your viewpoint and your ability to act.

Take care of yourself.

Regularly practicing self-care lifts your attitude, reduces depression and allows you to focus on what you really want. Your thoughts affect how you feel physically and emotionally. If you wake up worrying about a problem or imagining one, you’re generating negative emotions, which can impede your ability to move forward. To break that spiral, ask yourself deliberately what you want to focus on, how you want to act today and what it would be like to act that way. Doing this kind of mental planning can help you let go of the past and focus on the future.

What you eat and how much you sleep are important components of self-care. Food powers the brain, so eat well and avoid fad diets. Lack of sleep exacerbates stress, which can cause serious health issues. Prioritize good sleep habits, and create a bedtime routine.

Almost 40% of people in the United States rank themselves as very stressed out at their jobs. Studies show that number is probably higher for women. Instead of reacting to every stimuli at work, define chunks of time for working on a particular task or issue, prioritize the time for the work you’ll need to do and learn how to use this approach to end a period of stress. Discerning what work is truly a high priority will reduce the tension you feel – and probably emanate to others.

An important aspect of self-care is learning to manage your inner critic and your anxiety and shame. The first step is to be aware when your inner critic engages. You may want to name it and understand that it is trying to help. Countering its negativity with a positive validation you can repeat to yourself will help you feel safer and more present.

Learn to regard your mental health as you do your physical health. Seeing a therapist or joining a support group can help you deal with difficult issues. Being content, instead of pushing to be happy all the time, can provide balance in your everyday life.

“We are so obsessed with happiness in our culture that it’s actually making us really unhappy.”

Shame can cause you to act in regrettable ways. Brené Brown says shame thrives on “silence, secrecy and judgment.” To remove shame’s power, talk to someone you trust about the situation that concerns you, learn from whatever you did that worries you and accept it as part of your progress.

Networking still works and can help you achieve your goals.

Your personal and working relationships are crucial to being able to make sound power moves. Even if work makes you feel overwhelmed, take time to nurture important relationships. Other than a satisfying career, relationships top the list for creating well-being. Even more than money, optimistic friends or colleagues have a positive impact on the amount of satisfaction you feel about your life.

Create a small Circle of Champions, a cluster of people you respect who share your values. The members of this group may change as you redefine your life and career goals. Optimism is contagious, so cull negative people from your core circle. Make time for this group, and be present for its members in ways you’d like them to be present for you.

“There’s nothing wrong with being intentional and proactive about how and with whom you spend your time.”

Networking can help you on your way. Developing a network is not like having an ATM: You need to give as much as you take. Don’t turn to your network only when you need an introduction or a job. Create relationships based on mutual interests and respect.

Seek networking events that align with your goals. Know why you’re attending an event and what you want to achieve there. After you meet someone, follow up within 24 hours. Send an email referring to your conversation. Build the relationship by sending emails a couple of times a year or by connecting on LinkedIn.

If you’ve identified people you’d like to meet – but haven’t met – email them. Clearly state the reason you’d like to meet. If you attended the same school or have an acquaintance in common, mention it. Ask for a 20-minute phone conversation, and detail what you’d like to ask. Include specific times when you’d be available to talk. Make your subject line meaningful by including the name of that mutual friend or specifying what you’re requesting. Give people two weeks to respond. You may send a follow-up email, which includes your original note, but if you don’t get a response, let it go.

While cultivating work-based relationships matters, so does maintaining personal ones. To make significant power moves, you need the support of your friends and family. Set aside one day a week when you won’t access work email or messaging apps to be present with your kids, family or friends.

Become your own career coach, and forget about your dream job.

You are in charge of your career, so learn how to manage it. Women often tell stories about how they worked to achieve their dream job only to learn it wasn’t what they really wanted. This happens because people evolve and their passions change. The job you wanted in your 20s is not necessarily what you want in your 40s.

“Our dreams are never about just one destination – the best careers are circuitous, meandering and a little bit wild.”

Define your perfect career goal realistically by deciding what you want in a job and what would be nice but not necessary. Determine what you absolutely need in terms of salary, insurance, commuting time or retirement savings. See these as non-negotiable. Put all your career requirements into a table. For example, you might identify the need to have a commute that’s shorter than 30 minutes.

Delve realistically into which companies you’d like to join. Research them to narrow down the list based on how they fit your criteria. For the best candidates, dig further and find what division or job you’d like. 

Sometimes you may think you dislike your job, when it’s actually your work environment you don’t like. Before pivoting your career in a new direction, determine if your concerns are with the job or the organization. If you could move up the ladder at your current company, would you want to?

Author Lauren McGoodwin started Career Contessa to help counter the lack of career resources for women. Its website has a corporate background worksheet you can use to organize your research, target companies and explain why you’re a good fit. When managing your career, define your strengths. Think of where you’ve been successful or earned positive feedback. Identify which tasks energize you.

“By taking…your career into your own hands, you’re empowering yourself…and honing the ability to thrive.”

Start reaching out to contacts in your network or hire a career coach to help you define the job you want. Seeking a new job takes time and effort. Be clear about why you want a specific job at a specific company. Regularly update your online information.

Set goals that fit the SMART criteria: specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and timely. Review your progress weekly. Be aware of your performance metrics at your current job. If your company doesn’t have them, create your own and get feedback from your boss. If you are thinking about quitting your job, tamp down your fears and examine the situation realistically. Issues could include an unhealthy work environment, insufficient salary, no scope for promotion or not wanting to ascend at that company. If you decide to leave your job, be clear about why.

Don’t shy away from money – embrace it.

Most people measure their career success by the amount of money they make. That’s common, but don’t let salary define your value. Evidence indicates that women have more issues with money than men. The reality that women can have well-paid careers and financial control of their lives is a relatively new social phenomenon. Women in the United States couldn’t even have credit cards in their own name until 1974!

“Ignoring your money will not make anything better; it will only exacerbate the problem.”

Many women feel some fear of money and lack of knowledge about managing their financial life. Identify and work through your money fears.  For your own peace of mind, learn how to manage your finances. Create a budget that reflects your expenses, income and savings on a monthly and yearly basis. Defining your budget empowers you. Being honest with yourself about how much you spend may seem scary, but fully understanding your financial situation enables responsible financial decisions.

Negotiate for the job and salary you want.

Although few companies reveal their salary scales, turn to other mechanisms to learn the market value of your work. Research companies and jobs on sites like Glassdoor or InHerSight. McGoodwin’s Career Contessa website includes The Salary Project, an information resource where people can input their salary information anonymously.

Professionals recommend talking to five or so people who do your job at other firms in your industry to get information about the salary you should expect. To overcome awkwardness, mention the salary range your research indicates and ask for feedback. If you can’t get a good comparison, total your core monthly expenses – rent, utilities, insurance, groceries – and double it. Add 20% to that amount and multiply the total by 12 to get your ideal annual salary. That 20% gives you room to negotiate.   

“Asking for a raise is the ultimate in self-advocacy.”

Negotiating well requires preparing well. To get ready to request a raise, collect memoes and emails from your clients or your boss acknowledging your excellent work. Seek facts that show how your work supported the company’s goals. This could include new clients, contracts or sales you generated. Never inflate your numbers or take credit where you shouldn’t.

Schedule an appointment, and explain to your boss how you will continue to benefit the company. Have a number in mind that is 10% to 15% higher than what you want so you make room for the company’s counteroffer. Record your pitch and practice it.

Negotiating for a new job is a bit different. Contrary to traditional ideas, you should set out an initial, realistic salary amount, which will then become the basis for further negotiations. Tie your salary flexibility to other aspects of compensation. For example, if you’re new to the workforce, a company that provides training will increase your future value.

About the Author

Lauren McGoodwin founded Career Contessa, a site to help women with their careers, in 2013.

Video & Podcast

Strategies for Being Visible, 14 Profile-Raising Ideas for Emerging Female Leaders by Susan Ritchie

Recommendation

Career advancement is not an automatic reward for competence. If you want to rise to a leadership position, you must make your achievements and expertise known. Leadership coach Susan Ritchie offers advice on building a supportive professional network and elevating your profile in your industry through social media, writing and speaking. She recommends cultivating connections in your field and being ready to seize opportunities. Much of her guidance applies to men as well as to women, since Ritchie emphasizes planning, authenticity, effective communication and consistency in your career-building practices. 

Take-Aways

• Competence or expertise doesn’t automatically generate recognition and advancement.
• Expand and nurture your professional network.
• To create an elevated profile, act with boldness and be prepared to handle conflict and risk.
• Be vigilant for new opportunities and open to creative possibilities, including volunteering.
• Give people a good reason to remember you. Listen deeply and speak persuasively and confidently.
• Speak up for yourself. Cultivate a sponsor who will advocate for you.
• Use social media consistently and wisely to raise your profile.
• Develop your individual voice through writing and public speaking.
• Make meetings work for you by preparing rigorously, participating effectively and following up promptly.
• Learn how to ask for, evaluate, incorporate and share feedback.

Strategies for Being Visible Book Summary

Competence or expertise doesn’t automatically generate recognition and advancement.

Despite significant strides in the last decades, women remain underrepresented at the highest corporate levels. If you have career ambitions, the earlier you acquire the skills and strategies you need to raise your profile, the more likely you are to realize your goals. Identify the results you want so you can make the strategic choices that help you achieve them. Ask: What do I want my career to look like in two years, and what do I need to do to get there? Work out what skills, contacts and experience you need now, in six months and in a year. Develop a plan to get where you want to be. The sooner you begin, the better.

“I made a plan for my career, just like a business plan…I set a career path,” says Kate Davies, CEO of Nottinghill Housing. “I thought to myself, what is there in my workplace that I have to do to get the next step up?”

Keeping a professional journal can help you analyze your current status and determine your next steps. Make journaling part of your weekly routine. Use your journal to log your achievements, review your project performance, flag areas for growth, note new contacts and track important conversations. Consider recruiting an accountability buddy to keep you both on track.

Expand and nurture your professional network.

A network supplies the social capital that funds your career. Start early in your career to build and maintain your network – it’s essential to your progress. Formal networking groups can be valuable, but they aren’t the only way to build connections. Create a visual map of all your personal, business-related and family contacts. Review it to identify people who could contribute to your professional progress. Determine the people you need to meet who aren’t yet part of your network. When possible, use conferences or other industry events to make those connections.

Networks grow stronger when you consider not what they can do for you, but what you can do for them. To make yourself memorable, be useful – for example, introduce two people who would benefit from knowing one another.

“Every time you meet someone” advises Mary Kay Ash, founder of Mary Kay cosmetics, “imagine they have an invisible sign around their neck saying ‘make me feel important’.”

Set up a tracking system, in software or in your professional journal, to log your contacts, keep notes and set priorities. When you know you’ll meet new people, for example, at an event, block out time in your calendar to reach out to them. Send a warm note, telephone them, provide them useful information or connect via social media.

Institute your own network group, either internally with colleagues, locally in your city or even industry-wide. Coordinating such a group will raise your profile.

To create an elevated profile, act with boldness and be prepared to handle conflict and risk.

Everyone experiences self-doubt and lapses in confidence. Accept the discomfort that comes with taking on new challenges that raise your visibility. Inventory your skills and strengths. Focus on where you excel to reinforce your self-confidence. Use your professional journal to track what you learn and how you improve. List 10 professional achievements that make you feel proud.

