23 & You: 12 Monthly Lessons To Make This Your Best Year Ever

It seems everyone starts the new year with a sterling list of goals aimed at making this a shiny year of professional successes. Some are reachable, some are aspirational, all seem plausible in theory.

To make this year 2023 truly monumental and to zero in on actively achieving the goals you assign yourself, it is important to be realistic about where you are in your career, who you are and what skills and resources you have at your disposable—and can acquire.

Take The Lead has a bounty of instructive and inspiring content, resources and courses available for you and your team to make these goals a reality and to see that 2023 is your best year ever in terms of reaching your heights as an entrepreneur, leader, innovator, manager and colleague.

I Wish My Mother Had Taken Mackenzie Scott’s Advice

Issue 215 — December 19, 2022

My mother’s Wedgewood Bone china and Tiffany crystal wine, water, and cordial glasses glisten in the hutch I bought, where they could be not just stored but seen.

Mother had kept them packed away for many years. Why? Because she was “saving them for nice,” as she put it.

The SumGloria FeldtDecember 19, 2022Philanthropy, Women Leaders, Donation, gender parityComment

Tis The Season To Be Reading: 18 of The Best 2022 Books For You

If you’re like me, and have a pile of books you are aiming to complete before the end of the year yet are still craving to know what is new and not to be missed, this list is for you. This is also a list for amazing gifts for the friends and colleagues in your life hungry for the best and brightest in nonfiction written by women who tackle workplace issues, personal struggles, strategies and insights to being your best self.

Hoda Kotb’s Excellent Advice for Women at Forbes 50 Over 50: “Say It Out Loud.”

Issue 214— December 12, 2022

“Say what you want out loud.”

That was the most quoted takeaway from the fireside chat interview between Morning Joe co-anchor and founder/partner with Forbes in the “Know Your Value” initiative, Mika Brzezinski and NBC’s Today Show cohost Hoda Kotb at the gathering of women chosen for Forbes 50 Over 50 2022 on December 8 at Forbes’ New York headquarters.

Sex, Camera, Power: How Filmmakers Affect Gender Bias in Workplace and Beyond

What you see is what you get. And what you don’t see is what you don’t get.

Nina Menkes, award-winning filmmaker, director and creator of the new documentary, “Brainwashed: Sex-Camera-Power” anchored a recent panel following a screening in Chicago at Facets on the historic visualization of characters identifying as women and how that mandates how systems treat half the world.

Change Leadership, Gender Parity, Women Career Success, Parity, MediaMichele WeldonDecember 9, 2022women in film, media, gender bias, Leadership ToolsComment

How Jacinda Ardern Took Down a Reporter’s Sexist Question and Showed Us Three Ways to Outsmart Implicit Bias

Issue 213— December 5, 2022

You really must watch this video to get your hackles up at the hapless reporter who asked New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern if she was meeting Finland’s Prime Minister Sanna Marin because they are “similar in age.”

The 12 Best Leadership Lessons From Take The Lead in 2022

Who really needs a partridge in a pear tree? What many women in the workplace need is a reliable set of accessible tools, insights and proven leadership lessons to enhance and transform their careers and their work lives.

Take The Lead offers those valuable tips each week in interviews with a broad range of leaders across identities and communities in various industries across the globe, representing different approaches to distinct challenges many face.

Are You the One Who Sent The $2000 Check?

Issue 212 — November 28, 2022

If you sent that check — it came last week without information as to the donor — to Take The Lead, thank you! This post will be published to coincide with Giving Tuesday so whoever you are, your timing could not be more perfect.

I just posted the message below on my personal fundraising page for Giving Tuesday:

I co-founded and am devoting this phase of my life to Take The Lead (www.taketheleadwomen.com) because its training, coaching, role models, and thought leadership have been proven to provide women with the very tools they need to embrace their power and elevate their ideas about what they can achieve in their careers and personal lives.

The SumGloria FeldtNovember 28, 2022Giving Tuesday, #GivingTuesday, crowdfunding, Take The Lead EventComment

GivingTuesday CEO: Everybody Is Generous

“Generosity is a basic, positive human value. In today’s climate, it is a tremendously undervalued tool for depolarization,” says Asha Curran, CEO of GivingTuesday, a unique model of funding and community-based philanthropy in 85 countries, raising an estimated total of $7-10 billion over the last 10 years.

How Nancy Pelosi Aced the 4 P’s of Political Leadership: Power, Presence, Platform, and Perseverance

Issue 211 — November 21, 2022

Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi gave the best speech of her political life on November 17, when after the 2022 midterm elections, she announced she would remain in Congress but would not run for Minority Leader again in January when the new Congress convenes.

Her words and her demeanor were a summation of her style of leadership.

The SumGloria FeldtNovember 21, 2022The Sum, Nancy Pelosi, Election Day, Female LeadershipComment

Safety First: CEO Grows Organization, Leads Communities By Doing The Right Thing

Born and raised in the Bronx, not far from New York’s Yankee Stadium, Soyini Chan Shue always knew she wanted to be in a profession to give back to her community.

Six (Nonpartisan) Leadership Lessons from the 2022 Elections

Issue 210 — November 14, 2022

I believe so strongly that #votingisleadership that I created a hashtag for it. Civic engagement is in my view a critical part of leadership. We are all shaped by our communities and so must be part of shaping them.

Politics, as political scientist Walter Truett Anderson defined it, is the clash of uncertainties from which social realities are constructed.

The SumGloria FeldtNovember 15, 2022Voting, midterm, Leaders, AbortionComment