Stand With Them: 10 Ukrainian Women Leaders Show The World Their Power

As the Russian invasion of Ukraine continues to heighten a world humanitarian crisis for the more than 10 million people who have fled their homes and the thousands who have been killed, a barrage of heartbreaking images and stories comes from the bunkers, battered fields and destroyed landscape of multiple cities.

What is also emerging is a distinct story of Ukrainian women who are showing the world their courage, tenacity and strength of leadership in adversity. They are demonstrating their leadership as soldiers, activists, diplomats, politicians, caretakers, mothers, daughters, volunteers and advocates for their country.

The Power of Imagery: Annie Leibovitz on 50 Years of Working to Portray Women

You have likely heard the adage that a picture is worth 1,000 words. In the case of Annie Leibovitz, iconic photographer for more than 50 years, her pictures are priceless.

The legendary creative force and winner of the International Center of Photography Lifetime Achievement Award and the Centenary Medal of Royal Photographic Society, Leibovitz humbly graced the Chicago Humanities Festival stage recently to talk about how women are seen—and not seen authentically—and ultimately not known.

See Them, Hear Them: New CEO Aims For Media, Pop Culture To Drive Social Change

“What we don’t see, what we don’t hear, we cannot humanize,” says Nakisha M. Lewis, the new president and CEO of Breakthrough, a global nonprofit that uses the power of media, technology and popular culture to transform systems around gender, race, sexuality and immigrant rights.

Expert of Your Body: Author on Claiming Agency For Yourself, Your Work and Your Life

Call someone a genius and it’s a lofty compliment. But Sarah Ruhl, prolific playwright, poet and author, is officially a genius, as a recipient of the MacArthur Genius Award, as well as two-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.

The author of Smile: The Story of A Face, was on stage at the Chicago Humanities Festival recently, speaking with her friend and colleague, Jessica Thebus, artist and Director of the Northwestern University MFA Program.

They discussed the gendered agency and ownership of your own body as a woman, as a human, and as someone who loses control of its ability to move and to respond as intended in the workplace and in the world.

The Sound of Equity: Women’s Equality Day Concert Succeeds For Take The Lead

“We are determined to take this opportunity, to take the losses and turn them into gains,” says Gloria Feldt, co-founder and president of Take The Lead in the opening introductions of the Women’s Equality Day Concert featuring internationally renowned composer and pianist Marina Arsenijevic.

Fight Fair: Top Women Journalists Take on Media Equity Urgency With Hope

Leading the recent virtual discussion, “Take The Lead Presents: Equity for Women in Journalism,” Charreah Jackson and four veteran award-winning broadcast journalists plus Mira Lowe, president of Journalism & Women Symposium, tackle the shifting nature of journalism, opportunities for women, ongoing challenges of discrimination and the urgency to fight for fair gender identity and racial equality and representation in media newsrooms.

Global Star Pianist, Composer Marina Arsenijevic Shines On Women’s Equality Day

Hers is a rhapshody in power.

Award-winning concert pianist and composer Marina Arsenijevic has spent a lifetime creating music and performances around the globe that offer healing and respite in times of conflict and recovery.

Go For Gold: Team USA Women Aim For Equity Wins At Tokyo Olympics

The Tokyo 2020 Olympics kicking off this month are notable not just for what is missing—the crowds in the stands, many athletes who tested positive for COVID and Sha’Carri Richardson due to a positive marijuana test—but what gains have been achieved for competitors identifying as female.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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