Secure Your Intention: Why You Need To Power Up At Women’s Equality Day Conference

It’s a fact. Networking works— especially for women across all industries and identities.

Take The Lead’s Power Up Concert & Conference on Women’s Equality Day offers unique opportunities for networking, learning, sharing, skill-building, strategic planning, understanding, and expressing your intentions on how and why to create the career and life you always imagined.

Read More
Reimagining Your Career and Life: How Power Up Conference Leaders Can Help You Thrive

It’s one mission to serve your country. It is quite another to serve your own mission.

Those lessons apply to every person making life and career adjustments.  

“Women who have served in the military have successfully learned to maneuver in a closed, highly structured environment and within their own area of expertise such as logistics, combat arms, personnel, operations, and more,” says retired Major General Margaret (Peggy) Wilmoth, PhD, MSS, RN, FAAN, and professor in the School of Nursing at University of North Carolina since 2017.

Read More
U.S. Ranks 43rd in Gender Equality: A Women’s Equality Day Call to Action

Issue 235— July 10, 2023

“We want it all, but we’ll take half.” — Bella Abzug.

Abzug, the late NY Congresswoman and architect of Women’s Equality Day, made that declaration with a touch of wry humor, but she was serious as a heart attack. This sentiment resonates with an all-too-real truth about the ongoing struggle for women’s equality.

Read More
Happy/Not Happy Fifth of July: The Case for Action

Issue 234 — July 5, 2023

Happy Fifth of July. It’s National Bikini Day in case you hadn’t noticed. And National Graham Cracker Day (who makes these things up?).

I needed that moment of levity coming off a Fourth of July that was tinged with anger, sadness, and a new resolve, in the wake of the Supreme Court’s ruling last week eviscerating academic affirmative action precedents. Best selling author of The Memo and Right Within Minda Harts called it a sucker punch in her LinkedIn Post responding to the ruling.

Read More
Failure As True Growth: Abby Wambach On What Makes A Good Leader

“Failures are things I feel most proud of. Stop calling it failure, it’s true growth,” says Abby Wambach, former two-time U.S. Women’s National Team Olympic gold medalist, World Cup Soccer winner and author.

At the recent Customer Contact Week Conference in Las Vegas, Rebecca Jarvis, ABC News chief business economics correspondent describes Wambach as someone who “turns failure into fuel.” Jarvis adds that Wambach is also “the highest international goal scorer of all time” as well as an “advocate for pay equity and LGBTQ rights.”

Read More
No Lie: Gabrielle Union on How Entrepreneurs Can Create Success

“If you can’t be honest about yourself, you will go through life as a lie,” said Gabrielle Union, entrepreneur, award-winning actress, producer and author in a recent conversation at Pride Summit 2023 with B. Pagels-Minor, podcast host and founder of DVRGNT Ventures.

Read More
How About We Solve a Problem Instead of Admiring It? Building a Solution-Focused Mindset

Issue 232 — June 19, 2023

I often quote Mellody Hobson, President and co-CEO of Ariel Investments, in my speeches and training. She said, “We have admired the problem long enough.”

I don’t remember what she was referring to but to me this wry comment applies to every injustice people face, every complaint we may have even if it is fully warranted. We can spout data about how awful this is and how discriminatory that is, but until we are willing to roll up our sleeves and take action, we’re just “admiring the problem” and failing to get to the solutions.

Read More
Dangers of AI? Yes To Replacing, But Mostly Embracing A Whole New World

“This may be as big as the hype now and it may be underhyped in the longterm,” Sam Altman, CEO of Open AI, told Kara Swisher, journalist and podcast host, at the recent Pride Summit 2023 hosted by Lesbians Who Tech. “This is closer to a societal revolution, not a technical revolution.”

He spearheads the company launched in November 2022 with an estimated 1 billion monthly users and 100 million active users.

Read More
From Mass Disruption to Critical Mass of Progress: Lead YOUR Intention

Issue 231 — June 12, 2023

Are you ready for the 2023 Power Up Concert and Conference, as always on Women’s Equality Day August 26? Learn about it and get your super early bird tickets here.

I am excited to invite you to join in this pivotal moment to seize opportunities in the wake of pandemic recovery. The last 3 years have exacerbated disparities and revealed fault lines in our culture. The time to advance racial and gender parity in leadership is now.

Read More
Practice Hope: Legend Joan Baez on Activism, Music and Making Good Trouble

“Who wants to sit next to Juanita?”

Born in New York, and growing up in California, and later Massachusetts, Joan Baez says she felt like an outsider as a young girl of Mexican heritage in a small public school where her grade school teacher taunted her with a name that was not hers.

Read More