North Star: Soledad O’Brien On Listening, Point of View, Stories, Fairness and Values

“As an organization and an individual, you have to stick to your North Star,” Soledad O’Brien, founder and CEO of Soledad O’Brien Productions, told a virtual convening of two cohorts of Take The Lead’s 50 Women in Journalism Can Change the World.

“The story of one’s arc of one’s life is to figure out what your values are,” says O’Brien, award-winning journalist, speaker, author and philanthropist who anchors and produces the Hearst Television political magazine program, “Matter of Fact with Soledad O’Brien.”

Inspired: Author Heather Cabot Unpacks CBD Innovators’ Paths

“Just start.”

That is author and renowned journalist Heather Cabot’s advice to entrepreneurs as well as her own motto.

With her latest book out this month, The New Chardonnay: The Unlikely Story of How Marijuana Went Mainstream, hitting a bestseller list on Amazon recently, Cabot is taking stock of her successes as well as looking for what she will tackle next.

Silver Lining: Inventor, Founder Creates Urgent Solution and Fulfills Her Dream

Lori Greiner, the highly successful investor on ABC-TV’s “Shark Tank,” can offer tips and also learn lessons from Zeynep Ekemen, the creator of Silver Defender, a stretchable film that protects any and all surfaces from germs and viruses.

Ekemen, or Z, as everyone calls her, was at her early morning “Breakfast Club” with business friends in a local Fort Lee, New Jersey coffee shop in 2018, when one of her friends returned from the men’s room grossed out by what he saw.

Quarantine Proposition: Founder Says Launch Your Digital Business Now

“Jump and learn how to fly.”

That is Sarah Saffari’s advice to anyone feeling trapped and stuck in a job or remote work. The founder of CEOwned, an online business consultancy, knows from personal experience how to succeed during a quarantine.

For the last five months, the Canada-based Saffari has been working to help online business owners scale and succeed in their businesses from Medellin, Colombia, where she was traveling when COVID-19 restrictions hit. Not able to emerge from quarantine and return home, she is succeeding in place.

Dangly Earrings and Other Breaks with the Past

Issue 138 — August 10, 2020

CBS Sunday Morning reminded me, in a piece about President Gerald Ford’s photographer David Hume Kennerly, that August 9 was the anniversary of the date in 1974 when President Richard Nixon resigned from office. Why is this relevant?

Well, it is quite relevant to me, for it marked a major turning point in my life and my career. As it happens, that is also the date on which I was offered and accepted my first CEO position. I became executive director of the small young Planned Parenthood affiliate in West Texas.

Feel The Heat: Co-Founder, CEO Develops Tech Solution to Reopening

Seeing nurses and other frontline healthcare workers wearing trash bags to protect themselves during shifts at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic because of a shortage of PPE equipment made Amy Lu upset. It also made the engineer CEO and co-founder of Antlia Systems get to work on a solution for protection.

“It broke my heart,” says Lu, co-founder of Chicago-based Antlia Systems (named after the constellation). “So I used my connections to get more PPE and donate them. Then I was working hard to figure things out with engineering teams to find the best solutions to make safe places.”

Powerful women, you are a movement unto yourself.

Issue 137 — August 3, 2020

What do you think of when you think of a movement?

Picket signs? Pink hats? People marching and yelling? #BlackLivesMatter? Social justice perhaps?

It’s certainly true that we tend to think of movements as being about causes, because they often are causes that people feel strongly about.

Well what if the cause you feel strongly about is YOU?

Resilience of Black Women’s Businesses: 6 Entrepreneurs Offer Timeless Advice

August is Black Business Month in this country and it is prime time to check in on the effects of the last four months on Black women entrepreneurs. They have been hardest hit by the economic downturn nationally. It is also time to heed the advice of Black women who have started, maintained and succeeded with their businesses in good and bad tines.

According to the Chicago Tribune, “The number of active Black-owned businesses in the U.S. plummeted 41 percent during the early months of the pandemic from February to April, more than twice the 17 percent level of white owned businesses, research by Robert Fairlie from the University of California Santa Cruz shows.”

The Great Reset: CEO Says New Ventures Serve Greater Good

“As painful as it is now, the focus is now on meaning. This is a permanent innovative change.”

Jocelyn Kung, CEO of The Kung Group, says her executive coaching and organizational consulting firm’s recent survey of more than 400 startup founders revealed that the ongoing global pandemic has deleteriously affected the growth of companies, but also shifted priorities to a new era of sustainability,

Corresponding to the release of the Q2 Venture Report by Crunchbase this week, that shows the volume of less than $100 million m fundings is down 63% from the same time last year. The number of companies in the second quarter of 2020 is also down form 2,660 in 2019 to 1,254 companies this year.

Remote Possibility: 4 Tips For Preparing To WFH Forever

Millions across the country who kept their jobs or were not frontline essential workers at high risk have been working remotely since March. The transition to WFH for many has hit rough spots complicated with childcare and homeschooling and cramped spaces not set up for a 9 to 5 workday.

But it always felt as if it was temporary. That may not be the case.

While many offices are safely reopening in the coming weeks and months, with many workers and leaders facing fear and loathing about going back to the office, what if you face the forever fact of never returning to a workplace outside your home?

Is your career disrupted? How you can regroup, refresh, and rewire for success

Issue 135 — July 13, 2020

What had you planned to do in 2020?

I could hardly wait for 2020. It was going to be an epic year. The 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution giving women the right to vote. So many events were already being planned that my calendar was filled with places I wanted to go to join the celebration. It was to be the year that Take The Lead was finally poised to scale up with our strategy to achieve gender parity in leadership by 2025.

I had so many plans. Just the sound of those round numbers 2020 were enough to signal a special year.

We were about to find out just how special.

She Could Be Next: Producer, Founder Drives For Race, Gender Equity

You can’t separate the need for race equity from the need for gender equity. Both movements need to work in tandem to change the world.

“Examining any institution through the lens of race and gender is essential; do not biforcate,” says Jyoti Sarda, producer of the two-part documentary, And She Could Be Next, a series that “follows a defiant movement led by women of color as they fight for a truly reflective democracy and transform politics from the ground up.”

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