Posts Tagged ‘She’s Doing It’
She's Doing It: Racing Champion Robyn Benincasa's Leadership Essentials
Today’s She’s Doing It features a guest post from Robyn Benincasa, a two-time Adventure Racing World Champion, Guinness World Record distance kayaker, full-time fire fighter and leadership expert.
After fighting back from crippling osteoarthritis hip surgery at age 41, she is launching Project Athena, a non-profit that encourages women who’ve endured life-altering medical set-backs to try athletic pursuits they have always dreamed of doing. The project pays their expenses and provides coaching and equipment for whatever sport you decide to try. It is a survivor helping survivors project with the goal of women helping women.
Here, Robyn shares what she’s learned about how to take a team from ordinary to extraordinary, her analysis of leadership styles, and how to change and/or use them effectively in business.
When we are faced with a challenge, whether it’s in sports, academic, business or relationships, many of us operate out of fear of failure.
We focus our attention and efforts on not falling short, on trying to stay just one step ahead. But the greatest team builders think differently. Sure, they are cognizant of the possibility of failure, and they prepare to deal with the things that go sideways, but their main focus is on doing what it takes to win versus simply not lose.
For Maximum Performance, Hope is a better place than Fear
When a team member gives up hope and says “it’s over. There is no way out for us,” brainstorming is shut down and entropy takes over our souls. That’s not to say we shouldn’t master the tactical agility to make a U-turn whenever necessary because that’s an important skill. But the best team builders can even position a U-Turn in a positive light, as merely a new set of challenges.
Read MoreShe's Doing It: Jane Roberts' 10 Years Making Global Women's Rights Reality
This is a guest post by a courageous leader for women globally. Jane Roberts saw an injustice and took action to set things right. On this July 11, World Population Day, join me in support of her efforts to raise awareness and money to ensure that women around the world can have healthy pregnancies when they choose and access to preventive family planning services to plan and space their childbearing.
Also on 11 July, the UK Government and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, with UNFPA and other partners, will host the London Summit on Family Planning, a groundbreaking convocation on family planning. The aim of the summit it to mobilize global policy, financing, commodity, political will, and service delivery commitments to support the rights of an additional 120 million women and girls in the world’s poorest countries to use contraceptive information, services and supplies, without coercion or discrimination, by 2020.
July 22, 2002, ten years ago this month, I read in the Los Angeles Times Colin Powell’s announcement that the United States of America, my country, was not going to release the $34 million Congress had approved for the U.N. Population Fund. Powell, a proponent of UNFPA, sold his soul.
Read MoreShe's Doing It: Dorothy Seymour Mills Finds Her Voice–and Uses It!
Earlier this year, I reviewed baseball historian Dorothy Seymour Mills’ book, First in the Field, a book that offers readers insight into the history behind gender-based affirmative action policies.
Today, Mills returns to 9 Ways to discuss her new book. A work of fiction, Drawing Card is steeped in Mills. trademark historical-fact-made-relevant-today.
According to Amazon reviewer Joan M. Thomas, “Mills’ extensive knowledge of history and ethnic cultures makes the fast paced story all the more real. Moreover, while the events occur during earlier times, inequities that persist today become crystal clear.”
Today’s guest blogger, Dorothy Seymour Mills, is the personification of what it means to embrace Power tool #1, Know Your History.
In researching women’s baseball history, I discovered that at least two female baseball players had been signed to minor-league contracts but didn’t play. That’s because the Commissioner of Baseball, Kenesaw M. Landis, canceled their contracts as soon as he learned that they were women. Landis scoffed at the idea that women could play baseball, just as some baseball men do today.
Read MoreFlourish Over 50: Gloria and Susan Tolles Talk Texas Pasts and Flourishing Futures
Mitt Romney recently described contraception coverage and abortion rights as “shiny objects” used by Democrats to distract voters from “more important” issues. At a moment in which women’s reproductive rights are being dismissed by America’s Republican presidential hopeful, it is important for us to know our history! For me, the advent of the birth control pill accompanied a defining moment in which I realized my “power to.”
I discuss my life journey—from Texas to working with Kathleen Turner on a memoir to why 2012 may finally again be the year of the woman—with writer Susan Tolles for this interview. The article originally appeared on Susan’s website Flourish Over 50.
SUSAN TOLLES: Welcome to Flourish Over 50. I’m just so excited that you’re here, and I want to talk about your lifelong passion for really empowering women.
GLORIA FELDT: I first had to empower myself. I didn’t start out knowing much about this power stuff. I grew up in small towns in Texas in the 1940-50s, where girls were not encouraged to get an education, have a career, or have real aspirations for themselves. I mean, my family actually did expect me to get educated, but only in order to be a better mother, a better mate, etc. So I really didn’t start out thinking that I had power and agency myself; I grew thinking that the agency was outside of myself. I had to learn by trial-and-error along the way, and I am still learning it.
SUSAN TOLLES: Right, we all are. It’s always a work in progress.
