Posts in Inspirational Role Models
Who’s Who: 1st Black Female CEO of Global Bio Database Aims For Inclusivity

After delivering her third child at 5:25 a.m. March 18, 2020, by 8 a.m., Erica Lee, the chief operating officer of Marquis Who’s Who, was on the phone with her remote team asking how they were doing with her newly devised COVID plan to work from home.

“I had her, she’s fine, now let’s get you working,” she says she told her team.

Read More
Lucky 13: Must Read Now Books on Leadership, Life, Lessons and Success

Whether you are settling down with an e-reader on your favorite screen or thumbing through pages on a beach, this summer season offers many exciting new reads from fiction to nonfiction, advice, memoir and biography by some familiar and new favorite authors.

Each summer Take The Lead recommends what you might like to dive into, share in your book club or recommend to a friend, colleague, mentor or mentee. Here are a delightful bakers’ dozen of Take The Lead suggestions (alphabetically listed because we can’t possibly rank them as we love them all), with an addendum of four irresistible Young Adult offerings you may want to share with a younger person you mentor, love and intend to inspire.

Read More
Forging Solid Connections: CEO, Founder, Author on The Art of Connecting

Her mother would most definitely be proud.

Susan McPherson, founder and CEO of McPherson Strategies, and author of The Lost Art of Connecting: The Gather, Ask, Do Method for Building Meaningful Relationships, has spent more than 33 years since her mother’s death building a successful career built on authenticity, integrity and clear communication.

Read More
Frida Kahlo and Her: Author Shares A High Profile Life of Invisible Disability

Being the poster child for a movement or a cause is usually a metaphor, meaning that you embody the mission of an organization. For award-winning author, educator and disabilities justice advocate Emily Rapp Black, it was literally who she was.

In 1980, at six years old Black was chosen as the poster child for the March of Dimes, because a congenital birth defect resulted in her left leg being amputated. Her latest book, the critically acclaimed, Frida Kahlo and My Left Leg, explores Black’s ideological connection with the iconic Mexican artist who suffered from polio as a child, and later a leg amputation, using a prosthetic limb.

Read More
Post-COVID Turn Around: Fashion Entrepreneur Designs Win

This is the better life her parents imagined, and it is of her creation.

Ahyoung Kim Stobar, the daughter of an opera singer mother and a nationally renowned professor, TV and radio show host father in Korea, came to the United States from Korea in 1983 as a nine-year-old with her two brothers and parents.

Read More
Respect: 10 Black Women Leaders Creating Change Now

Recognizing that there are infinitely more than 10 brilliant Black Women in 2021 to celebrate, acknowledge and learn from, we at Take The Lead looked at the latest contributions from only some of the multitudes of Black women leaders who are making a difference—in politics, economics, literature, business, science, academia, sports and retail.

Read More
9 Keys To Inclusive Economic Recovery For All Women

Women were hit the hardest in the pandemic economically and women can reshape the recovery “to build back better,” says Cherita Ellens, president and CEO of Women Employed.

Ellen was one of six women leaders who set out to offer as many solutions as possible in one lunch hour zoom panel sponsored by the Chicago Foundation for Women in the recent, “Rising Above The Shecession: Concrete Steps To Ensure Women Emerge Stronger.”

Read More
Moving Forward in Equity: Women in New Administration In Era of Economic Recovery

“Women have to be front and center in all of our discussions,” Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot declares in a virtual panel discussion hours before the inauguration of Joe Biden as President of the United States, where a cascade of firsts for women and BIPOC were literally center stage.

Read More
Bright Future: Steinem + Moore On Women Leading A Post-COVID World

“Laughter is the only emotion that cannot be compelled. Laughter is a proof of freedom.”

Gloria Steinem, iconic feminist leader, author and activist, waxed poetically philosophical during the recent live Take The Lead event, “Putting Women at the Heart of the Recovery: An Intimate Conversation.”

Read More
Women Take The Lead: 2020 Sets Records in Representation in U.S.

“Dream with ambition, lead with conviction, and see yourself in a way that others might not see you, simply because they’ve never seen it before. And we will applaud you every step of the way.”

These were the stunning words from the next and first Madam Vice President, Kamala Harris, from a Delaware stage before introducing President Elect Joe Biden after the election results were announced.

“But while I may be the first woman in this office, I won’t be the last. Because every little girl watching tonight sees that this is a country of possibilities,” Harris said.

Read More