Credit Due: Taylor Swift’s Advice About Power and Female Friendship

Issue 257 — April 22, 2024

I’m listening to Taylor Swift’s new album, The Tortured Poets Department, looking for inspiration for my more-or-less weekly column, “The Sum.” As in the sum of the week, what it means or what I learned about my favorite topics — women, power, and leadership — from whatever happened during the past week.

The last couple of weeks for me were all Beyonce all the time with the release and immediate race to the top of the C&W charts of her album Cowboy Carter. (How many versions of dancing to “Texas Hold ‘Em” have you seen on social media so far? I’m obsessed.)

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The #1 Action You Can Take Today To Make Life More #GenderFair

Issue 254 — March 3, 2024

How many clip art flowers and pink figures, celebratory Women’s History Month posts have you seen already this March — and we’re just a few days into it? Somehow it seems that many people have forgotten (if they ever knew) that women needed this special month, just as February was Black History Month for the same reason — because the narratives of history have not been written with our lens, and often our accomplishments have been downright ignored — or stolen.

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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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The Big RE Secret for Solving Women’s Pay and Debt Gaps

Issue 205 — September 5, 2022

Something doesn’t compute here, I thought, when I saw a well-meaning but laughable piece of advice to women in an Ad Council campaign in collaboration with AARP.

“Save a larger percentage of your income for retirement,“ it tells women, and cites the data that women are 80% more likely than men to be poor in their old age. “Save 2% more than you are currently saving,” goes the advice.

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It’s Intentioning launch day! But why are there 9 Leadership Intentioning Tools?

Issue 1789— September 27, 2021

[Special Note: Today 9/28/21, my new book Intentioning: Sex, Power, Pandemics, and How Women Will Take The Lead for (Everyone’s) Good is formally birthed into the world. It is incumbent upon me as the author to ask you to buy it, review it, and share it on social media. And seriously, despite the cheesiness I feel making that ask, I do want this book to reach thousands or millions of women like you to help you embrace your power, elevate your intentions, and use the tips and tools in this book to get the lives and careers of your dreams. And what I know is that if you don’t ask, you don’t get. OK? OK! Thank you for your support.]

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Women Asking, Women Giving: 3 Ways to Maximize Impact of Philanthropy

Issue 176 — August 30, 2021

If you want to see me break out into a cold sweat instantly, just say the word “event.” Every time an organization with which I’m involved has an event, my first reaction is “No.”

Not surprisingly, since I’ve been leading nonprofit organizations almost my entire career, and thus on the asking end of the fundraising equation, that probability of cold sweat occurs with some frequency.

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