“It’s impossible to demonstrate your value to others if you cannot see it yourself.”

Don’t linger in your comfort zone: Reach for professional opportunities that make you stretch. Men are more likely to apply for jobs for which they satisfy only 60% of the stated requirements; women generally don’t try to compete unless they can check off 100% of the list. Consider that 40% of criteria you don’t yet meet as potential areas for growth.

Getting out of your comfort zone means owning your opinions and presenting them clearly and authoritatively. Stop hedging your statements. Expect disagreement; don’t take it personally or let it rattle you. Remain respectful and calm, but don’t be afraid to stand out and be different.

Be vigilant for new opportunities and open to creative possibilities, including volunteering.

You can’t profit from opportunities you cannot see. Stay abreast of developments in your field. Be ready to sign on to a new opportunity with an attitude that presumes you’ll overcome any obstacles that arise. Tenacity and determination make it possible to say yes in the face of uncertainty.

Curiosity helps you find opportunities if you ask the right questions. What could be done differently and better? How could you step up and lead? On social media, don’t wait for invitations to participate in discussions or debates about important topics in your field. Add value to the conversation.

“Your workplace may not be able to provide everything you need to grow and develop yourself.”

Volunteering expands your leadership skills. Select volunteer work that encourages you to learn new skills, use your expertise and stretch, but be sure you have the time and energy to keep your commitment. Choose an engagement that allows you to demonstrate your abilities to a larger community.

Give people a good reason to remember you. Listen deeply and speak persuasively and confidently.

To establish a memorable connection with people, reflect and affirm the values you share with them. Bring positive energy to every interaction. How you show up may change depending on context, but remain genuine.

Listening has three levels: surface – when someone’s talking and you don’t really engage; conversation – when you’re paying attention, but looking for a chance to jump in yourself; and deep listening – being fully present and actively seeking to understand.Deep listening makes others feel seen and valued, and they’ll remember you for that. To practice it, you must set aside your preconceptions and judgments, your agenda and your need to chime in.

“Authenticity is about understanding who you are in the moment and knowing that we are complex creatures with different layers. We’re not one-dimensional.”

Cultivate empathy. A leader perceives and responds to other people’s needs and wants. If you understand what matters most to your audience, you can frame your message to address their concerns. Questions prompted by curiosity and concern build trust and reveal possibilities. Effective leaders seek a shared win-win outcome from every dialogue.

Being empathetic doesn’t mean being a doormat or a people-pleaser. To be a leader, you must be ready to challenge the status quo, to champion change, to be respectfully assertive and willing to take risks.

Speak up for yourself. Cultivate a sponsor who will advocate for you.

Men often talk over or interrupt women and some appropriate and restate women’s ideas. You must persist: Learn how to be bold and get heard.

Small talk is a leadership skill. The ability to make others feel comfortable and establish a connection with people above and below you in the hierarchy can work wonders. Few careers are built one reluctant monosyllable at a time.

“The ability to engage others in conversation, put them at ease and help them to feel accepted is a real skill, and people who have this talent are engaging and unforgettable. How you leave people feeling in business and life really matters.”

Having regular conversations with your boss strengthens your working relationship. These conversations are essential for managing up; finding common ground in conversation makes you a more effective employee and your boss a more understanding manager and ally.

Talking with people in power gives you the opportunity to learn and to make the case for yourself. Ask for training, ask for a promotion, and let them see your ambition and eagerness to learn. Ask the leaders you meet how they got where they are and what their best advice is for someone with similar aspirations.

Such a conversation could lead to a higher-up becoming your advocate: a person who champions your skills and potential and acts as an ally to smooth your path to new opportunities. This is a huge gift. It means someone is willing to risk his or her reputation on your behalf. A network that includes senior personnel assures you that people at the top see your achievements. It helps you stay in touch with those who share your values. Moreover, an advocate for your career may emerge from among them.

Use social media consistently and wisely to raise your profile.

With planning and diligence, leverage social media for greater visibility in your industry. The broader the recognition of your expertise and contributions, the more choices you’ll have and the more robust your career will be.

Where do the people in your field hang out on social media? Where are the lively conversations and information exchanges? When you figure that out, make yourself a presence there. One popular choice is Twitter; its strength is that anyone can respond to anyone. If you ask an interesting question or contribute a useful comment, you may initiate a dialogue. Over time, you may find a mentor, gain an invitation to write for a blog, become a podcast guest, connect with experts, or become known for your contributions to a public conversation.

“Consider what you want to be known for and then ensure that everything you post online reflects that.”

Discipline is essential with social media. Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and other platforms can easily become time-eaters and diversions. To manage your time, carefully select and follow the most inspiring leaders and publications in your field. Post and retweet valuable information, including your own work. Use hashtags to label your posts and comments by topic. Be consistent and stay on message. Respond to productive questions and insightful comments.

Develop your individual voice through writing and public speaking.

Before social media, there was ink on paper and the human voice. Writing and public speaking remain essential tools for becoming visible to a wider community. React thoughtfully to current events and hot topics in your field. Craft an article for your company’s newsletter. Write a white paper showcasing your expertise. As you become a more experienced writer, you might reach out to industry publications or even consider writing a book.

“Your boss will think you’re fabulous,” says Carolyn Pearson, CEO of Maiden Voyage, ”if you’re putting the discretionary effort into writing a white paper on top of everything else you’re doing.”

Many people face anxiety at the prospect of public speaking, but it remains one of the most effective ways to elevate your visibility. Build your confidence by starting small. Volunteer to do presentations – and get training if you need it. Make sure you have something worthwhile to say at every meeting. Propose a brief talk for a networking event. After you’ve gained experience, respond to conferences’ calls for speakers. Organizations like Toastmasters can help you hone your public speaking skills.

After each speech or presentation, give yourself credit for three things you did right and identify one thing you might change. Avoid seeking others’ opinions, but acknowledge any commentary graciously. Use your talk as an opportunity to follow up with important audience members, particularly if you otherwise would have no reason to connect with them.

Make meetings work for you by preparing rigorously, participating effectively and following up promptly.

Every meeting is a chance to make a positive impression. To get the most out of a meeting, prepare. Know the agenda and identify how you can contribute useful input. Study the materials in advance. If you’ll need allies in the room, identify them beforehand. Arrive early to chat with other participants. Use your calendar and professional journal to set aside time to prepare before every meeting, as well as to outline your take-aways and next action steps. Plan to follow up with contacts afterward.

“If you’re not speaking up, then why are you around the table?” asks Charlotte Sweeney, CEO of Charlotte Sweeney Associates. “If I’m halfway through a meeting, and I haven’t said anything, I ask myself, what value am I adding here? ”

Make sure you have an opinion to offer or well-informed, pertinent questions to ask. Keep your remarks focused and brief. Don’t let yourself be talked over or interrupted. If someone tries, continue your comments and focus your gaze on the meeting’s leader. In some instances, holding up a “stop” hand to silence the interrupter is effective.

Learn how to ask for, evaluate, incorporate and share feedback.

If you aspire to leadership, feedback tells you how others perceive your actions and helps you calibrate your behavior. Beyond its direct utility, soliciting and receiving feedback makes you more visible. It can help you cultivate a relationship with a potential mentor or advocate.

Don’t overdo requests for feedback. Seek it for major project milestones or specific intervals a few times a year. Request specific guidance you can act on: What one thing am I doing especially well? What one thing could I do to improve? Pay attention to feedback from a variety of sources that reveals repeating motifs.

“Feedback is the best learning curve anyone can have,” says Heather Melville, director for strategic partnerships at the Royal Bank of Scotland, “and the cheapest market research you can get! ”

While you don’t have to honor others’ opinions – especially unsolicited ones – try to set aside any reflexive defensiveness. Determine if there’s truth to the criticism and decide whether to act on it or not. When feedback is positive, share it with your boss, colleagues, mentors and professional network. That’s not boasting; that’s ensuring that they recognize your good work.

About the Author

Leadership coach, blogger and speaker Susan Ritchie also wrote Strategies for Being Brilliant: 21 Ways to Be Happy, Confident and Successful.

She Made It, The Toolkit for Female Founders in the Digital Age by Angelica Malin

Recommendation

Starting your own business can be daunting – especially if you’re a woman looking to enter this predominantly male arena. Women often struggle with low self-confidence and impostor syndrome, which prevent them from realizing their dreams. Angelica Malin, award-winning entrepreneur and founder of About Time Magazine, focuses on the practical steps to take and the mind-set you’ll require to launch and build your own business. She provides useful workbook sections and inspiring interviews with female business founders.

Take-Aways

• Before starting your own business, make sure you understand your motivation and purpose.
• Entrepreneurs need resilience and positivity.
• Success looks different for everyone. Don’t compare yourself to others.
• Your productivity depends on understanding your unique skill set and planning each week rigorously.
• You can learn to be a leader.
• A service-based business requires minimal start-up capital, but brings in less revenue than a product-based business.
• Understand your target market.
• Create a personal brand to stand out, grow your business and nurture customer loyalty.
• Developing an effective PR strategy requires thorough research and personal engagement.

She Made It Book Summary

Before starting your own business, make sure you understand your motivation and purpose.

To build a career you love, know what matters to you. Consider what your ideal workday might look like – do you want flexible working hours and a home office? Or do you want to run a large global company? Identify your passions. They will get you through difficult times and guide your decision-making.

“Purpose is the single most important part of any business. You need to know your why: why you’re doing what you’re doing, what you’re trying to achieve, why you care.”

Knowing the purpose of your business is the first step to a successful career you love. Many female founders start businesses because of their experiences with a particular problem or situation. For example, Tania Boler, founder and CEO of Elvie, realized when she had children how much strain the body undergoes during pregnancy and childbirth. She got a team together to develop a product to train the pelvic muscles.

Entrepreneurs need resilience and positivity.

Cultivating the right mind-set is an essential aspect of building a successful business. As an entrepreneur, you need to believe in yourself and your idea. You can learn to be positive. Remind yourself regularly why you are starting your business and what you want to get out of it. Set small, achievable goals rather than large, abstract ones. Write down your achievements and celebrate your successes.

“Women…find it hard to own their success, and will attribute it to chance.”

Practice resilience, one of the most helpful skills you can develop to sustain your entrepreneurial journey. Resilience comes from being confident in who you are and what your business can provide. Spend time with positive, practical people who support you and offer sound advice. For Camilla Barnard, co-founder of Rude Health, this meant finding a business partner with whom she could share responsibilities, successes and frustrations.

Play through worst-case scenarios, and think about how you might respond to them. Consider competition as a sign you’re doing things right, and let it inspire you to revisit your business offering. While keeping an eye on developments in your field is important, limit the time and money you spend on social media, and be selective about the feeds and people you follow.

Success looks different for everyone. Don’t compare yourself to others.

People often think of success as reaching a certain position, earning a certain amount of money or owning certain status symbols. Yet success is not necessarily about material achievements – it’s about your emotions around your achievements. Feeling successful can come from achieving a sense of security, or simply enjoying what you do. No single definition of success fits everyone, and your definition is likely to change depending on what stage of your life and your career you are in now. When you’re in your 20s, for example, you might prioritize the flexibility to travel – whereas at a later stage, success might mean not having to work overtime and being financially secure. Understanding what your success might look like helps you remember not to compare yourself to other people and not to compare your achievements to theirs.

