Climb: Taking Every Step with Conviction, Courage, and Calculated Risk to Achieve a Thriving Career and a Successful Life


Book Description

"Gadsden-Williams is an award-winning global diversity expert who launched Ceiling Breakers LLC to help women and professionals of color to reach their potential. In her book, she talks about her journey as a woman of color who's had top senior-level positions in corporate America while managing a chronic illness. She also provides solutions to address the challenges women face navigating the business world, essentially a playbook for dealing with some of the most demanding workplace issues." --Ebony Magazine "The first book from diversity expert, philanthropist, and Accenture lead executive Gadsden-Williams incorporates both memoir and career guide...Hers is a realistic, pragmatic discussion of what it takes to make it in Fortune 500 companies, and in life." --Booklist "In this memoir and guidebook, Gadsden-Williams interweaves the story of her life as a black female executive with research statistics and savvy career tips for minority women also seeking to occupy the 'C-Suite'...Always candid about the realities of corporate life, the author offers sound advice for minority women seeking advancement, recognition, and meaningful lives. Illuminating and useful." --Kirkus Reviews "Michelle Gadsden-Williams has accomplished something rare for a black woman in America: maintained a successful corporate career at the highest level. Climb is the story of her journey to the top, and her generous effort to send the elevator back down for the rest of us." --Tiffany Dufu, author of Drop the Ball "Gadsden-Williams has written a brilliant book that reveals how companies can leverage diversity as a competitive advantage in today's marketplace. With vivid stories from her twenty-five years [of experience], Climb is a book that will reframe HR into a powerful strategy function for twenty-first century organizations." --John Gerzema, New York Times best-selling author of The Athena Doctrine "Gadsden-Williams has used her personal story of resiliency to provide invaluable insight into how to build a fulfilling life, not just a career. She pulls no punches when sharing her experiences as an African American woman determined to fulfill her dream to help others live up to their potential." --Linda A. Hill, professor, Harvard Business School, and author of Being the Boss "Most organizations were not designed for women of color. [In Climb] Gadsden-Williams takes us on a journey of her career--the winding road of making tough career and family decisions, seeking out and shaping opportunities, and walking away when others thought she should stay. There is raw, sincere vulnerability displayed in this book...[and there] is also a call to action--intentionally shape your career and be an active partner in shaping the organizations you are a part of. Thank you for sharing your story! I am sure it will be an inspiration to its readers. Keep climbing!" --Katherine W. Phillips, Paul Calello Professor of Leadership and Ethics, Columbia Business School "A frank memoir plus career guide, Michelle Gadsden-Williams shares personal stories of self-assurance, resilience, and bravery that serve as lessons for women in the workplace. This book is essential reading." --Angela Rye, CEO, IMPACT Strategies Renowned as a diversity and inclusion strategist, Gadsden-Williams held C-Suite positions at major organizations for many years...and then took the off-ramp to probe a different career path, launching Ceiling Breakers LLC, with the primary goal to help women and professionals of color reach their full potential. As a woman of color and corporate executive who has worked and traveled the world for several Fortune 500 companies--all while managing a chronic illness--she provides insight into overcoming the barriers facing professionals in today's workplace. In Climb, Gadsden-Williams combines her inspirational life story with pragmatic solutions to address problems facing women in corporate America, offering a professional playbook for tackling today's most pressing workplace issues.




Key Productivity and Performance Strategies to Advance Your Career


Book Description

Key Productivity and Performance Strategies to Advance Your STEM Career shares valuable knowledge and insights on best practices used by high performing individuals in the STEM fields to enhance their professional endeavors. The strategies contained in this book are based on Lesia L. Crumpton-Young's experience and expertise as a STEM professional and a certified Life and Career Coach. The book includes real-life examples from STEM professionals of career hurdles and efficient solutions to reaching your career goals. It covers effective goal setting, decision-making, and how best to overcome doubt and criticism, as well as practical advice on critical path analysis. Finally, the book includes a five-year career planning tool, along with additional problem statements and exercises, making it a valuable resource those involved in the STEM fields. Includes a five-year career planning tool, additional problem statements and exercises Discusses topics such as decisive decision-making, setting clear and concise goals, objectives, targets and how to efficiently allocate resources Present insights on the best practices used by high-performing individuals in the STEM fields




A Blessing: Women of Color Teaming Up to Lead, Empower and Thrive


Book Description

A Blessing presents a fresh, bold analysis of African American female leadership. An unapologetic look at our often-overlooked role in America’s social, political, psychological and economic history, it is armed with data that should be empowering for today’s “unicorns.” The book offers a “playbook” to help Black unicorns “team up” and find innovative ways to support one another as they climb, what research shows, are lonely, stressful, jagged yet ultimately rewarding ladders of opportunity.




