On November 1st I attended the 10th Annual Pennsylvania Conference for Women and spent the day with 7,000 women! Hillary Clinton and Madeleine Albright delivered the key-note addresses and there were many other extraordinary women leaders who spoke through out the day. It was a conference alive with waves of energy that kept surging. While… Continue reading…
Category: Leadership
Taking on Fear Advances a Career
Last week I was sitting in a workshop on courage and leadership at the Pennsylvania Conference for Women when the panel moderator asked “Does fear ever go away or do you need to be willing to take the leap and be fearful while taking action?” Suddenly my mind flashed back 27 years to when I… Continue reading…
Dispelling Notions About What it Takes for Women to Achieve and Thrive
While listening to an NPR radio interview with Debora Spar, President of Barnard College and author of the newly-published book Wonder Women: Sex, Power and the Quest for Perfection, it became all too clear that the ideas I grew up with about being a girl and achieving as a female were really different from those… Continue reading…
It in Adversity that We Learn are Biggest Lessons
In his new book The Gift of Adversity: The Unexpected Benefits of Life’s Difficulties, Setbacks, and Imperfections, Norman Rosenthal, M.D., shares his belief that adversity is by far the best teacher most of us will ever encounter. To make his point, he draws on case studies, his upbringing in apartheid South Africa, and the experiences… Continue reading…
Lessons from Oprah and Mika Brzezinski on Being Authentic in the Workplace
“Don’t expect the clarity to come all at once, to know your purpose right away,” urged Oprah in her May 2013 commencement speech to Harvard graduates. After several years in the media business, Oprah said, “it became clear to me that I was here on earth to use television and not be used by it.”… Continue reading…
How would Happy Fernandez Lean In on the Current Conversation about Women & Leadership
There’s a firestorm brewing in reaction to Facebook COO, Sheryl Sandberg’s new book, Lean In, and it makes me wonder what Happy Fernandez would have to say about it. Unfortunately, 74-year-old Happy died in January so I’ll never really know, but that doesn’t stop me from wondering what ways she’d add to the conversation. I… Continue reading…
Beyond Sheryl Sandberg’s Leaning In
In an interview in the April Harvard Business Review, Sheryl Sandberg said, “Women face huge institutional barriers. But we also face barriers that exist within ourselves, sometimes as the result of our socialization. For most of my professional life, no one ever talked to me about the ways I held myself back.” (Harvard Business Review… Continue reading…
Surprising News on What Actually Makes Us Productive
While reading the paper last Sunday morning, I was reminded of why I prioritize getting up and out the door to my weekly yoga classes. According to Tony Schwartz, author of Being Excellent at Anything, “strategic renewal — including daytime workouts, short afternoon naps, longer sleep hours, more time away from the office and longer,… Continue reading…
It All Comes Down to Virtual vs. Real
Late Thursday afternoon I was driving home and did the usual… I clicked on NPR for whatever program was on the air. I listened intently as the reporter told the story of a Notre Dame football star, Manti Te’o, who was fooled into believing that a virtual romance with a woman was actually real. After… Continue reading…
Reimagining Leadership
Last weekend, I heard Kitty Kolbert, the Director of the Athena Center for Leadership Studies at Barnard College, say, “If we can develop women as leaders, we can also develop men to be better leaders.” Hosting a TEDxWomen event to “re-imagine leadership,” The Athena Center for Leadership Studies had organized a day of live performances,… Continue reading…