“By comparing ourselves with others and their successes, we can lose sight of ourselves, our goals and our business.”

Women in particular tend to struggle with impostor syndrome and self-doubt, so stay clear about what matters to you. This will help you focus. Regard obstacles or failures as lessons to learn from, and never take them personally. When self-doubt hits, remind yourself of your accomplishments. Write down your goals so that you track your progress. Keep a record of positive things that happen, and invest in yourself so you can be at your best.

Your productivity depends on understanding your unique skill set and planning each week rigorously.

Identifying your unique set of skills helps you build a career that suits you, gives you the energy to deal with the challenges that come with running your own business and informs your hiring decisions. To define your individual skill set, think back on what you enjoyed doing as a child. Ask a friend or colleague to assess your strengths. (You’re likely to have blind spots when it comes to evaluating your own abilities.) Having a candid take on your strengths and weaknesses will help you focus on the jobs you do best so you can plan your work effectively, thereby boosting your productivity.

“The most important thing I’ve learned about productivity is that it’s best friends with planning.”

When planning your days and your weeks, identify the most important tasks and batch them together, so you don’t have to switch often among your tasks and projects. Schedule time for administrative chores and for relaxation.

Use automation where possible, for example, for sorting emails, getting alerts, following up on invoices, and so on. However, be aware that technology can distract you and drain your productivity. Clinical psychologist Kirren Schnack recommends a regular detox from technology – for example, scheduling time with your phone switched off, setting a timer for phone use, turning off notifications, and deciding before your day starts when and for how long you want to use your phone.

You can learn to be a leader.

Leading well is an important part of building a successful business. Many female managers and executives find leadership challenging because women often care more about being liked than being respected.

Good leadership requires listening and showing your team members that you appreciate them and their work. It demands self-confidence and commitment to your business and your team. Taking steps to boost your confidence is a worthwhile investment – whether you’re finding a mentor or coach, attending training courses, or spending a little extra on work clothes or gym classes.

“Investing in your personal development and growth is one of the best things you can do for the long-term health of your company.”

Being a founder and a leader can be lonely and stressful, so put activities and assets in place to help you with these challenges. Take the time to learn the skills you might need, rather than trying to pick them up on the fly. Structure your days and weeks so you don’t end up working around the clock. Schedule downtime during which you never think about work – pursuing a hobby can help. Put a support framework in place, whether it’s an informal network of friends and family or a group of like-minded professionals. Consider taking on a co-founder, someone whose skills complement yours and whose vision and values align with yours.

A service-based business requires minimal start-up capital, but brings in less revenue than a product-based business.

Businesses are generally either service-based or product-based, though you can devise a combination of the two. Each type has advantages and disadvantages, both during the start-up phase and when you try to scale and grow. Service-based businesses generally have lower start-up costs, and are relatively straightforward and less risky to set up. They allow for greater flexibility – so you could, for example, start a service-based business while still doing another job.

“The brilliant thing about being a founder is it gives you the freedom to create a business that suits you perfectly.”

However, service-based businesses are more difficult to scale – taking on more work and increasing revenue will sooner or later require additional staff. Setting the right price for your services might pose a challenge, since hourly fees must take administrative tasks into account.

Product-based businesses are easier to scale: once you have your product, producing more units doesn’t necessarily require more staff. However, products carry risk: You must invest money up front for research, prototypes and production. You’re also unlikely to know the scope of your customer demand until you launch, no matter how much market research you do.

Understand your target market.

Once you solidify your business idea, identify your target market. Whatever type of business you start, make sure it solves a problem for that audience. Engage with and listen to potential customers to find out what they really want. It might be different from what you have in mind.

“Our consumer is always the one in control – without them, there is no business.”

Formalize your business ideas and findings into a business plan – even if you’re a one-person firm – to develop structure and gain clarity about what you want to achieve. If you use your business plan to raise money, include details about market analysis and finance. This means working out how much money you need and how you’re going to raise it. You have options, ranging from getting friends and family to buy into your business, crowdfunding, approaching angel or venture capital investors, applying for government entrepreneurial support, or taking out a bank loan.

Create a personal brand to stand out, grow your business and nurture customer loyalty.

Invest money and time in creating your brand. Getting this right from the onset is important, since changing your brand identity once you’re up and running can be difficult and can impede your progress. Make sure you have licenses and trademark protection, and consider any additional support you might require – for example, an accountant or bookkeeper. 

Business success today depends more and more on your personal brand. Your offering doesn’t have to be completely new or different to sell. If you link it to your personal brand – your passion, heritage, experience and skills – it immediately becomes unique and sets you apart from your competition. This enables you to determine your own price and to protect the future of your business.

“Uniqueness doesn’t always come from having a never-been-seen-before product or service, but from the way in which you package it.”

Using social media effectively is a crucial component of building a personal brand. Be truthful and consistent to develop a following and to establish a relationship with your audience. Tell your story, and create a growing community by listening to your followers. You don’t need to be on every social media platform – focus on the platforms your target audience enjoys. Include calls to action in your posts, and keep your branding and tone of voice consistent across all your posts and platforms. Creating opportunities for your audience, for example, by posting or reposting job advertisements provides value to your followers and encourages others to join.

Developing an effective PR strategy requires thorough research and personal engagement.

Getting your business or product noticed in the media can be challenging. Many businesses are competing for the attention of journalists, broadcasters and top bloggers. To stand out from the crowd, identify the media outlets that are the most relevant to your business, your likely customers and the story you’re trying to sell.

“PR is personal, and the more personalized you can make your pitch, the better.”

Keep your pitch short and relevant, and have the information a media outlet might ask for at the ready – for example, high-resolution images, quotes, a list of shops that stock your product, and so on. Engage with journalists, podcasters and broadcasters on their social media channels, and establish yourself as an expert in your field by undertaking some public activities, such as applying for awards, seeking speaking opportunities or starting a podcast. As author and award-winning PR coach Natalie Trice explains, good PR is about becoming a leader in your particular area and showcasing yourself as a knowledgeable, entertaining media guest.

About the Author

Award-winning entrepreneur Angelica Malin is founder and editor-in-chief of About Time Magazine and a regular media contributor on business and entrepreneurship.

Video & Podcast

Pregnant Then Screwed, The Truth About the Motherhood Penalty and How to Fix It by Joeli Brearley

Women pay a professional and financial price for having children – in employment opportunities, career advancement and salary. In this infuriating, compassionate book, a British women’s rights activist describes exactly how the workplace fails women with children, what women can do to fight back, and how society can start loving its mothers.

In the United States, women earn, on average, approximately 80% of what men do. And women in every country in Europe, too, receive lower average salaries than their male counterparts – an average of 13% lower across the EU in 2020, according to the European Commission.

But it seems statements about the gender pay gap need to carry a startling, heartbreaking qualification: Women who don’t have children earn about the same amount as men. The pay gap arises because women who have children earn far less than women who don’t – a phenomenon sociologists have dubbed “the motherhood penalty.” Author Joeli Brearley also terms it “the procreation gap”: the literal price women pay for perpetuating the human race.

The Procreation Gap

Brearley lays out the reasons for the procreation gap with passion, clarity and more than a few swear words. And she brings the receipts. First, she notes, women face rampant employment discrimination during pregnancy and motherhood. In the United Kingdom alone, 54,000 women lose their jobs each year just for clocking in pregnant, and nearly 80% of working mothers contend with discrimination or negative treatment at work.

From the moment the stick turns blue, we face challenges and barriers we never previously knew existed.

JOELI BREARLEY

Women do have the right to 39 weeks of paid maternity leave in the United Kingdom, and in 2010, the UK’s Equality Act outlawed discrimination on the basis of maternity or pregnancy. But as Brearley points out, legal rights mean little when employers regularly disregard them – leaving little recourse for women who are already exhausted by childbirth and the travails of mothering an infant. A mere 1% of British women who encounter workplace discrimination related to maternity or pregnancy ever undertake legal action. Yet 77% of working mothers report having experienced some form of workplace discrimination. Young mothers, those with disabilities and minority women face additional challenges.

Get Pregnant, Get a Pink Slip

In 2013, while working for a children’s charity, Brearley received a phone call from the organization’s CEO informing her that her contract had been terminated. Brearley had told her employer that she was pregnant only the day before.

Brearley first sought to bring a suit against the employer, but the combination of legal fees – estimated at £9,000 (about US$10,700) – and a risky pregnancy led her to abandon the case. Women have only three months from the date of the discriminatory action to start proceedings, Brearley explains, a limitation that would have pregnant women, already struggling with financial worries due to the loss of income, also take on the expense and stress of raising a tribunal claim.

No matter how much we try to escape traditional gendered roles…women are constantly being nudged back to the kitchen sink.

JOELI BREARLEY

Brearley soon found new employment. But as she spoke with other mothers, she learned her experience was far from isolated. She founded the nonprofit organization Pregnant Then Screwed in 2015 to support women who’ve suffered discrimination on the basis of their pregnancy or maternity and, ultimately, to end the motherhood penalty. During the COVID-19 pandemic, she took the British government to court for indirect sex discrimination – and won. Brearley serves on a UN working group for women’s human rights, and in 2021, Vogue listed her among the 25 most influential British women.

Guidance for Mothers

Throughout the book, Brearley offers heartfelt advice and practical knowledge to help mothers navigate – and fight back against – a work world that systematically excludes and disadvantages them. Noting that women often fail to take action because guilt and shame hamper their response, Brearley explains where those feelings of guilt and shame stem from societal expectations, inaccurate media portrayals of motherhood, gender-biased scientific studies and denigrating messages from employers themselves, and she encourages women to protect their mental health and assert their rights.

Pregnant Then Screwed has supported thousands of women in insisting on their rights in the workplace, and that extensive experience informs Brearley’s advice to readers who might be undergoing their own difficulties. For example, Brearley points out that many employers weaponize nondisclosure agreements to gag and disempower women who’ve suffered discrimination. She assures readers that these agreements rarely provide legal cover for wrongdoing – and that employers know this.

A Better World for Mothers

After thoroughly defining the problem – the persistent pay gap for mothers; the discrimination women face just for having children; and the challenges and burdens placed on the shoulders of women who become pregnant, bear children or lose them – Brearley outlines solutions with equal precision. She dismisses self-employment as a solution, citing sobering facts: Some 60% of new businesses fail within their first three years; about half of all self-employed people subsist on poverty wages; self-employed mothers often can’t afford to stop working after giving birth; and the gender pay gap stands at a stunning 43% among the self-employed.

We’ve forced our childbearing hips into pairs of corporate trousers that were never designed for us, and, quite frankly, it has given us thrush.

Instead, Brearley calls for specific reforms in a host of areas: flexible working hours for everyone (and fewer hours in the first place); accessible, affordable, high-quality child care; higher salaries for child care workers; a shift to a focus on productivity rather than presenteeism; paternity leave, paid and ring-fenced so fathers can actually spend more time with their children; a justice system that provides access for pregnant and post-partum mothers, and that holds companies accountable; and quotas – such as those already in existence in France, Italy, Germany, Spain, China and India – that ensure women hold a measure of power in corporations.

