From Lucy to Leadership Part 2: Our Origins’ Central Question

Issue 252 — February 11, 2024

Last weekend, I went to see the movie I think should win Academy Awards in every category: Ava DuVernay’s rendition of Pulitzer Prize-winning author Isabel Wilkerson’s Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents.

After writing last week about the discovery of the 3.2 million year old hominid fossil Lucy in Hadar, Ethiopia 50 years ago by paleoanthropologist and founder of the Institute of Human Origins Donald Johanson, I wanted to explore further the question of why we humans are the way we are.

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Wear the Shirt of Change: Representing the Power of Women’s Leadership This Giving Tuesday

Issue 246 — November 27, 2023

No doubt you have noticed that Giving Tuesday 2023 is today, November 27. I’m challenging you to share what’s on the shirt of your convictions about women’s leadership.

My personal favorite shirt is historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich’s well-used quote, “Well behaved women rarely make history.” But today I’m wearing the shirt designed by Michael Stars for this Giving Tuesday.

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Your October Surprises From Take The Lead

Issue 242 — October 2, 2023

No, not October surprises like in politics, where they’re always bad news. We don’t need those.

These FREE juicy morsels of practical information to use and inspiration to lift us up, served up in brief, engaging chats, will spice up the fall without the calories of pumpkin spice lattes. Though feel free to sip one while joining us for these conversations.

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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.

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Pivotal Moments: Why Gender Equality in Leadership Is Coming

Issue 229 — May 22, 2023

My grandmother was a Bolshevik.

Grandmother Rose was anything but revolutionary by the time she was my primary caregiver during my preschool years in Temple, Texas. She came to America in 1920 to marry her fiancée from their home town in Lithuania, had two children, and learned to play domestic arts like the other traditional housewives in the neighborhood.

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