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.”

True Believer: CEO, Founder on Guiding Leaders Through A DEI Reckoning

From the age of five, Jennifer Brown was performing. On stage, she was singing and dancing as a child growing up in Southern California in a musical family, then as an adult pursuing a singing career.

“I love the adrenaline, I love being under pressure,” says Brown, the CEO and founder of Jennifer Brown Consulting, a global strategic leadership and diversity consulting firm that coaches business leaders on critical issues of talent and workplace strategy. “Which is good because I have three 90-minute keynotes online today,” Brown says.

Read On: 10 New Books By Women Leaders For Your September Reading List

September is Literacy Month and also typically back to school month. But with school on hold, virtual, hybrid or postponed, we can still enjoy a robust reading month. And what possibilities you have with great new books by, for and about women and the issues and concerns facing all of us.

Take The Lead frequently highlights the latest books from women leaders, innovators, entrepreneurs, thinkers and doers. It’s why Take The Lead has launched a new Book Club and why Take The Lead includes great reads from our leadership, staff and partners here.

Update: COVID Infects 25 Years Of Progress After Women’s Rights = Human Rights Speech

In 1995, Madonna, Mariah Carey and Janet Jackson topped the pop charts. A new music option called DVD launched. Windows 95 and Ebay were introduced.

And Hillary Clinton gave a world-turning speech in Beijing, China.

“If there is one message that echoes forth from this conference, it is that human rights are women’s rights. And women’s rights are human rights,” First Lady of the United States Clinton spoke to a crowd of 1,500 on September 5, 1995 at the Fourth World Conference on Women by the United Nations Development Program.

Calm Down: 5 Steps for Leaders To Reduce Employee Work Stress

How can women leaders deal with the issue of workplace stress among their employees?

Nearly every employee today is experiencing work stress, perhaps in varying degrees and in different forms. This is especially true given the current global health crisis brought on by COVID-19 and the resultant changes in today's workforce.

Even prior to COVID, a 2018 Fidelity Investments survey found that in America, the workplace has been deemed the top stress factor among employees. In the U.S. workplace stress is responsible for losses of up to $300 billion.

Thank goodness Kamala Harris is ambitious, and that’s not all she is

Issue 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.

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.

47 Years of Women’s Equality Day: 5 Ways To Celebrate Now And Why

Forty-seven years ago Bella Abzug’s push to make August 26 Women’s Equality Day a national day of recognition became reality. It is still not a federal holiday. While Americans have yet to reach gender and racial equity, Take The Lead’s mission continues to be equality, equity and fairness for all women.

According to a new report from the Pew Research Center, less than half of Americans, or 49%, “say granting women the right to vote has been the most important milestone in advancing the position of women in the country.”

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.

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.”

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