Book It: 13 Best Books By Women You Will Love To Read and Give This Year

Treat yourself before the holidays or treat a close friend as a gift for the holidays with one or many of these new books from authors you have grown to revere and perhaps a few whose work is new to you.

Before the year ends, you will want to dive into this curated collection of the latest fiction, nonfiction, business, leadership and books that offer lessons in leadership, life, work and more. This sterling and diverse selection of essays, novels, memoirs, biographies and instructional guides span a range of interests and deliver the immense talents of writers we already know and those we want to know better.

Equity, Humanity, Power and Joy: Black Journalist Leaders On Addressing History With Solutions

When was the last time—if ever—you were part of a venture when a leader pronounced that joy was an integral part of the mission?

“We built into our mission that joy underlines our ethos,” says Deborah Douglas, co-editor-in-chief of The Emancipator, the new journalistic venture from Boston University’s Center for Antiracist Research and the Boston Globe’s opinion team resurrecting the 200-year old abolitionist newspaper. “Journalists should not have to create from tension.”

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.

Power As Hammer: Gloria Feldt’s Book Launch On Intention, Power & Why Luck Is Not What You Need

“As soon as we can talk about power as a hammer—you can break something with it or you can build something with it— we turn power into a generative, innovative, creative positive idea as the power to,” says Gloria Feldt, co-founder and president of Take The Lead at her live and virtual book launch for her latest book, Intentioning: Sex, Power, Pandemics, and How Women Will Take The Lead for (Everyone's) Good.

The Sum, Women Career Success, Take The Lead LaunchMichele WeldonSeptember 24, 2021Intentioning, PowerTo, Purpose, gender parityComment

Nothing Artificial About Her Leadership: Tech CEO on Leading With Empathy

Perhaps the writing was on the wall from the time she was a teen.

At 16, Heather H. Wilson was a national officer for Future Business Leaders of America as a student at James Wood High School in Winchester, Virginia, where her mother was a teacher. Her father was an art teacher at an elementary school in town.

“I was raised by two educators who set very high bars and standards,” says Wilson, CEO of CLARA Analytics, the leading provider of artificial intelligence technology in the commercial insurance industry.

More Than A Number: 7 Reasons Why Aging Is Your Secret Power

For too long, many women have bought into the lie that their relevance is proportional to their youth. The truth is, aging is a secret power.

Don’t believe me?

Take a look at 7 reasons why getting older is one of the best things that can happen to you.

“I think that ageism is a cultural illness; it’s not a personal illness,” actor Frances McDormand, recently said.

Are You Reimagined? Facts For Navigating Your Post-Pandemic Work & Life

The more you know, the better you can do.

A spate of new research on shifts and changes in income, career, life outlook and more for women since the pandemic slowdown and ensuing Delta surge shows significant changes in who we are, and how we work in the world.

Career choices, Career success, Changing the Workplace, Women Career SuccessMichele WeldonSeptember 10, 2021Covid-19, Workplace, Women LeadersComment

FREE MASTERCLASS: HOW TO “CARPE THE CHAOS” AND THRIVE

Issue 174 — August 2, 2021

A colleague once gave me a poster bearing the caption, “When you’re up to your ass in alligators, it’s hard to remember your goal was to drain the swamp.”

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.

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.

Aiming For Equal: CEO, Founder Works For Equity in Sustainability

Perhaps the seed for Lisa Ann Pinkerton’s career as founder and chair of Women In Cleantech & Sustainability has something to do with the fact that she was born in Hyden, Kentucky near the Daniel Boone National Forest.

New Ways To Be Strong: Addressing The Stress For Black Women at Work

Calling someone strong is supposed to be a compliment. For generations of Black women, expecting and demanding they always be strong—and silent—no matter what, is cause for concern.

Dr. Inger Burnett-Zeigler, licensed clinical psychologist and an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, in the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University, is out to change all of the stigmas, misconceptions and invisibility of Black women and redefine what it means to be a strong Black woman.

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