Although Brearley’s anecdotes and case studies focus on the United Kingdom, her passionate arguments deal with universal themes and problems. If you are a mother or if you have a mother, Brearley’s treatise will likely enrage you. She makes a powerful case that it’s time to stop penalizing women for procreating, and to start building a society that supports mothers.

Video & Podcast

Fearless, The New Rules for Unlocking Creativity, Courage, and Success by Rebecca Minkoff

Recommendation

How did fashion designer Rebecca Minkoff go from barely covering her rent to transforming a T-shirt design business into a multimillion dollar fashion label? Minkoff attributes her success to hard work and fearlessly forging her own path. In her lively, accessible book, she distills the lessons learned during her career into 21 maxims you can apply to your own unique journey. If you just want to imitate someone else’s success, says Minkoff, follow the template of your predecessors. But if you want to create something totally new, dare to do things differently.

Take-Aways

• Fashion designer Rebecca Minkoff offers her tips for professional success. First, own your choices.
• Choose purpose over profit, and give back to your community.
• Be specific about your needs, and seek opportunities you may be missing.
• Conquer your fears. Take risks and venture into the unknown.
• Cultivate strong working relationships, and stay aligned with deep communication.
• Be accessible to a broad audience, and don’t rush yourself or take shortcuts.
• Stop imitating others. Give yourself freedom to experiment.
• Flip your perspective about change, and tune into your intuition. 
• Opt to collaborate rather than compete.
• Prioritize self-care, and design a life that works for you.
• Treat failure as a learning opportunity, and recognize that your goals will keep evolving.

Fearless Book Summary

​​​​Fashion designer Rebecca Minkoff offers her tips for professional success. First, own your choices.

For two decades, fashion designer Rebecca Minkoff worked from the ground up, building her global luxury fashion label. Now, she shares her rules for success. You can choose how you apply these guidelines on your own path toward success. Sometimes pursuing your goals will mean eschewing safe and established conventions, and forging new ways of working. Thus, adopt Minkoff’s advice only when and where you see fit. Remember that true success – however you define it – takes hard work and dedication. Nobody achieves their dreams overnight.

“If I had taken the safe route and always done as I was told, when I was told, where I was told, I’m pretty sure I would be answering the phones at my father’s office in Florida.”

Throughout your formative years, you likely sought permission to do what you wished to do. For example, children must ask their parents or guardians if they want to eat or go outdoors to play. As an adult, don’t ask others to validate your choices before you make them; doing so offloads responsibility onto others for matters you yourself should handle. Instead, embrace your autonomy and direct your own life.

Choose purpose over profit, and give back to your community.

When you were a child, how did you respond to the question, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” You likely answered authentically – even if your answer was something outrageous, such as a “ballerina cat.” As adults, many people stop believing in their dreams, because they worry that following them won’t pay the bills. Try to reconnect with your sense of purpose, seizing opportunities that align with your unique strengths. For example, if your greatest strength is your ability to listen empathetically to others, then choosing an accounting role, for instance, might not serve your purpose as well as working in a customer service position. Find work that feels truly rewarding to you.

You can help others in your community in many ways. Giving back could mean beautifying your neighborhood or joining a social movement, for example. You have something to offer those around you, and you should take an active role in building the kind of world in which you want to live. You don’t need to spend money to make a difference. Think about ways you could use your time, energy, skills, ideas and resources meaningfully. If you believe you don’t have time to give back, think about the last time you sat down to watch your favorite television show or browsed social media. You decide how to spend your time, so take ownership of the choices you make.

Be specific about your needs, and seek the opportunities you may be missing.

People frequently ask Minkoff if she has time to chat with them about their careers. She turns down such vague requests because it’s impossible to offer meaningful advice to people who ask for generic tips and aren’t specific about their needs. You’re the only one capable of discovering what you need, and you can’t expect others to figure out those needs on your behalf. Try to answer as many of your own questions as you can before reaching out to successful people for help. Do your own research. If your question is common, the public figure from whom you seek help has likely already answered it in a public forum. Once you’ve found answers to general questions, you may discover a bigger, more meaningful question you’d like to ask someone you admire. Be specific when you solicit input. Asking more targeted questions will lead to better answers.

You may find yourself in a tough situation and feel you lack options, or you could face poor options that don’t serve your needs. When Minkoff first moved to New York, before her career took off, she faced a tough choice: She could rent a cool apartment that exceeded her budget or move back home to live rent-free in her childhood bedroom in Florida. She eked out a third option for herself, although it wasn’t instantly apparent: She found a cheaper, less-glamorous apartment on the Lower East Side and started a side hustle working as a stylist on commercials. Search for flexible, creative solutions to your problems that may not be immediately obvious.

Conquer your fears. Take risks and venture into the unknown.

Examine your fears and anxieties, and try to understand what they can teach you about yourself. If you discover your fears are suppressing your full potential, cast them aside. If something you try fails, don’t engage in negative self-talk. Acknowledge the reality of your situation, remove the emotion from it and don’t be afraid to walk away. Avoid wasting your time agonizing about why things didn’t pan out exactly as you’d hoped. Seize opportunities to pivot and forge a new path for yourself.

“Fear is not calling the shots. It’s not in control. You are. You don’t have to listen to it. You don’t have to let it stop you.”

Fear isn’t always a negative emotion. It can help you avoid disaster, navigate dangerous situations and increase your awareness of the world around you. Fear becomes negative only when it stands between you and your dreams. You can overcome this kind of fear and develop the courage to live life on your own terms. Though it can feel overwhelming, your fear doesn’t actually control you. You’re the one who ultimately decides what course of action to take. Overcoming your fear doesn’t mean eliminating it; it means learning to take purposeful action while facing it.

Try something new. You have no guarantees that your ventures will work out, but by taking a chance, you might just reach your desired outcome or generate new ideas for solving a problem you face.

Cultivate strong working relationships, and stay aligned with deep communication.

You can’t have productive working relationships without clear communication. When you communicate in a confusing manner, your outcomes will be sloppy. When you talk to your team, take time to make sure everyone understands the message you wish to convey. Minkoff often stops during meetings and scans for people nodding their heads. If your company is new, prepare yourself for an adjustment period of trial and error. Women often struggle to embrace directness and clarity at work, because people expect them to project positivity at all times. This can muddy your message when you face a problem. Honest feedback can propel your projects forward and bring new perspectives.

Try to understand others’ triggers, and don’t dismiss their concerns, even if those issues seem trivial to you. Articulate your weaknesses so that others understand your shortcomings, as well as your strengths. Delineate your own boundaries and respect other people’s. For example, some may find constant communication disruptive.

Effective communication requires more than just clarity and understanding. To cultivate close relationships, you must display vulnerability. If you want to have a long-term relationship with a friend, colleague or partner, you’ll need to engage in deep conversations that evolve with your relationship. View your conversations as investments in the partnerships you’re nurturing.

Flip your perspective about change, and tune into your intuition.

Be wary of becoming too attached to your ideas; sometimes you’re going to have to expand them or change your approach. Don’t take opportunities for improvement as a sign that your original idea is bad; view them as indications that you’re growing and are moving in the right direction.

If you listen to your gut when making choices, you will less likely regret them. Swap any negative self-talk with positive thoughts. Tell yourself, for example, that you are the best person to make decisions for your business, because you know it better than anyone else. Imposter syndrome can trigger the belief that you aren’t the best-qualified person to make the tough choices in your life. Don’t allow decision fatigue to paralyze you.

“Negative thinking gets the better of all of us sometimes…I ring the alarm when a negative thought creeps in, and I reinforce the opposite.”

Remind yourself that you occupy your current role because you belong there. While some situations warrant expert advice – for instance, if numbers don’t come easily to you, seek out a financial expert – synthesize any information you gather and, ultimately, make your own decisions.

Be accessible to a broad audience, and don’t rush yourself or take shortcuts.

You might think that cultivating brand desirability is inherently tied to exclusivity, but overpricing your product or service, or making your offerings scarce in order to create a cachet of luxury and prestige won’t help you.

“Playing hard to get is overrated…If it feels like an old way of thinking, that’s because it is…Inclusivity is the new exclusivity.”

For example, when Minkoff decided to reduce the price of her bags to get them onto the arms of more customers than would be possible if she kept the price on the high-end of the luxury purse spectrum, her sales increased 548%.

Skimping on details to work faster is unlikely to yield the results you want. For example, you might decide to use a template to get a website up and running quickly, but then you could wind up having to rebuild your site because you don’t get the result you’d envisioned. Cutting corners rarely reaps dividends. Accept that the results you seek require good, quality work, which takes time.

Stop imitating others. Give yourself freedom to experiment.

You may feel tempted to mimic someone else’s strategy and process, but it’s best to discover your own. While finding inspiration in others’ work is natural, being your own director is important. Relish the fact that nobody can replicate your work from a place of authenticity, or in the same singular way that you can.

If you simply follow others’ templates for success, you’ll imitate their results, wins and mistakes. Each industry has its own rules and methodologies, created by the successful people who came before you. If you wish to create something new, you must be a pioneer and an innovator. Dare to fly in the face of what has gone before.

Opt to collaborate rather than compete.

You may be tempted to view others’ wins with envy or jealousy. Women who have a scarcity mind-set due to a historic lack of opportunities may struggle, particularly, with such feelings. But that attitude doesn’t serve you. When you see others successfully doing the work you want to do, cheer them on as an inspiration – a proof of concept. Collaborate with other women you admire to achieve meaningful change. Collectively you are greater than the sum of your individual parts.

Prioritize self-care, and design a life that works for you.

Often, the best form of self-care is connecting with your passion for purpose-driven work. If you feel burned out, reflect on how you’re spending your energy. What aspects of your job make you feel depleted? Perhaps you have issues with a particular colleague or aren’t keen on a new project. Do you love your job? If not, can you find a more meaningful career?

“Burnout comes from living in a constant state of stress. There is no scented candle in the world that will make that feeling go away.”

Reflect on your work environment and get specific about what triggers feelings of burnout. If external factors – such as, say, caring for an aging parent – are causing burnout, find ways to address those issues.

The term “work-life balance” implies a separation between your private and professional lives. But separating those two worlds simply doesn’t work for many people. One realm constantly leaks into the other, and vice versa. Instead, design your life with a broader picture of what makes you feel happy and fulfilled in mind. By taking this approach, you can enjoy your life, overall, even when you face unexpected circumstances that disrupt your sense of balance. Design a life that serves your individual needs. Your approach to navigating your life may shift over time. Accept that you can’t be everything to everyone at all times (working mothers, in particular, often must navigate this minefield), and strive for flexibility, accepting support where possible.

Treat failure as a learning opportunity, and recognize that your goals will keep evolving.

You might fail to reach your desired outcomes just as often as you succeed. Try to take a measured approach to failure: Don’t fall apart or react with shock. Instead, acknowledge what didn’t work and move forward. Treat your failures as learning opportunities, then try again with a positive attitude.

Acknowledge that you’ll never achieve all you want to achieve because your dreams keep evolving along with you. Just as you have endless possibilities, the journey you take toward realizing your purpose is also endless.

About the Author

Rebecca Minkoff founded an affordable luxury fashion label in 2001. She hosts Superwomen, a weekly podcast, and is a co-founder of the Female Founder Collective, an organization that connects women business leaders across industries.