Driven by Intention: Own Your Purpose, Gain Power, and Pursue Your Passion as a Woman at Work


Book Description

A game-changing guide for women who want to transform the way they work and create their own success—from an award-winning global diversity expert. Ambition alone will only take you but so far. Without a plan, however, you're left with blind ambition and that won't necessarily take you where you want to go. In this groundbreaking book by diversity, workplace culture, and career building expert Michelle Gadsden-Williams, you’ll discover how much more useful—and rewarding—it is to cultivate an intentional mindset. Deeply inspiring and eminently practical, Driven by Intention shows how intention is about so much more than simply setting goals: it’s figuring out why we choose what we want to do and how we get this done in order to seamlessly execute and achieve our passions. Simply put, intention is the “secret sauce” of realizing your vision—at home, at work, or wherever you have passions worth pursuing. Gadsden-Williams combines years of professional experience with research-based insights, proven strategies, and effective exercises to provide the tools you need to get started, in chapters that include: Setting Intentions vs Setting Goals Strengthening Your Squad Defining Your Meaning by Impact Transforming Company Culture Leveraging Your Prized Assets Managing Your Financial Life Men as Allies for Female Leaders Filled with practical steps to take now and how to reimagine what comes next, Driven by Intention is an effective blueprint for success and the profiles of twelve highly accomplished women (and one executive chairman who is a male ally) that drive the lessons home. You’ll find relatable strategies and tactics embedded in their stories—from women who had to forge their own paths, faced uncertainty or incredible odds and still managed to rise above it all, and establish uber successful careers for themselves. Women such as Mellody Hobson, president and co-CEO of the largest black-owned asset management firm, Ariel Investments; Fairygodboss co-founders Georgene Huang and Romy Newman; Sheri Salata, who had extraordinary success over more than 20 years as executive producer of The Oprah Winfrey Show and president of Harpo Studios; and more share how they rose to the top because they were driven by their intentions. Driven by Intention is a book for impact seekers who want to make a material difference at work, in the world, and in their own lives—on their own terms.




Climb


Book Description

MICHAEL BERRY is the fascinating biography of the first Muslim attorney to practice law in the State of Michigan. Throughout his 50 years as an attorney in partnership with a diverse group of attorneys, who joined the firm on a handshake and stayed for many years, Michael Berry amassed many notable achievements and an equally impressive roster of awards and recognitions. A savvy politician, Michael Berry rose to chair the largest Democratic congressional district in the United States. Michael Berry eventually was appointed to the powerful Wayne County Road Commission, which oversaw the vast network of roads in Detroit's home county, known as the automobile capital of the world. Under his 16-year chairmanship, the Detroit Metropolitan Airport was greatly expanded and became one of the top 10 airports in the United States. In 1974, Detroit's international terminal was named after Michael Berry. Throughout tragedy and triumph, Michael Berry always found time to help anyone along the way to improve his or her life. His community service and humanitarian efforts span decades and great distances, including his ancestral land of Lebanon. Overriding in this remarkable journey through the octogenarian's life is the example he set in everything he undertook. He practiced law by the book, often putting principle above payment. He ran a tight ship at the Road Commission, instituting a bidding system for all work undertaken by that influential body and clearly proving that stewardship can be, as it should be, the cornerstone of public service. Arab Americans in fact, all Americans everywhere should look to Michael Berry as a gentle giant who rose from childhood poverty and achieved great success without compromising the values instilled in him at a young age. His biography serves as a living legacy for those who seek to blaze similar trails.




