Issue 150 — November 23, 2020
Happy Pre-Thanksgiving. I hope you are well and that however you plan to spend the holiday will be enjoyable.
Whatever you have planned, we can all breathe a big sigh and agree on this: It’s been quite a year, hasn’t it? One we can’t even describe yet because it’s not over and every day brings new surprises. But there are a few things we know for sure.
This pandemic has made us more creative.
Read More2020 came dancing in with such hope.
2020 was going to be Take The Lead’s year to scale up after seven years of building our credibility, developing our unique methodology of accelerating women’s advancement in leadership, and proving that it works. We’d earned the opportunity to grow exponentially. We had an amazing year of programming planned. Symbolically, 2020 being the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution giving women the right to vote after seven decades of struggle, seemed like the perfect time.
But just as the suffrage amendment was flawed by not assuring voting rights to Asian, Indigenous, and Black women, 2020 brought to light many deficiencies. Like those punching balloons that keep popping back up for more, it seemed like every time we thought it couldn’t get worse, it did.
Read MoreThis graphic circulated around the internet quickly upon breaking news that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris would become the next President and Vice President of the United States. Harris is smashing one of our two highest and hardest glass ceilings. In doing so, she represents so much of our history and more importantly, our future.
Harris Represents Women — the obvious, overarching 51% of the population that has waited since 1776 to see one of its gender represented in the highest halls of power. Her white suit was a nod to the 100 year anniversary of the 19th amendment writing women’s right to vote into the U.S. Constitution — and the decades-long battles afterward to make sure all American women have the unfettered right to exercise that primary civic duty.
Read MoreIssue 147 — November 2, 2020
The leaves are starting to turn in New York’s Central Park. Daylight savings time has given us back the hour it stole last spring. The pandemic rages on.
And a momentous election is taking place. The world is watching. Americans have cast more early votes than any time in history. You can feel the anxiety in the air.
Read MoreIssue 146 — October 26, 2020
Save the date! Thursday October 29, at 8 pm eastern time — celebrate your right to vote with a brilliant performance by Ari Afsar and Lauren Gunderson from their new “Jeannette: the Musical.”
Jeannette Rankin was the first woman elected to Congress and an ardent suffragist.
Read MoreIssue 144 — October 5, 2020
I’ve gotta tell you, I get really tired of people complaining to me about something they saw in the news coverage of women. Whether it’s criticizing or loving Kamala Harris’s Chucks or the tone and timbre of a female leader’s voice, and don’t get me started on Hillary Clinton’s ankles and yellow pantsuit, women in leadership roles are scrutinized and stereotyped much more often than men. That’s surely true.
Read MoreIssue 143 — September 28, 2020
She was tiny. She was mighty. She was a brilliant legal strategist. She was lovingly dubbed “notorious” for her groundbreaking advances for women’s equality, autonomy, and therefore our power within society.
Yet U. S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg broke boundaries gently. Never wavering from her revolutionary vision of gender equality, she believed in making big change in small increments.
“Real change, enduring change, happens one step at a time.”
Read MoreIssue 142 — September 14, 2020
Don’t get the wrong idea. I have great respect for Hillary Clinton, and she has been a woman ahead of her time in many ways. But her recent essay shows she has caught up with my core message about women’s relationship with power. Let me roll back the tape and tell you what I mean.
You know that great song in the musical “Hamilton” — “The Room Where It Happens?”
I was in the room where it happened 25 years ago. Two rooms where it happened, actually.
And the experience was life changing. World changing even. But that was then.
Read MoreIssue 141— September 7, 2020
Drew Dixon’s resume includes Former Vice President of A&R at Arista Records, a former director of A&R at Def Jam Recordings, the former general manager of John Legend’s label Homeschool Records, and the former manager of recording artist Estelle. She produced more hit records than I can count with artists you know. Dixon is the founder of the independent label The Ninth Floor, the tech-enabled beauty start-up EverythingDid, and the co-creator of the TV series Reciprocity.
Definitely an ambitious and intentional woman who knew from her teenage years that working in the music business was her dream.
Read MoreIssue 140 — August 31, 2020
It was so predictable. Any woman who had the audacity to run for president must be too ambitious, said the wagging tongues and talking heads.
Ambitious when applied to a woman becomes an epithet. Applied to a man, it isn’t just a compliment, it’s an assumption.
Read MoreIssue 139 — August 23, 2020
Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock in your quarantine, or have put yourself on a strict social media and television diet to get away from the political talking heads, you know this year, 2020, is the 100th anniversary of the 19th amendment giving women across the U.S. the right to vote.
Thousands of women’s organizations had planned celebrations leading up to this auspicious anniversary, some on the various significant dates leading up to August 26, the anniversary of when the amendment became formally part of the Constitution.
Read MoreIssue 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?
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