Video & Podcast

The Book of Gutsy Women, Favorite Stories of Courage and Resilience by Hillary Rodham Clinton and Chelsea Clinton

Recommendation

Hillary Rodham Clinton and Chelsea Clinton continue in print their decades-long conversation about strong, capable and brave women, both well known and unknown. The women and girls profiled made a difference in their communities and pioneered future opportunities for all women. An encyclopedic catalog of trailblazing women, this bestseller – which both authors acknowledge is far from comprehensive – will educate, inspire and entertain readers with its empowering overview of what women can achieve.

Take-Aways

• Dorothy Rodham, Hillary Clinton’s mother and first role model, was like the typical 1950s TV mom.
• Margaret Chase Smith was a groundbreaking member of Congress.
• Fifty-eight percent of the women who served in the 116th Congress had been Girl Scouts.
• Title IX legislation, which guarantees that girls have equal opportunities in education, enabled the careers of superstar female athletes.
• Fearless female adventurers were often the first women in their fields.
• Many women who became well known worked for years in obscurity.
• Girls and women hold political positions that reverberate around the world.
• Women banding together over time have accomplished more than any one woman could.
• Women developed new perspectives on old problems, thus changing minds and the world.

The Book of Gutsy Women Book Summary

Dorothy Rodham, Hillary Clinton’s mother and first role model, was like the typical 1950s TV mom.

Dorothy Rodham encouraged her daughter and wanted her to have choices she didn’t have. Clinton’s other female role models were fictional, like reporter Brenda Starr and Jo March from Little Women. Nancy Drew inspired both Hillary and Chelsea Clinton. Their heroes include Harriet Tubman, Helen Keller, dancer Isadora Duncan and Maria von Trapp, whose story inspired The Sound of Music. But history is full of unsung “gutsy” women. You’ve heard of Joan of Arc, but have you ever read about her mother Isabelle Romée? She worked for decades to rescue her daughter’s reputation and reverse the Catholic Church’s charge that Joan was guilty of heresy.

Margaret Chase Smith was a groundbreaking member of Congress.

Margaret Chase Smith’s husband – Clyde Harold Smith – was a Republican congressman. When he fell sick during his first term, she took over his duties, then campaigned for his re-election in 1938. In 1940, he urged his supporters to back his wife. After he died, Margaret Chase Smith won the seat in a special election to become Maine’s first congresswoman. She faced a tough primary, and the local paper declared that her gender disqualified her. She won anyway.

“Smith “was a quiet and steadfast champion of policies advancing women’s rights, equality and dignity; I think she was a feminist without claiming the label.”

When Smith ran for Senate, the Maine Republican Party opposed her. Opponents called her a communist for supporting the United Nations and the New Deal. But she won decisively. She was the first senator to speak out against Joseph McCarthy. In 1964, Smith launched her campaign for the presidency, the first woman to try seek a major party nomination. Other groundbreaking US women politicians include presidential candidate Shirley Chisholm, vice-presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro (the first from a major party), Bella Abzug and Virginia House of Delegates member Danica Roem.

Fifty-eight percent of the women who served in the 116th Congress had been Girl Scouts.

Juliette Gordon Low was born in Georgia in 1860. Lord Robert Baden-Powell, who founded the Boy Scouts, inspired Low to start the Girl Scouts. She and her cousin began with a troop of 18 girls in Savannah. As the organization grew, it championed practical knowledge under the motto “Be Prepared.” Low pushed for educating girls and giving them leadership training and financial literacy. Girl Scouts supported the US Army in World War I as volunteer ambulance drivers and nurses’ aides. They sold cookies during the war years. Their program is the largest “girl-led business” worldwide, selling 200 million boxes of cookies annually. Barbara Walters, Serena and Venus Williams, and Madeleine Albright were all Girl Scouts, as were 59 million of today’s American women. Engineer Sylvia Acevedo, current CEO of the Girl Scouts, created new badge programs for the sciences and other fields that men have traditionally dominated. 

Title IX legislation, which guarantees that girls have equal opportunities in education, enabled the careers of superstar female athletes.

After the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor in 1941, police interrogated Patsy Mink’s father, a Japanese-American engineer in Hawaii. Every medical school she applied to rejected Mink because of her gender, despite her stellar grades. She applied to law school, and the University of Chicago accepted her by labeling her an international student, though Hawaii was then a US territory. When she returned home to Hawaii, she fought to take the bar exam. Firms wouldn’t hire her because she was a wife and mother, so she opened her own law practice. She won a US House seat representing Hawaii in 1964.

Bernice “Bunny” Sandler studied sex discrimination. She found that women often had to meet higher standards than men – or gained admission to college only if the school had a quota for women, no matter their qualifications. Sandler discovered that it was unlawful for organizations – including universities – to discriminate on the basis of gender if they accepted money from the federal government. So she filed a class action suit in 1970 against universities. She enlisted Oregon representative Edith Green, an education advocate, who held Congressional hearings on the matter. Green and Mink drafted the legislation for Title IX, which guaranteed equal opportunities in education regardless of gender. Congress passed it, and President Richard Nixon signed it into law in 1972.

“Nearly 50 years later, Title IX has transformed educational opportunities for generations of women and girls.

In 1973, the world watched mesmerized as tennis stars Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs played their historical “Battle of the Sexes” match. King knew it was important to women that she win, and she did. She was afraid that a loss would undermine Title IX and harm the women’s movement. Later, King came out as a lesbian and a champion of LGBTQ rights and equal rights for female athletes.

Title IX boosted the participation of girls in secondary school sports more than 900%. International athletes train in the United States and return home to elevate sports in their countries. Only 700 girls participated in soccer programs before Title IX. Now, more than 390,000 play, paving the way for the championship US women’s soccer team. Despite winning the World Cup several times, US women’s team members still earned just $250,000 in prize money in comparison with their male counterparts – who, if they had won, would have earned $1.1 million each.

Fearless female adventurers were often the first women in their fields.

Margaret Bourke-White was the first American female war correspondent. She began working as a photographer for an architectural firm after graduating from college. She gained fame for her stunning industrial pictures. She worked for Fortune and became the first foreign photojournalist to photograph the Soviet Union in 1930.

Her husband, journalist Erskine Caldwell, joined her in Europe, where Bourke-White documented rising Nazism. As the US entered World War II, she took a job with a New York newspaper. Caldwell wanted to start a family, but Bourke-White didn’t want to give up her career, and she found little support for working and raising children. She went back to Europe, and their marriage ended. Her assignments took her to combat zones and concentration camps. She photographed Gandhi’s struggle in India and South African apartheid. She published 11 collections of photographs.

“Sally Ride and “her fellow would-be astronauts practiced jumping out of planes with parachutes and surviving in open water.”   ”

Around the time that eighth-grader Hillary Rodham got a rejection letter from NASA saying the space program didn’t accept women, Sally Ride was growing up in Encino, California. She was interested in space, but dropped out of college to become a tennis player. She later studied physics at Stanford University and earned her PhD. She won a place in the space shuttle program in 1978, one of 35 astronauts, including six women, that the program accepted from more than 8,000 candidates. Ride piloted jets. She trained for five years, and gained a spot on the Challenger crew for a mission in 1983. She was the first American woman in space. After her career at NASA, she founded the Sally Ride Science organization to develop science programs for schools. Following her death in 2012, the Navy named a research ship for her. Since Ride, 50 American women have traveled to space. 

Many women who became well known worked for years in obscurity. 

Rosa Parks became known as a civil rights activist in 1955 when she refused to give up her seat on a segregated Montgomery, Alabama, bus to a white passenger, leading to her arrest. Parks trained for years as an activist and was well-versed in black history, nonviolent action and organizing. She served as secretary of the Montgomery chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Through the years, Parks pushed for antilynching bills and voter rights protection in the days of arbitrary tests and poll taxes in the South. She persevered until she was able to vote. By 1955, she’d had enough of discrimination. The Montgomery’s Women’s Political Council called for a bus strike the day Parks went to court, and it maintained the strike for nearly a year.

Dolores Huerta is less well known than Cesar Chavez, the leader with whom she co-founded the United Farm Workers Union (UFW) in 1962. While he was the face of the farm workers’ movement, she worked behind the scenes organizing rallies and lobbying for legal protections for workers. Migrant farm workers, usually Latino and Asian, faced abuse and financial hardship. The UFW led fruit and vegetable boycotts, and won stronger contracts with farm owners and vineyards.

“In media interviews, “Chavez was asked about his leadership of the organization…Dolores was asked about motherhood and whether she ever wanted to take a day off and go to a spa!”

Huerta and the UFW got California to pass a law allowing farm workers to unionize and negotiate collectively. Huerta spoke out against the health threats of pesticides. She protested many times over the years, leading to her being arrested 22 times. While she was peacefully protesting against Vice President George H.W. Bush, the San Francisco police beat Huerta so severely she had to have emergency surgery. She won a large settlement, which funded her work and the union. Huerta created the UFW motto “Sí, se puede” – “Yes, we can” – which Barack Obama used in his 2008 presidential campaign. He thanked her for her inspiration when he awarded Huerta the Medal of Freedom in 2012.

Girls and women hold political positions that reverberate around the world.

Malala Yousafzai has advocated for girls’ education in Pakistan since she was 11 years old, when she chastised the Taliban for shutting down girls’ schools. The Taliban stormed her school bus and shot her when she was 15. She was still recovering at age 16 when she spoke at the United Nations to promote girls’ education. Her Malala Fund supports education for girls worldwide.

“Greta Thunberg “couldn’t understand why everyone around her – from classmates to world leaders – wasn’t similarly fixated on confronting this global emergency.”

Greta Thunberg started to raise awareness about the climate emergency in 2018, at age 15. She went on strike from school. She found inspiration from the shooting survivors of Florida’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, and the gun reform movement they started. Thunberg protested alone in front of the building where the Swedish legislature meets – continuing her strike on Fridays, with other students joining her. Her #FridaysForFuture protest has grown worldwide. Thunberg is open about her Asperger’s syndrome, a type of autism, and claims it’s given her singular focus.

Women banding together over time have accomplished more than any one woman could.

Journalist and anti-lynching advocate Ida B. Wells was a suffragette and campaigned for US women’s right to vote. She joined the 1913 Women’s Suffrage Parade with her sorority, but grew angry when she learned the white women who organized the parade relegated black women to the back of the march. She marched at the front with other women from Chicago.

“In 1900, in the face of rising white supremacy within the suffrage movement, [Terrell] reiterated her commitment to suffrage for all women.”

African-American suffragettes took leadership roles, including Anna Julia Haywood Cooper, who spoke at black women’s clubs to persuade members to fight for suffrage. She and Mary Church Terrell taught at the same school. Like Cooper, Terrell believed black and white women had to join together to ensure women’s voting rights. With luminaries who included Wells, Harriet Tubman and poet Frances E.W. Harper, Terrell organized and became the first president of the National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs. These women advocated for equality and fought racism. Wells later co-founded the NAACP. While women won the vote in 1920, the US Senate did not pass antilynching legislation until December 2018.

Women developed new perspectives on old problems, thus changing minds and the world.

Biologist and educator Wangari Maathai began her Green Belt Movement in Kenya to reforest the country and lift people out of poverty. The government targeted her for assassination as a prodemocracy leader. She suffered a vicious beating during a public hunger strike. For leading the Green Belt Movement, which spread throughout Africa and worldwide, in 2004 Maathai became the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize. Her movement planted 50 million trees by the time of her death in 2011, and her daughter Wanjira Mathai continues her work.

“Eleanor Roosevelt “stood up against racism, advocated for the trade union movement, worked to alleviate poverty and create jobs.”

Franklin Delano Roosevelt contracted polio in 1921, and Eleanor Roosevelt took charge of his care. Despite his polio and the opposition of her mother-in-law, Eleanor Roosevelt encouraged her husband’s political ambitions. After FDR’s death, Roosevelt represented the United States in the United Nations, where she spent seven years as ambassador. Roosevelt chaired the UN Human Rights Committee and built consensus for the universal declaration of human rights (UDHR), a visionary codification of “social, economic, cultural, civil and political rights.”

About the Authors

Hillary Rodham Clinton served as first lady, senator from New York and US secretary of state. She became the first woman to win her political party’s nomination for president. Her daughter Chelsea Clinton advocates for women and girls through the Clinton Foundation.

Video & Podcast

Dear Madam President, An Open Letter to the Women Who Will Run the World by Jennifer Palmieri

Recommendation

Political insider Jennifer Palmieri offers a moving tribute to leaders she’s learned from and admired in this poignant insider memoir of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign. Palmieri writes in the form of an open letter offering advice to the first woman who becomes president of the United States in the future, whoever she may be. Palmieri was Clinton’s communications director and had a front row seat to the unique craziness of the 2016 election season. She draws her eclectic – and, fair warning, partisan – memories around processing her sense of loss and considering what it means to survive and thrive in politics as a woman.

Take-Aways

• “When the unimaginable happens, imagine what else may be possible.”
• “Brace yourself: Nothing draws fire like a woman moving forward.”
• “Speak up – your voice is needed.”
• “It’s your world and you can cry if you want to.”
• “Keep your head (and your heart) during a storm. You need both to steer the ship to safety.”
• “Show us what you have been through. It tells us what we can survive.”
• “Don’t search for your role in his story – write your own.”
• “Even when you lose, refuse to be defeated.”
• “We are bound together. Now we need to unite.”

Dear Madam President Summary

“When the unimaginable happens, imagine what else may be possible.”

Jennifer Palmieri felt devastated the day after the November 2016 presidential election. It wasn’t just losing, and it wasn’t coming to a stop after months of continuous movement. Palmieri had to deal with her sister, Dana, who lay sick and dying in Houston.

“She could feel what was happening, all the forces – seen and unseen, cosmic and earthly – that were lining up against her.”

Palmieri had joined Hillary Clinton’s presidential election campaign after being part of the White House communications team for President Bill Clinton and President Barack Obama. Post-election, she took a break from politics. She felt let down by the rules she and other women had always played by. Today, women play by their own rules and win.

“Brace yourself: Nothing draws fire like a woman moving forward.”

Palmieri disliked people lauding Clinton as a “gracious loser,” rather than as a woman ambitious enough to run for president. Palmieri had thought Americans could elect a woman, especially one so qualified. Clinton tried to warn her.

The women’s movement is relatively young. Clinton’s mother was born the day Congress gave women the right to vote. Misogyny was the biggest obstacle to Clinton’s election. Decades of political attacks against her and her husband hurt, but “pervasive gender bias” motivated those who passionately hated Clinton.The Secret Service uses the phrase “move forward, draw fire” when that’s the only option for handling internal disagreement. The phrase was apt for campaign staffers, and for Clinton as well. When a woman moves forward, she draws fire. Clinton broke barriers, blazed her own trail and confounded people because they couldn’t compare her to anyone else. Future women presidents should expect similar or worse attacks. 

“Our culture still tends to characterize ambitious women as pushy, conniving and selfish. This is not unique to politics – it’s true for women in any walk of life.”

The press never trusted an intelligent, capable woman in a powerful position. People would say, “There’s something about her I just don’t like.” Congress called Clinton to testify, and a foreign power actively targeted her candidacy. Republican nominee Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, Julian Assange and James Comey piled on in unprecedented ways. Yet despite sexual assault allegations against Trump, who yelled “lock her up” at rallies and declared he wouldn’t accept the election results if Clinton won, many voters supported him. One reason was that Clinton posed an “existential threat” to patriarchal norms.

“Speak up – your voice is needed.”

While on Obama’s staff, Palmieri spent time in the Oval Office, 10 Downing Street, the Kremlin and Tokyo’s Imperial Palace. Obama kept stress levels low in meetings and encouraged people to speak honestly. Still, as his deputy communications director, Palmieri realized the first time she was in a room with the president that she would have to up her game.

“If you act like you belong in the room, people will believe you do. If you act like your opinion matters, others will, too.”

Other people may be better than you, but they’re not that much better. You’re the one in the room. Do your job.

“It’s your world and you can cry if you want to.”

Clinton’s staff adopted a stoic nod to acknowledge painful information. Such stoicism is how women succeed in a male-dominated world. It proves they’re tough and suits their “sense of duty.” Women try to be superwomen, no matter the costs, because that’s what society expects, and it’s what they expect of themselves.

“There’s something else in the nod from a woman. An acquiescence. A need for approval. If this is the hoop, I will jump through it.”

Men built the professional world and find comfort within it. Women once adopted men’s rules to try to fit in, but the world belongs to women now, too. Women must update the rules of the game to empower themselves. They should “nod less and cry more.” Tears demonstrate powerful emotion. Why mute that? 

After the election, Palmieri had to describe the campaign in a public forum. She planned to be professionally neutral, but when she shared her opinion that the opposing campaign had used race-baiting to divide the country, tears came to her eyes, and her voice wavered. Later, she decided she didn’t care. She had said what she wanted to say. Think of all the good and true things people don’t say because they fear saying it with too much emotion. What a waste. Staffers called Palmieri’s office “the crying room,” a place people could come and cry without anyone judging them. Women can be emotional and still strong.

“Keep your head (and your heart) during a storm. You need both to steer the ship to safety.”

In times of crisis, leaders need to stay calm and focus their teams on solutions. From the leadership examples of the Clintons and Obama, Palmieri learned how important heart can be in times of crisis. When the HealthCare.gov website didn’t work, it damaged the President Obama’s standing and his signature legislative achievement. He told the press office team he expected them to try improve the news coverage, but he knew and wanted them to know that the stories weren’t going to improve until the site worked. Obama’s ability to see the problem clearly was an enormous relief to his staff.

When the court acquitted George Zimmerman, the Florida man who killed unarmed teenager Trayvon Martin in 2012, the verdict caused pain and anger, especially for African-Americans. The country needed to hear from the president. The press office sought a worthy venue for his message to the African-American community. Obama felt he needed to speak not to them but for them, as a black man. He knew he could have been Trayvon Martin at 17.

“No pollster would have advised him to make a speech like that, but it was something all of the country needed to hear.”

When the FBI reopened the case about Hillary Clinton’s email just days before the election, she responded by discussing the charges daily with the press and at her rallies. Her staff convinced Clinton that she didn’t need to talk about it – she’d already said everything there was to say. Better to stick to the big issues, they advised. That’s what Clinton did, but it left her uneasy, and it turned out to be a mistake. Clinton had a sense of what the country wanted to hear from her but, against her better judgment, didn’t say it.

“Show us what you have been through. It tells us what we can survive.”

Being president ages everyone. The future first woman president will pay the “pink tax,” the extra hour women require to do their makeup and hair. Her face will acquire wrinkles and “battle scars,” which will comfort other women because she survived.

“You, more than all the men who preceded you, will be judged on your appearance and how attractive you are.”

Palmieri took a picture of herself on her 50th birthday, the last day she saw her sister before her death. Palmieri felt like hell, and had been through hell. Her face showed it. She hopes the meaning and blessings she acquired on the journey show as well.

“Don’t search for your role in his story – write your own.”

Nobody wrote women into the history books, but women were present as history was made. The US Declaration of Independence and the Constitution don’t mention women. Imagine what the world would be like if women had equal say in politics and culture. Women don’t grow up reading about women making history, so they believe their stories are unimportant. Even Hillary Clinton didn’t think she had an interesting life story. She grew up comfortably middle class. She graduated from college and law school and then met Bill Clinton – and “the rest is his story.” His personal history of rising from a small town in Arkansas to the presidency inspired Americans. Obama’s story reflected the American ideal that a black man could become president.

“It’s not enough for your life to be hard – it has to make sense to us, we have to recognize the struggle, it has to tell us a larger story we want told about America.”

Hillary Clinton was making history, so it was hard to appreciate her story as it unfolded. She decided to emphasize her alignment with Democratic presidents of the past, like Franklin Roosevelt, who took on and solved big problems. Unfortunately, many people didn’t want to hear her. She had to be passionate, but she couldn’t shout. She had to look strong, but also show vulnerability, and people said her voice was “shrill.” After she wrote her post-campaign book What Happened, people listened to Clinton. Many lamented that “this Hillary” wasn’t the one who ran for president. But she was always the same person. Now Clinton’s struggles are a part of history. Her lessons will help the woman who finally becomes president.

“Even when you lose, refuse to be defeated.”

People have been trying to run Hillary Clinton off the national stage for years. When Steve Bannon announced a “scorched Earth” of relentless attacks against her, Clinton’s campaign understood that Trump’s goal was to deflate voter enthusiasm and demoralize the campaign. With the Benghazi hearings, WikiLeaks, a tough primary and the FBI investigation, Palmieri reminded fellow staffers of the frustration Republicans must feel when they couldn’t take Clinton down. She lost the race in the Electoral College, despite leading the popular vote by three million, but she never felt defeated.

“Hillary never cowered in the face of attacks or failed to call out hate. And after she lost, she refused to stop fighting for the issues and people she cared about.”

During tough times, Clinton focuses on what she needed to accomplish that day. She has plenty of fortitude. And when life handed her a loss, Clinton mourned it and found a way to move forward.

“We are bound together. Now we need to unite.”

The 2016 election was a reckoning for the United States. It reflected deep divisions that had built up over decades.

“It wasn’t going to be simply a ‘change election’ or a referendum on Obama or even an election about the economy. It was about what kind of country we are going to be.”

One Friday in June 2015, Palmieri felt that real change was happening. The Supreme Court affirmed the Affordable Care Act and gay marriage. After a white racist murdered nine black parishioners at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, SC progress seemed to be underway to remove the Confederate flag from South Carolina’s capitol. That morning, Obama sang “Amazing Grace” at the service for the people killed at Mother Emanuel.

However, Trump’s announcement for president weeks earlier had cited a country in decline. His words resonated with many voters. Bill and Hillary Clinton saw deep disaffection within the electorate, and it unsettled them. They’d never experienced hopelessness and anger from voters. They asked people on the campaign to read Eric Hoffer’s The True Believer, about the rise of authoritarian leaders. 

People’s frustrations don’t come out during a crisis. They come out later. The United States was reacting to 15 years of tumultuous change, including the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, war, recession, growing economic inequality, demographic change, digital transitions and climate change. What unifies Americans in times of division is the belief that the country can be better. The pain one group feels spills over, and everyone feels it. Based on the understanding that they are bound together as Americans, people can choose to unite. The president must be everyone’s president, listen to divergent concerns, and include everybody. It’s the right kind of job for a woman.

“Don’t wait for permission or an invitation or expect to find your place in someone else’s story. Jump into whatever it is you want to do.”

Celebrate your age, experience and viewpoint. Understand that men should treat you as an equal, but if they don’t, ignore them. Women have intelligence and ability. They need to imagine better possibilities, including being president of the United States.

About the Author

Jennifer Palmieri directed communications for the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign in 2016 and worked as President Barack Obama’s communications director.

Video & Podcast

The Adventures of Women in Tech, How We Got Here and Why We Stay by Alana Karen

Recommendation

Hear the voices of women recount their stories of triumph, and, alas, frustration, as they navigate their technology careers. Alana Karen, a director of search platforms at Google, recounts how women succeed in tech careers and why they stay despite the myriad challenges the industry presents, including an inhospitable work culture, persistent pay inequity, and the daily demands of balancing work and home responsibilities. Karen surmises that resolving these issues will require the collective effort of tech companies and women in senior roles to foster inclusivity and improve overall diversity.

Take-Aways

• Careers in technology offer women opportunities to immerse themselves in innovative and fast-paced work cultures.
• Alas, women are often hesitant to promote themselves and their successes at work.
• Women in tech feel the onus is on them to pave the way for future generations.
• To initiate change, women must help others to improve diversity and ensure respect in the workplace.
• The concept of “having it all” remains beyond reach for many.
• Women in tech frequently encounter the need to prove themselves in a male-dominated work culture.
• To ensure a balance between work and home life, women in tech must set boundaries.

The Adventures of Women in Tech Book Summary

Careers in technology offer women opportunities to immerse themselves in innovative and fast-paced work cultures.

Despite headlines to the contrary, the technology industry is a diverse workplace; male and female employees hail from a variety of cultures, socioeconomic backgrounds, and work and educational experiences.

Some women employed in the IT sector opted for technology careers from an early age, while others explore other avenues before landing there. Consider, for example, the paths these women followed toward their careers in tech: Wendy Zenone transitioned from public relations to information security and software engineering. Bethanie Baynes worked in photography and early on saw the opportunities that technology offered artists. Marily Nika knew from age 10 she wanted a career in IT. Ashley Sun aimed for medicine in college before switching to computer science. Annie Lange earned a PhD in poetry, and now works as an engineering manager. Kris Politopoulos moved from accounting to engineering operations.

“We need so much diversity in tech to build great products and services for the world.”

A rich diversity of backgrounds and perspectives creates an innovative and productive work environment and produces favorable economic results. In fact, research shows that companies with more racial and gender diversity outperform their competitors, and teams with higher numbers of women experiment more and generate more creative ideas.

Nevertheless, a lack of diversity remains problematic in technology companies – not only when it comes to hiring women and minorities but in terms of retaining them as well. If technology organizations don’t elevate their efforts toward inclusion, they risk losing the diversity they have already established.

The women who choose careers in technology, and stay despite its challenges and pitfalls, share common traits. These women revel in the fast pace and constant change that the industry brings. They embrace the opportunity to shape the present world, as well as the chance to expand the role of women in technology for future generations. They enjoy the “open, honest and intellectual” culture that permeates the sector. Moreover, they appreciate the flexibility and the financial security that tech offers.

Alas, women are often hesitant to promote themselves and their successes at work.

When women in tech describe themselves, they often struggle to define their responsibilities; some find it difficult to separate their work and home life, and others downplay their strengths and achievements.

A Yale University study identified the source of this hesitancy: Society expects women to be humble. People often judge women who speak confidently about their accomplishments to be braggers and, thus, find them less likable. Other studies confirm that, when rating their own abilities or speaking of their successes, women exhibit less confidence than men. Women instead describe themselves as curious, driven, hard-working and energetic – terms with definitively positive, yet humble, vibes. Moreover, women tend to ascribe their personal successes to team efforts instead of taking the plaudits. This aversion to self-promotion leads to fewer promotions and diminished earning potential.

“How can we be successful if at the root of everything we do, we don’t think or feel that we belong; if every time we have an idea, we wonder if it’s our place to speak up; if every time we disagree, we fear the downsides of sharing our thoughts? That adds up, and ultimately means we either don’t act like ourselves or our jobs jail us without leveraging all our talents.”

Women also bring what some see as more feminine personas to their jobs – empathy, caring, flexibility – as well as a focus on people and relationships. Such characteristics are essential in the tech world. One tech employee, for example, uses her ability to connect with others as an opportunity to inspire software engineers with necessary perspectives.

One study found that roughly 40% of women don’t set specific career goals for themselves. Another study found that women prefer to set more generic life goals instead – for example, to become more organized, or to find a romantic partner. Few cite power as their objective. Women’s goals tend to change over time, too – sometimes as a result of having children, and other times due to work pressures, hostile corporate cultures or a need to perform to higher standards than men. One tech employee, Adrienne, found that in her 20s, she aimed to be a leader, but as she matured, she refocused her sights on personal growth and learning. Other women feel compelled to stay passionate and challenged by their work; to use their influence to impact their work, home and community lives; or to find happiness and a balance between work and home. And some women lack a career blueprint, preferring to work out what they want – and what they don’t want – as they go along.

Women in tech feel the onus is on them to pave the way for future generations.

Some sectors in technology – such as human resources, customer service or marketing – boast a greater share of women than others. But in more technical disciplines, women present in smaller numbers, which some feel puts pressure on them to work for better representation in the future.

“Part of building relationships is to help people know you better, so you aren’t deemed a ladder climber if you’re ambitious.”

Assumptions persist, even in technology companies, that men innately outperform women in STEM fields – science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Some wonder, too, if certain behavioral norms for men, such as being direct in meetings, receive more scrutiny when performed by women. Those currently working in technology hope to counter these views by embracing high-visibility roles and working to increase diversity within their organizations.

Women share the additional burden of conflicting workplace standards: Be nice, but not too nice. Dress professionally, but not fancy. Deliver results but don’t be aggressive. Indeed, women must navigate different paths for success than men. Some women reject the idea of likability and aim for respect instead, while others view their likability as a necessary element to their effectiveness. The challenge, many admit, lies in striving for a balance between maintaining likability and pursuing career aspirations.

To initiate change, women must help others to improve diversity and ensure respect in the workplace.

Workplaces naturally create competitive tension among employees who aim for management positions. While men compete with one another for positions every day, without ill feelings, for women on the same team, this situation can create a quandary. An unspoken rule persists in some organizations that management limits the number of senior positions available to women. In such circumstances, the instinct to fight for your own survival can lead you to throw the notion of helping other women out of the window. But the fact remains that women need to support one another if they hope to achieve the long-term goal of increasing overall numbers. Only in doing this will they strengthen the opportunities for women in technology.

“There’s a special place in hell for women who don’t help women.” (Madeleine Albright)

Some women suggest that male bosses manage them more transparently and truthfully than female bosses. Diane, for example, found her female boss inconsistent in her support, and Beam, wishes her female director had endorsed her during a reorganization. This, in turn, makes Beam less likely to trust female bosses and more likely to seek out male bosses. To increase overall numbers, women need to respect one another, be honest with one another and realize that only in encouraging one another will women advance based on their merits.

The concept of “having it all” remains beyond reach for many.

Statistics show that 41% of mothers are the sole or primary earners in the family. At the same time, most also shoulder the majority of home and child care responsibilities. Unsurprisingly, women gravitate toward topics of well-being and balance when speaking about their work and home lives. Many struggle, for example, to focus on both their careers and their families, and they often feel that motherhood erects barriers to success – either from not having the time to devote to their careers or from dealing with others’ negative perceptions and discrimination in the workplace.

“I have decided that my concept of ‘having it all’ is really over my lifetime. That I don’t expect to be able to have it all now and certainly not ever in a perfect way. I will be deliberate and think of my life in phases.”

Technology companies offer greater flexibility than most organizations, and many women leverage that advantage to dedicate more time to work and family. Alas, because they can work from anywhere, work can then permeate their home lives, and women struggle to transition cleanly from work to family. Christine acknowledges that tech jobs often require after-hours work due to launch deadlines and the need to be accessible 24/7. Frances, meanwhile, feels both her work and home life need more of her time and attention than she can possibly give. Bethanie argues, however, that rather than “having it all,” women need to accept that they must prioritize the tasks that are most important to them.

Women in tech frequently encounter the need to prove themselves in a male-dominated work culture.

Men typically outnumber women in the technology sector, and women often face questions about their abilities or perceptions that they rank below their male peers. Take the following approaches to thrive in the face of such challenges:

1. Become resilient – Rely on your abilities to push through adversity and persevere, even when you doubt yourself. Alex, for example, learned to stay confident in her developer role by collaborating with others – though she admits that some people still question her abilities. Others, like Carrie and Rachel, believe that ignoring signs of unfairness or bias gives them the edge they need. Many women opt to rely on their internal optimism, agreeing that negative attitudes diminish their influence and respect.
2. Promote yourself – Too much humility hinders your career growth, yet women struggle with the negative perceptions and external resistance associated with self-promotion. You must actively promote your talents; don’t rely solely on your work to speak for you. Speak up at meetings. Work on your presentation skills, and hone soft skills, such as leadership and management.
3. Ask instead of making assumptions – Don’t refrain from asking for assignments, promotions or greater responsibility. Studies show that women are more reluctant than men to apply for “stretch” positions – that is, roles where they don’t meet all the qualifications. Learning to ask for what you need – be it for a referral or for help on a project – contributes to both on-the-job training and self-promotion.
4. Find support – If you feel isolated in your technology career, try networking with co-workers, enrolling in training programs and attending conferences for support. Moreover, focus on finding the right fit with a boss and an organizational culture.
5. Foster confidence – Empowering women helps a country’s overall economy, and recognizing and embracing the talent women bring while reducing pay inequities benefits everyone. Boost your self-image by recognizing your strengths, asserting yourself and saying no when necessary.

To ensure a balance between work and home life, women in tech must set boundaries.

Technology careers demand time and energy, and learning to say no to working longer hours proves challenging, since responsibilities don’t disappear at day’s end. On any given day, women can experience a range of emotions, including insecurity, guilt, optimism and satisfaction. Learn to navigate the peaks and valleys that tech jobs impose by aiming for balance. Focus on positive elements in your day. Take extended leave to gain perspective. Find the right job fit for greater satisfaction. Use your organization’s flexible work policies to carve out more time for family and community activities. And don’t be afraid to reach out to others for help.

“I’m reminded of an old game we played as children…We’d surround one girl who was lying on the ground. We’d place our fingers beneath her and recite, ‘Stiff as a feather, light as a board’ like a meditation prayer. After 30 seconds or so, we’d lift the girl using just our collective fingers. As a child it was magical. But it’s not magic – it’s the collective effort of all of us helping each other, a power we often underestimate. And when we all do it, the load is light. ”

Women cite many reasons for staying in their tech careers. Primary among them is the constant challenge of learning, creating and innovating. Many enjoy the people, the ability to impact communities and the financial security tech jobs provide.But not all women stay; in fact, studies show more than half of women in technology leave mid-career, due, in part, to the male-oriented culture, but also from having few female counterparts in their high-pressure jobs.

