I Owe You an Update

Issue 225 — April 9, 2023

Thank you for supporting Take The Lead! You make this essential work for gender parity possible.

As a donor, you deserve to know what your gifts accomplish. We’ve been heads down doing the work — delivering training, creating valuable leadership content, and planning exciting new programs. Here’s a brief update for 2023 so far. I’d love to elaborate if you want more information, and I’ll be happy to take your questions, ideas, and comments. Please send them to me?here .

The Topline: Take The Lead Is Rising

After almost three years of pandemic-induced challenges, we are on the rise!

There is a huge need to help women recover from job losses and the “great resignation.” We must overcome setbacks to the intersectional leadership parity we had been on a path to achieving by our target year of 2025.

We’ve retooled programs to address the changed world. I believe — I hope you agree — these very challenges present the best opportunity we will ever have to make big systemic changes in the workplace and in how we structure our lives for a greater purpose, and higher intentions, all with balance and joy.

Here are three main highlights:

1. A New Mastermind Series + New Option to License the Core Power Tools

Your gifts enable us to develop, test, and evaluate these groundbreaking leadership development programs and provide scholarships for women who need them. 90% of women in previous courses have completed their action plans and report significantly higher levels of confidence based on knowing their value and embracing their power in our new “power TO” rather than the power over paradigm. Your support also enables us to provide free webinars and to produce podcasts, an award-winning blog, and a free newsletter that includes women’s “Power to Change” stories.

I am excited to collaborate with other women on setting intentions. I am coming in needing a lot of help refining my ideas and getting over the hump of making a big shift from running my business in freelance mode to a company with a team mode. — Marisa

Marisa is in?the new leadership mastermind–style course launched on March 23, Intentioning: Transform Your Dreams to Reality with the Power of Intention. Based on my book?Intentioning, I’m teaching it to live online in mastermind format, one hour a week for 13 weeks. And, drum roll, our platform has a new, secure community function we’ll use instead of Facebook. This highly interactive FUN series is especially good for women in leadership, in any sector. Women aiming to clarify then set intentions (using intention as a verb, intentioning), for their next steps. Women yearning to answer the question, the power to what? To what end will I use my power?

You can help Take The Lead by recommending our work to women who could benefit from it. They can email?[email protected] ?and ask to be informed of the next cohort. We’ll make sure they get notifications of upcoming events.

We also delivered a well-attended, nerve-hitting, free webinar, “Strike Your Own Damn Balance” with Leading Motherhood founder and CEO Amy Looper. The topic is based on the Leadership Intentioning Tool #5 of the 9 from in Mastermind series.

The 9 Leadership Power Tools to Advance Your Career course?remains the core curriculum, perfect for early or mid-career women. It is available now as an online self-study course. Plus, it’s terrific as a virtual plug-and-play proven women’s leadership program that businesses and nonprofit organizations can license and use internally. Please tell organizations you’re connected with about it. They or you can email?[email protected] . We’ll get in touch with more info.

“Certified graduate!!! 9 Leadership Power Tools: The Sure Steps To Advance Your Career. Why exactly is this course worth your precious time? Here are three powerful reasons:?Reason #1: You’re smart and intentional and so ready to learn the secrets to your career success as you hone the very practical skills you need to be highly successful as a leader. Reason #2: We all have our insecurities and fears. But with this course, you’ll boost your confidence, authenticity, intentionality, and joy. Reason #3: You’ll learn from leadership expert, New York Times Best-Selling Author, successful CEO, professor, and activist for gender equality, Gloria Feldt, who will share directly with you how to break through barriers and maximize your leadership with these three steps: how to transform and embrace your power; the 9 Leadership Power Tools you’ll use right away to be a more effective leader; and create your own Strategic Leadership Action Plan, paving a clear path to implement what you have learned. Thank you for this amazing course :)! And thank you Insight for this opportunity!” -Beatriz G.

2. 50 Women Can Change the World Rises Again!

Our most powerful, most effective, most immersive, and most beloved program is 50 Women Can Change the World? which we deliver according to industry or sector. In the pre-pandemic past, your contributions have enabled us to provide this 3-month intensive part-in-person and part-virtual training and coaching programs plus three months of follow-up to women in the nonprofit and public service sector, journalism, media and entertainment, healthcare, and law. The women in these programs not only make individual Strategic Leadership Action Plans, they also create cohort-wide plans where they commit to working together to “take the lead” to advance all women in their sectors. At least 50% of our cohorts are women of color.

An external evaluation found 40% of women in these programs achieved significant career advancement within six months. Most exciting to me is that many cohort members reported aspiring far higher than they would have before. Because first women must have the intention to lead and know how to articulate the value they bring before we can reach parity.

Now, we are so excited to report we will soon receive funding for?two cohorts (50 each) of 50 Women Can Change the World in Entrepreneurship!

I can’t yet share more information. But you will be the first to know when we can make it public. Meanwhile, please feel free to recommend female entrepreneurs, maybe even yourself, who would be perfect candidates. We anticipate launching at the Power Up Concert and Conference on Women’s Equality Day, 2023.

3. That brings me to the 2023 Power Up Concert and Conference, on August 26, Women’s Equality Day in Los Angeles. Mark your calendar. I guarantee you won’t want to miss it.

Thank you to each and every one of you who attended last year, who sponsored, and who donated your talent and time to make it “the best conference I’ve ever attended” (according to some attendees).

This year will be bigger and better than ever. People are more ready to be in person. And we will still have a virtual option. The event delivers the “inspire” part of our mission, and we always have calls to action. We want you and need you to be involved in any way you want! Some volunteers have stepped up and last year’s chair Kim Tarnopolski created detailed procedures and spreadsheets to guide us. It will be fun and amazing. We have opportunities for committee members, speakers, panelists, roundtable facilitators, social media amplifiers, fundraisers, exhibitors, and more. And near and dear to my heart, in memory of my husband Alex Barbanell, we will have a part of the program for men.

How can you help? All of the above. But to be honest, we especially need sponsors. Sponsorships are available starting at $10,000, and all levels have great benefits. Contact me directly?[here] ?if you want to sponsor or to work with us to approach prospective sponsors.

4. This brings me to the not-as-good news. You probably saw it coming. Whatever you can chip in right now will do immense good. Let me explain.

Truly, the purpose of my report is to thank and update you. That said, we are grappling with major donor pledges coming in later than anticipated as they watch the stock market’s ups and downs. Funding for the 50 Women in Entrepreneurship will take up to a few months to arrive. Yet we must invest in the necessary up-front cost of our work with our tiny team.

So if you can chip in any amount, large or small, this is the moment when it will do the best. Thank you in advance for your support. Make a tax-deductible one-time gift or become a monthly sustainer?here .

With much gratitude,

Gloria Feldt, Co-Founder & President, Take The Lead

PS. Does your company have a matching funds policy? Double your donation?here .

Take The Lead is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization. Contributions are deductible to the full extent of the law.

GLORIA FELDT ?is the Cofounder and President of Take The Lead, a motivational speaker and expert women’s leadership developer for companies that want to build gender balance, and a bestselling author of five books, most recently?Intentioning: Sex, Power, Pandemics, and How Women Will Take The Lead for (Everyone’s) Good. Honored as Forbes 50 Over 50 2022, and Former President of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, she is a frequent media commentator. Learn more at?www.gloriafeldt.com ?and?www.taketheleadwomen.com . Tweet?Gloria Feldt .