GLORIA FELDT: It is a work in progress. So I’ll give you the real quick rundown of what happened: I was a teen mom; I got pregnant, married my high school sweetheart when I was 15. I had three children, bing-bing-bing, and then I was 20 years old. I think it was the combination of maturity and the advent of the birth control pill where I just woke up. That was one defining moment.
I realized two things: Firstly, I had three children, and although I had a husband who was earning a salary, I kept thinking, “What if I have to support these children?” I had no employable skills whatsoever. Secondly, I was starting to get a little bored and I realized that this life was not as much fun as I thought it was going to be. I, in fact, had a brain and I was eager to go to school.
And so, I finished high school by correspondence, and then the birth control pill came along. It was that defining moment that allowed me to see that I could create a life for myself. I could plan. If I wanted to have more children, I could have them by my own choice at whatever time I wanted to. But if I didn’t want to have more, then I had that option, and it meant I could go to college. I would say that was the first big defining moment for me. There were a series of other moments.
So I often ask people when I speak, “When did you know you had the power to _______?”
SUSAN TOLLES: Hmm, great question.
Read MoreShe's Doing It: Chicke Fitzgerald Has Solutionz
One of the best things about writing a book about women’s relationship with power is that I get to talk with so many interesting people about it. And since it seems that everyone is using my No Excuses Power Tool #8 – “Employ Every Medium” – by being the media these days, I have the opportunity to appear on many web-based radio shows, emanating from anywhere, and available for listening, often along with an accompanying blog post, at any time of the day or night. Media that simply could not have existed in years past.
One example of that trend is an interview I did with Chicke Fitzgerald, founder of the business development consulting firm Solutionz and the Executive Girlfriends’ Group (EGG).
EGG is a platform for executive women (both corporate and entrepreneurial). And it’s a ‘real world’ connection, not an electronic one, hosting a by invitation only conference call weekly, on Fridays from 4pm ET to 5:30pm ET. The website provides support to the group and allows the members to connect one on one, ask and answer questions, and to benefit from one another’s expertise.
I caught up with Chicke for our interview on her cell phone.
Read MoreShe’s Done It for 40 Years: Ms. Magazine Honored for Auspicious Anniversary
When did you first see Ms. Magazine?
I can’t recall exactly the first time I saw it, but I do remember subscribing to it soon after it launched in 1972. I lived in Odessa TX, not exactly the bastion of feminism. But within the pages of Ms., I found women from all over the country saying what I’d been thinking. And I realized I wasn’t alone in feeling that something was terribly unfair about the way women were treated in society.
I also learned about the National Organization for Women from Ms. I joined as an at-large member and located the other five or six at-large members within a 100-mile radius.
Read MoreShe's Doing It: Jane Fonda Rocks the Power of Grandmothers at Women's Media Center Event
“Making women visible and powerful in the media,” the mission of the nonprofit New york and D.C. based Women’s Media Center http://www.womensmediacenter.com/, was on full display Monday night June 4. The evening’s centerpiece was the premiere of “Peace, Love, and Misunderstanding,” starring the incomparable Jane Fonda as a marijuana-growing and selling, tie-dye-wearing, sexuality-embracing, moon-howling grandmother who never left the 1960’s.
[caption id="attachment_8298" align="alignnone" width="400" caption="The incomparable gossip columnist Liz Smith"]
They're Doing It: AAUW and NASPA Honor 5
Ever work so hard that you forget to take time to celebrate what you’ve accomplished? I do it all the time.
So today, here’s a shout out to the American Association of University Women (AAUW) and the National Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education (NASPA) who on May 31 will take time to celebrate six outstanding women.
Women who are clearly doing it for themselves and other women.
These women are innovators in media, advocacy, politics, and business, and they will be honored at the National Conference for College Women Student Leaders (NCCWSL).
Read MoreShe's Doing It: Katie Couric's Advice for Making Media Breakthroughs
At the start of this video interview with Katie Couric, the first female major TV network evening news anchor, Katie politely but pointedly calls out interviewer Katie Corrado for introducing her initially as “the lovely Katie Couric.” Much like her interviewee, Corrado is perky and cute. She appears to be a generation younger than Couric.
That Corrado needed to be called out is cause for concern about what lessons are being transmitted from one generation to another, and how the dominant cultural narratives imprint even an obviously intelligent young media professional.
Fortunately, Katie’s willingness to apply No Excuses Power Tool #9 Tell your story, is the best antidote for those women whose consciousness needs to be raised about the remaining barriers to gender equality.
Corrado then asked a stereotypically leading question about whether women compete or support each other in the cutthroat media business.
Read MoreShe’s Doing It: Lily Finds Women Revolting and a 9-Year-Old Feminist
You met Lily Womble in last week’s She’s Doing It and learned that she attended the AWID (Association for Women’s Rights in Development) international forum in Istanbul.
There, she recorded video interviews with a number of women from around the globe. Besides the two in this post (watch them to learn what the post title means), you can see more on Lily’s YouTube channel.
Now back in college in Mississippi, 19-year-old Lily reflected on her experience:
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