#148 Empowering Women to Take the Lead: A Conversation with Gloria Feldt

While women in the U.S. receive more than 50% of college degrees each year, they remain largely absent from executive leadership positions. As a female leader who successfully ran Planned Parenthood at regional and national levels, best-selling author, and co-founder of Take the Lead, Gloria Feldt continues her lifelong mission – to help prepare, develop, inspire, and propel women to take their fair and equal share of leadership positions across all sectors by 2025. She’s doing this by providing breakthrough training, mentoring and coaching, and thought leadership.

Gloria is truly a master juggler – managing senior leadership roles while raising a family of three during a time when women were encouraged to stay at home. In this time she managed to write four best-selling books; the latest being No Excuses: 9 Ways Women Can Change How We Think About Power.

In this episode, Gloria shares her personal and professional journey. Although she has tried her hand at many things over her successful 30-year career, the common thread of advancing women’s rights underpins it all. We discuss the gendered nature of our relationship to power and how internalized inferiority is the first thing women have to overcome if they are to get into top positions.

Learn more about Gloria’s organization Take The Lead and how they are helping women around the country change how they think of power and how best to deal with the implicit biases they face.

Listen to the entire conversation here on the WAM podcast. Hearing Gloria Feldt is like a master class in female empowerment!

MEET YOUR HOST

Linda Rigano

Linda Rigano is the Principal Consultant of The Rigano Group. