Thanking You Monday

Leadership Ambassador prepare to deliver the 9 Leadership Power Tools programs. Contact takethelead@takethelead.com to learn more or set up a call to learn how we can help your company or organization accelerate women and gender diversity in your leadership. L-R: Tanushree Ghosh Dhall, Lori Chillingworth, Gloria Feldt, Sandra Um, Susan Blount, Keisha McKinnor.

I hope you had a meaningful Thanksgiving and are rolling joyfully into the rest of the holiday season. Tomorrow is Giving Tuesday, when you will be besieged with fundraising appeals. But this year, with gratitude still on our mind and Take  The Lead decided to have Thanking You Monday instead.

 Thank you for your support of Take The Lead and the mission of gender parity in leadership by 2025. Thank you for your passion for equality, diversity, and equity in work and all of our life. Thank you for connecting on social media, subscribing to our newsletter, joining our Virtual Happy Hours, and donating to our “life changing” programs that help so many women lead and succeed. 

 Thanks to you, 2019 has been a banner year. I picked just 11 of the accomplishments to share that your support enabled us to deliver.

 1.                  Cohort 3 of 50 Women Can Change the World in Nonprofits graduated in Arizona. Led by Leadership Ambassador Felicia Davis with funding from the American Express Foundation, SRP, Freeport McMoRan, APS,  and others, these high impact programs accelerate the careers of emerging female leaders in Arizona nonprofit organizations. So much so that they led to the next accomplishment.

2.                  Here comes a first: 50 Women Can Change the World 2.0 conference, themed “Power Up & Lead: Igniting the Intentional Leader Within.” It will be held in Arizona February 28-29, 2020 (don’t you love the Leap Day connection?)  for all our 50 Women cohorts, with one day open to others who are interested in participating in this high impact program and some high profile speakers whose presentations will be open to the entire community and livestreamed everywhere. Put it on your calendar now!

3.                  The inaugural cohort of 50 Women Can Change the World in Journalism is a raging success. Here is a short video to give you a flavor of the full journalism program and the takeaways that the women shared. Funded by the Ford Foundation and the Democracy Fund, we are thrilled with the caliber of journalism leaders and innovators who participated. In addition to individual Strategic Leadership Action Plans, they launched Women Do News, to rectify Wikipedia’s gender imbalance of journalists and ensure that the world will see more biographies of accomplished female journalists.  The coworking hub for women, Luminary kindly hosted the edit-a-thon. Read more about this effort here.

4.                  Coaching services launched!

5.                  Corporate training services expanded as more companies realize the strong business case for advancing women in leadership, besides the fact that it is simply the fair and just thing to do.

6.                  We launched the Take The Lead Women Podcast. Subscribe on Apple podcasts or any other of your favorite podcast platforms if you haven’t already, and please rate it and write a review to help boost our standing. Ping me any time to suggest a topic.

7.                  Editorial director Michele Weldon won a prestigious award  for our blog —her  competition was the entire blogging staff of the Chicago Sun-Times! Our Movement blog is rated in the top 30  business blogs for women. And on the outside chance that you don’t already subscribe to our newsletter, also written by the incredibly productive Michele, here’s where you can.

8.                  We had two events this year, and are so grateful to each of you who attended and/or donated. The first was a July “Pop Up for Parity” silent auction in New York and virtually, where in addition to the fun of bidding and maybe even winning great prizes, we were entertained by the inimitable Kathleen Turner and her daughter Rachel Weiss. The second was in the gorgeous Los Angeles home of Loreen Arbus on October 29. Comedienne Maysoon Zayid and actor/singer Ari Afsar graced us with their talent.

9.                  In the spirit of our board chair Dr. Nancy O’Reilly’s book published earlier this year, we know we are #inthistogether. We deeply value our collaboration with her  foundation Women Connect 4 Good. Together we are going to blast out into the new year with campaigns to engage more women  and men in this mission. I am very grateful to all of our board members and volunteers who make all that we do possible.

10.              We trained new Leadership Ambassadors from around the country so we can scale up to bring our services to you and  your organization wherever you are..

11.              Take The Lead’s work is gaining national media recognition from the likes  of Bloomberg TV, Ms. Magazine, The New  York Times, Forbes, the Wall Street Journal’s Secrets of Wealthy Women podcast, and many more. In addition, I’ve  had the opportunity to  reach new audiences by speaking at dozens of conferences such as  The Riveter Summit, the World Woman Summit, and Women in Cable Television (where I was introduced by Princess Beatrice  of York—that was surely a first!).

None of this—not one single part of it—would be possible without you.

We have the proven programs that will enable women to reach parity in leadership by 2025—70 years faster than the most optimistic projection. Many people say that’s impossible, but I know that with your support, we can do it

 So, having declared this “Thanking You Monday,” I will simply say thanks and look for more to come.

 In Gratitude and #SisterCourage,

 Gloria Feldt, Cofounder and President, Take The Lead

@GloriaFeldt