Brave


Book Description

Live every day with greater clarity, confidence and courage. Brave is a handbook for being more courageous. Written for busy people on the go, its short, focused chapters provide practical tools and empowering perspectives to help you build your 'courage muscles' in your work, relationships and life. Drawing on her background in business, psychology and coaching, author Margie Warrell will guide you in moving past the fears, doubts and beliefs that keep you from making the changes, and taking the chances, you need to enjoy the fulfillment and success you desire. Courage is a habit. Practicing it daily, even in quiet small ways, unlocks new possibilities, creates new opportunities, grows your influence and enables you to meet your challenges with more resilience and self-assurance. So whether you're stuck in a rut, struggling in a relationship, overwhelmed by your daily juggling act or uninspired about your future, Brave will provide you with a regular dose of positive and practical inspiration to: Clarify what 'success' truly means to you, and be more purposeful in your daily efforts to achieve it Speak up with greater confidence, and be more assertive in dealing with difficult people, getting what you want and changing what you don't Define the person and leader you aspire to be, become more resilient under pressure, decisive in uncertainty and adaptable to change Scrap the excuses (your age, education, gender, busyness or children) that sabotage your future actions Dare more boldly, passionately pursuing the goals that inspire you most, no matter how daunting Courage begets courage. You build it every time you choose to leave the safety of your comfort zone for the sake of something more important. Day by day, brave action by brave action, you can Brave within you to create a life rich in all that you seek. If you want to live your life more powerfully and purposefully, this book will become your trusted companion.




Find Your Courage


Book Description

"An up-front, to the point, and honest masterpiece. You can't go wrong with this one!"—Richard Carlson, bestselling author of Don't Sweat the Small Stuff . . . From popular life coach and motivational speaker Margie Warrell comes an inspiring, practical guide for finding the courage to change any--or every--aspect of your life. Warrell's "12 Acts of Courage" challenges you to rethink your "life scripts," overcome everyday fears, and dream bigger. Each chapter includes proven strategies and "Courage Exercises" to help you harness their inner strength and make meaningful changes in your personal and professional lives.




Seven Steps to Your Best Life


Book Description

Within you is a zone of genius that contains everything you need to live the life you were born to live! Would you like to be living your best life and operate at your highest potential in one or more pivotal areas of your life? Do you consider yourself a High Achiever, or would you like to become one? Seven Steps to Your Best Life gives you the roadmap, tools and strategies to be operating at your absolute best. It is your step by step, paint by the numbers guide for getting the results you want in the shortest time possible. This is the book for anyone who: -Is or aspires to be a high achiever -Needs new direction in their career -Would like to develop the mojo to finally get control of their destiny! -Wants to find a stronger spiritual connection and inner peace -Needs help fine-tuning their purpose in this stress-filled world -Is ready to make important and carefully chosen life changes -Wants to master self-discipline -Wants to replace fear and anxiety with courage -Would like to discover, follow and enhance strong passions in any life area -And much more!




Race, Work, and Leadership


Book Description

Rethinking How to Build Inclusive Organizations Race, Work, and Leadership is a rare and important compilation of essays that examines how race matters in people's experience of work and leadership. What does it mean to be black in corporate America today? How are racial dynamics in organizations changing? How do we build inclusive organizations? Inspired by and developed in conjunction with the research and programming for Harvard Business School's commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the HBS African American Student Union, this groundbreaking book shines new light on these and other timely questions and illuminates the present-day dynamics of race in the workplace. Contributions from top scholars, researchers, and practitioners in leadership, organizational behavior, psychology, sociology, and education test the relevance of long-held assumptions and reconsider the research approaches and interventions needed to understand and advance African Americans in work settings and leadership roles. At a time when--following a peak in 2002--there are fewer African American men and women in corporate leadership roles, Race, Work, and Leadership will stimulate new scholarship and dialogue on the organizational and leadership challenges of African Americans and become the indispensable reference for anyone committed to understanding, studying, and acting on the challenges facing leaders who are building inclusive organizations.




Getting Everything You Can Out of All You've Got


Book Description

A trusted advisor to America's top corporations and recognized as one of today's preeminent marketing experts, Jay Abraham has created a program of proven strategies to help you realize undreamed-of success! Unseen opportunities face each of us every day. Using clear examples from his own experience, Jay explains just how easy it can be to find and/or create new opportunities for wealth-building in any existing business, enterprise, or venture. And just how easy can it be? One entrepreneur took the concept of the ballpoint pen and refined it into a multimillion-dollar idea: roll-on deodorant. Fred Smith of Federal Express took the methods that banks use for clearing checks to develop an overnight delivery company that has revolutionized the way we do business. Now, what have you seen--or are going to see--that you could take and turn to your advantage? In Getting Everything You Can Out of All You've Got: 21 Ways You Can Out-Think, Out-Perform, and Out-Earn the Competition, the program focuses on helping you spot the hidden assets, overlooked opportunities, and untapped resources around you, and gives you, and gives you fresh eyes with which to see and capitalize on them. You'll also learn how to adapt and apply these tools to your unique circumstances to maximize your income, influence, power, and success.