Women in tech suggest several strategies to boost retention of women workers within the industry:

• Promote more women to leadership positions.
• Provide greater flexibility to help women bear the dueling responsibilities of home and work.
• Encourage and accept more diverse points of view in the workplace.
• Create a more inclusive, less arrogant culture.

Ultimately, women need to look to mentors to help propel them in their careers, learn to balance work and family life without guilt and anxiety, and find the best culture fit. Furthermore, women in senior positions must pay it forward by recruiting and hiring more women, and by using their status to fight for equal pay.

About the Author

Alana Karen works in product development and innovation in the tech industry. She speaks at conferences on resilience, equity, inclusion and other industry-relevant topics. 

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Breaking Borders, A Remarkable Story of Adventure, Family, and Career Success That Defied All Expectations by Kate Isler

Recommendation

Microsoft veteran Kate Isler’s saga of perseverance and independence proves that every leader’s career trajectory is unique. From humble origins, Isler went from serving fast food to leading global teams for Microsoft and finding her calling advocating for gender parity. Isler distills her diverse experiences into lessons to inspire leaders, entrepreneurs and other women in business. She demonstrates the importance of relationships, finding work-life balance, trusting your vision and bypassing convention when it stands in your way.

Take-Aways

• Glean incremental lessons and small victories from your experiences.
• Turn to negotiation and self-advocacy to navigate uncertainty.
• Strengthen your leadership style by noting what you respect and disrespect in others.
• Women leaders sometimes must bypass convention and move ahead without a template.
• Parenting and relocating for global career opportunities aren’t mutually exclusive.
• When facing adversity, be kind to yourself, so you can show up for others.
• Everyone struggles with life transitions. Your attitude makes the difference.
• Build a community of women to create necessary cultural change.

Breaking Borders Book Summary

Glean incremental lessons and small victories from your experiences.

Kate Isler began her working life with wildly varied early experiences. Coming from a humble background, she was a hotel switchboard operator, a fast food server and a receptionist. Her later professional experiences included becoming a high-ranking Microsoft executive and founding her own river rafting business in Colorado. Throughout, she learned these important lessons.

• Never underestimate yourself – Find strength within. You can accomplish more than you imagine.
• Don’t fear risks – You might not make millions when you launch your first business, but you’ll gain valuable lessons and accrue small victories that make it worthwhile.
• Embrace honesty – Reflect on what you’re actually able to handle and live with, and stick to your resolutions as you embark on your own path.
• Craft your life vision – Decide what your dream life looks like. Then, commit to realizing that vision.
• Study people – Regardless of what roles you take on, you can always learn new things by paying attention to the people around you.

Don’t spend too much time in a role that feels awkward or doesn’t align with your broader goals. When Isler got her first stable job – as an office receptionist – she wasn’t very good at it, and she knew it wasn’t her future path. 

“Being a receptionist is somewhat like being an appliance. People knew I was there and counted on my work, but most of the time, I was invisible.”

Her boss confessed that Isler’s firing was imminent and suggested that she quit before it happened. This experience taught her to trust her intuition. When a role doesn’t feel right, it isn’t right for you. 

Turn to negotiation and self-advocacy to navigate uncertainty.

Due to her father’s work as a Holiday Inn manager, Isler moved around a lot as a child and often lived in hotel suites. These frequent moves and upheavals helped her fine-tune her interpersonal skills and become adept at relationship building. 

She had to navigate even more uncertainty as an adult, when – having never left North America – she and her husband, Doug Isler, traveled around Southeast Asia as newlyweds. This formative trip taught Isler that she had the personal skills and tools to navigate new contexts and environments. 

“Self-advocating is a life skill that everyone should practice. It is easier said than done in many cases, but you will always feel better if you have represented yourself honestly.”

Isler believes most learning happens when you leave your comfort zone. She experienced this firsthand when she landed a job as an outside salesperson for a Seattle photo lab that was in the midst of an expansion. Isler forged relationships with marketing managers across the city, while creatively identifying new revenue streams. Working in sales taught her negotiation and self-advocacy. In her view, you never need to accept a first offer, because a business transaction always has room for compromise. Negotiating doesn’t need to be an unpleasant, adversarial experience if you approach it as a simple discussion. 

Strengthen your leadership style by noting what you respect and disrespect in others.

When you start a new job, familiarize yourself with its existing power structures and hierarchies. Ask questions to gain clarity. Pay attention to good and bad leadership behavior, so you can replicate what you respect and avoid repeating others’ mistakes as you climb your organization’s career ladder.

A job at a marketing agency – where she worked for a boss whose leadership style she didn’t respect – helped Isler refine her views about leadership. Employees liked the boss, but Isler felt he didn’t lead effectively because he avoided difficult conversations. Leaders cannot dodge addressing issues that have a negative impact on their teams. 

“Microsoft leadership was young, hungry and aggressive. But they understood that people make mistakes and that, if you give them the opportunity, most competent people will recover, repair and learn quickly.”

Isler began her two-decade career at Microsoft in 1989. At the time, its business model called for partnering with IBM to develop and sell coding languages and operating systems to developers. Microsoft constantly reorganized itself as Isler worked her way up into a marketing role in which she managed a small team. 

Building her team to include field marketing, Isler gained two significant insights about managing people. Just as Microsoft’s leaders gave her permission to make mistakes and learn from them, she extended these learning opportunities to her team. Developing authentic relationships helps motivate people to follow you. Therefore, Isler advises, invest time in getting to know your team members.

Women leaders sometimes must bypass convention and move ahead without a template.

Living the life you envision requires overcoming your fear of doing things differently than your predecessors. Women frequently fail to climb the corporate ladder because they focus on their qualifications instead of their attributes. For example, they often don’t recognize the ways they could become valuable corporate assets in roles that require continuous learning.

Isler bucked convention by aspiring to gain a level of success similar to her male colleagues’ positions and by asking to work in the office of one of Microsoft’s global subsidiaries. This took her first to Dubai, and then to Africa, India and the Middle East (AIME), as Microsoft’s regional marketing manager. 

“Women didn’t consider this type of global career as an option. It never occurred to me that I couldn’t do it.”

Sometimes, being willing to do things differently can be a company’s best asset. The male leaders Microsoft partnered with in the Middle East were caught off guard when Isler announced an important change in the company’s business model. These men were nonplussed precisely because Isler was a woman. They weren’t accustomed to negotiating with a female at such a high corporate level. This unexpected wrinkle gave Microsoft a significant edge as it moved toward more competitive pricing.

Parenting and relocating for global career opportunities aren’t mutually exclusive.

The decision to make a career move is an important life choice that requires you to define success on your own terms. Remember that your home isn’t a physical location – home can be wherever your family is. While convention dictates that an American mother ought to raise her family in the United States, Isler took on another opportunity at Microsoft – to work as a regional marketing director in London – although it required her to spend 75% of her time traveling. 

“Home is where the family is, not a location on a map or a building.”

Isler understood that diversity and gender parity give global teams a competitive edge, so she focused on bringing in more female team members and more members from different cultures – people with strategic ideas and different knowledge foundations. Her commitment to diversity and gender parity was pivotal to her team’s success in opening new Microsoft offices, protecting intellectual property, and introducing new versions of Microsoft Office and Windows. 

When facing adversity, be kind to yourself, so you can show up for others.

Sometimes life throws adversity and challenges your way, and you need time to recharge. After gleaning valuable lessons from working abroad, Isler took a job close to home – near Microsoft’s Redmond, Washington, campus – as the international marketing director for Microsoft Press. When the move created difficulties in her marriage, she learned the value of taking time away from her career for self-care and healing. 

Returning to work after a break poses its own challenges. When Isler returned to Microsoft, she no longer occupied a role at her former senior level. She had no direct reports and had to share an office. She faced a choice: She could continue to wallow in frustration or choose to improve her situation. Isler remained positive, and managed to transform her job into something more suitable: a marketing position with Microsoft’s team in Eastern Europe. She pivoted by taking time to connect with her colleagues, working in open collaboration areas instead of hiding in a tiny office, tackling projects that enhanced her visibility and meeting new people. 

“Giving up is not an option! When you know that you are headed in the right direction, and there are detours or obstacles that set you back, look at them as part of the journey and not a reason to abandon the vision.”

When you face adversity, treat yourself with compassion and take time to recover. If you don’t take recovery time, you may fail to show up for the colleagues who depend on you or for your loved ones. You may find yourself in a difficult situation with no easy or fast solution. When this happens, focus on grounding yourself in the present and taking things step by step, one day at a time. 

Trust yourself if something doesn’t feel right, and don’t hesitate to fight for relationships you view as worth saving. Isler convinced her husband to relocate their family to Munich for her new marketing role. She learned to never take those who support her for granted. Isler acknowledges her husband’s bravery in doing things differently and breaking free of conventional gender roles to be a trailing spouse and their children’s primary caregiver.

Everyone struggles with life transitions. Your attitude makes the difference.

As you build your life experiences, you may face many “almosts.” After Isler left Microsoft, she experienced what she perceived as “a year of almosts.” She almost launched a start-up, almost sold her house and almost got an offer for a big job in California. Despite finally getting her college degree, Isler felt unsure how to navigate this new stage in her life. Life transitions aren’t easy for anyone – Isler’s husband suffered, too, since their children had grown up and left their household, and he was no longer sure of his role.

“Life is a series of twists and turns. My success has come through being open to the possibilities and seeking out situations and people that fill my soul.”

When life seems dire, and you feel things couldn’t get any worse, choose to have a positive attitude and tackle your challenges with grace, rather than indulging in negative emotions. When she wasn’t working, Isler combated isolation and depression by staying connected to her network of global contacts. This helped her stay relevant in her field and alert to new opportunities.

Build a community of women to create necessary cultural change.

If you’re a female executive, your connections to other women leaders can be crucial, especially if you work in a male-dominated industry like technology. Isler realized she needed to leave Microsoft when a woman leader she admired left the company, and it replaced her with a man who had little respect for Isler’s experience. Too many women opt out when they face challenges, rather than trying harder to create the life of their dreams. Often, women hold limiting beliefs because their culture conditioned them to constrain their visions. Overcoming these limitations is challenging, but it’s necessary if you want to live life on your terms.

“I have once again reinvented myself. This version of me includes being an author, a motivator and a community builder.”

Isler could have become discouraged searching for a new job, because she encountered many companies with ageist and sexist hiring practices. Instead, she saw an opportunity to reinvent herself. She committed to writing her autobiography and to creating an advocacy campaign, Be Bold Now, a community that dedicates itself to fighting for gender parity. 

Today, Isler works to connect women who champion and celebrate one another, instead of seeing each other as competition. Too often, people treat successful women leaders as anomalies or disapprove of them for failing to hew to their expected roles as wives and mothers. People sometimes fail to accept nontraditional family structures, in which men take on domestic responsibilities to support their partners’ careers. Isler exhorts readers to push for cultural change, to change the way business power systems undervalue women, and to help make sure that more women can succeed.

About the Author

Kate Isler is Co-Founder and CEO of TheWMarketplace, an eCommerce platform that promotes women-owned businesses.

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