Be Uma: Founder, CEO, Author on Manifesting Your Success With Confidence

She has always liked moving fast.

At seven years old, growing up in greater London, Rita Kakati-Shah told her physician father and zoologist mother (who was also a classically trained singer and dancer) that she intended to be a formula race car mechanic or race car driver.

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(Un)equal Pay Day: Is it Good News or Bad News?

Issue 193 — March 14, 2022

It’s progress to be sure that March 15 marks Equal Pay Day 2022. Women now earn 83% of what men earn for matched full time work.

Last year the annual recognition of when U.S. women had to work into 2021 before they earned what men earned what men did in just 12 months of 2020 occurred on March 24. The year before that, the day was March 31.

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Say My Name: Fang Cheng Leading As Successful, Authentic Tech Innovator

Fang Cheng would not change her name. Not to make it sound less “Asian,” not to make it what investors told her would make her job as a tech innovator and entrepreneur easier.

One advisor told her to change her first name to Fiona. And when she married, another advisor told her to take her husband’s last name, because it was Jewish and not Chinese.

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"Bravery Has no Gender" Kira Rudik and Volodymyr Zelenskyy Lead Like a Woman in the Face of the Unthinkable

Issue 192 — March 8, 2022

My heart clutched as I watched Stephanie Ruhle interview Ukrainian Member of Parliament Kira Rudik on “The 11th Hour.”

I urge you to watch it a few times, not to become fearful but to observe how she speaks powerfully AND with empathy, humanity, and courage. These characteristics are what I mean when I say she leads like a woman.

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Break The Bias: On IWD, Enroll in New 9 Leadership Power Tools to Advance Your Career

International Women’s Day is one day out of 365 to intentionally promote equity and fairness for all those on the globe identifying as female and to address the urgency of breaking deliberate and unconscious bias interrupting the path to gender equality. #BreakTheBias is the theme of IWD this year.

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You’ve Got The Power: Newly Enhanced 9 Leadership Power Tools Course Arrives March 8 Because Now Is Best Time For You

Because you are worth it. Because now is the time to rethink your life, your work, your purpose and take the action to shape the future you intention.

What the Great Reshuffle informed by the global pandemic has done to physical and remote workplace cultures, it has also done to you.

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What "And Just Like That," the Truckers' Revolt, and the Great Resignation Can Teach Leaders

Issue 191 — February 21, 2022

If you were eagerly awaiting the “Sex and the City” reboot, “And Just Like That,” perhaps you were one of many who concluded that you can’t go home again and expect it to be a satisfying visit.

I loved the iconic television series back in the day. Yet I can see that trying to update it while maintaining the elements that made it so much fun in its first go-round was an impossible task. Because its current iteration takes place in a culture chastened by a pandemic and awakened to deep seated racial injustice that makes the whiteness of the original four female friends, especially in one of the world’s most diverse cities, seem so out of place.

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Persevere, Be Authentic: Take The Lead Board Chair Lily McNair Advises on Leadership

“I was the kid who loved all kinds of things.”

As a girl growing up outside Trenton, New Jersey at Fort Dix, where her father was based in the U.S. Army, Lily McNair loved books—a biography on Harriet Tubman especially, plus a psychology textbook—and a chemistry set that taught her how to make little volcanoes.

The miniature chemistry set her parents gave her one Christmas ignited McNair’s love of science. Tubman’s story inspired her to live a life helping others. And the psychology textbook her father bought (though he had not attended college) showed her she wanted to pursue a career in psychiatry or psychology.

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How Black History Month Can Help Us All “Uncover Ourselves”

Issue 190 — February 7, 2022

Nikole Hannah-Jones, author of the 1619 Project said it like this: “At some point when you have proven yourself and fought your way into institutions that were not built for you, when you’ve proven you can compete and excel at the highest level, you have to decide that you are done forcing yourself in,” she writes in her statement explaining why she left the University of North Carolina after an acrimonious but ultimately successful tenure battle to take the inaugural Knight Chair in Race and Reporting at Howard University.

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Justice at Last? A Black Female Supreme Considered For SCOTUS Finally

She will be Black, female and serving on the highest court in the land; the first time in its 232-year history. Coincidentally, the nomination will be official at the end of February, Black History Month and fulfills a 2019 campaign promise by President Joe Biden.

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Let's See: Why Black Women Must Be Visible Beyond Black History Month

Yes, there is a Rosa Parks signature series Barbie doll, Ella Fitzgerald Barbie (who comes with a standing microphone), Ida B. Wells Barbie with a newspaper in her hand, as well as Katherine Johnson (with an ID badge around her neck) and Maya Angelou Barbies, each in the collector series costing about $30.

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No Vax? Coping With Unvaxxed Colleagues, Clients and Customers

You are double vaxxed, boosted and spatially safe, yet you work regularly with colleagues, clients and customers who are not.

Never mind the masking issue, you are in contact in-person—and remotely—with people who are opposed to treating COVID-19 the same way you do and it is causing disruption, discontent and malaise in the workplace.

How as a leader do you maintain professional distance and your own safety as well as a safe and fair workplace culture?

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