Posts in Changing the Workplace
Open The Mirrored Door: Key Tips For Building Your Path To Leadership

For a generation or more, women in leadership in the workplace have focused on breaking the glass ceiling.

Now, says Ellen Taaffe, Director of Women’s Leadership Programs at Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University, it’s time to focus on breaking through what she calls the “mirrored door.”

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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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Reading The Future: 5 Trends To Define Work in 2022 and Beyond

The coronavirus pandemic has altered every aspect of life, and the workplace is no exception.

In 2020, 2.3 million women left the U.S. workforce—either through job loss or being forced to quit in order to care for their children—leading to the lowest levels of women in the labor force since the 1980s, prompting Vice President Kamala Harris to declare it “a national emergency.”

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Find Meaning in Your Work & Life: Host, Author, Founder on Crafting Purpose

“I am driven by justice,” says Sonali Kolhatkar, author, radio host, nonprofit organization co-director, artist, musician and mother. “There’s a time and a place for rolling up one’s sleeve and getting the work done,” says the Los Angeles-based host and executive producer of the nationally syndicated radio and TV program, “Rising Up With Sonali” which airs on KPFK and KPFA and also as a TV show on Free Speech TV.

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Who’s In Charge? Authority Gap Is Real and What You Can Do About It

It is likely that if many of us had a nickel for every time someone questioned our authority or expertise, many of us would not be too concerned about having enough saved for retirement.

Yes, those moments when your title and role are announced and the naysayers shrink in the back of the room, can be satisfying, but the consistent presumption of a lack of authority and credibility based on gender is far too prevalent and costly. It hinders not just acknowledgment, but advancement, opportunity, income and quality of life.

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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.

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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.”

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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.

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Not Perfect, But Your Best: Fintech Innovation Leader on Career Vaults

Now vice president and head of strategic partnerships at Amex Digital Lab, Stephanie Schultz recalls it was not all that long ago starting her career at American Express, when she thought maybe it was time to get an American Express card herself.

And now she spearheads the innovation hub at this Fortune 100 company, creating new ways for customers to interact with Amex digitally across all platforms and apps.

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Thrive In Your Brilliance: Latina Leader, Author on How To Create Change

You may not have heard of the artichoke capital of the world—Castroville, California—but you definitely need to hear and know more about Denise Padín Collazo, a leader, advocate, director and author who coincidentally was born in Castroville.

Senior advisor for external affairs and director of institutional advancement at Faith In Action, (formerly PICO National Network), the nation’s largest faith-based, progressive organizing network, Collazo is an inspiring leadership expert and social justice advocate with the mission to encourage women of color to lead with vision and to thrive.

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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.

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