“Appoint yourself,” Elaine Welteroth, author, journalist, “Project Runway” judge and former editor in chief of Teen Vogue, told a crowd of close to 2,000 at the 34th annual Chicago Foundation for Women luncheon. “We have a responsibility to make a difference right where we are.”
Read MoreGrowing up in Cleveland, Halle Tecco heard her mother tell of the struggles and heartbreak of her 10 miscarriages and a stillbirth, before adopting her and her brother, and then giving birth to her sister when Halle was 16. Her own struggles with infertility led Tecco to found Natalist, a science-backed company launched recently with $5 million in capital aimed at assisting consumers with their own reproductive health.
Read MoreGreetings from Arizona where I’m up reading (time zone change) with no one else awake to talk to about this horrible article The Next CEO Of Wells Fargo Will Be A Female…Human Shield, subtitled “Giving the worst job in American banking to a woman is the wrong way to make history.” I shake my head.
Read MoreNo victory laps just yet. A new report from The Center for American Women And Politics at Rutgers University shows a disruption of the gendered view of national politics, if not quite a victory. While the 2018 midterm elections revealed that “women candidates disrupted the (White male) status quo in American politics and challenged assumptions, and they outperformed among non-incumbents at nearly every level in both primary and general elections,” the 2020 elections are still hazy on the horizon, the report states.
Read MoreThirty years ago this year The Women’s Bean Project started with $500 and a cup of bean soup. The idea that founder Josey Eyre had in 1989 was to transform the lives of homeless women in Colorado Springs to employed workers living independently with their families. So Eyre bought $500 in supplies to make bean soup mix and quickly sold $6,000 in mixes on the initial investment.
Read MoreI dare say the women of “Downton Abbey” would not be at all surprised. Yet reviewers, pundits and even the creators of the film, “Downton Abbey,” a follow up on the big screen after six seasons on television, were surprised that in its first three weeks at the box office the movie earned $135.4 million, more than 10 times its operating budget.
Read MoreI distinctly remember when the actress Diahann Carroll began starring in the sitcom “Julia” about a nurse who’s also a widowed single mom to an elementary school-aged son living in suburbia. Sounds pretty ordinary, right? But Julia was Black, it was 1968, and the Civil Rights Movement was in full bloom of progress and simultaneously receiving violent pushback.
Read MoreAs a child, Sydney Ryan says she only played with dolls because she wanted to design clothes for them. So it’s not much of a surprise that Ryan later became a co-founder and chief culture officer of Cabi, “a company for women by women” that is personalized direct sales shopping with home pop-up shops with company contract stylists.
Read More“I am not CEO Susan; it sounds like a new version of Barbie,” says Susan Smith Richardson, CEO of the Center for Public Integrity. As keynote speaker at the recent Journalism & Women Symposium annual Conference and Mentoring Project in Williamsburg, Va. recently, Richardson, the award-winning former editorial director of Newsroom Practice Change at Solutions Journalism Network and former editor and publisher of The Chicago Reporter, spoke of the value of using your power in service to fulfill a vision.
Read More“I geek out about leadership,” says Mira Lowe, president of Journalism & Women Symposium, assistant dean at the University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications and director of the Innovation News Center there. Leading a panel on “Stepping into Leadership” at the recent JAWS Conference and Mentoring Program, Lowe, who was a recent participant in Take The Lead’s 50 Women Can Change The World in Journalism program, adds, “Leadership is a constant avocation. You are never done learning about leadership.”
Read MoreI talked with Ms. Magazine’s Carmen Rios about why I pivoted one my career to women’s leadership parity, why Take The Lead focuses it’s 50 Women Can programs on depth and impact rather than mere numbers, and much more.
Read MoreSilicon Valley is known as the launching pad for and home to many tech empires. It’s also known for its deep-rooted sexism. Of course, that’s not limited to that region. With ‘Tech-Bros’ often dominating the scene, it can seem nearly impossible for women to make headway. Only about 10 percent of the executive roles in tech are held by women.
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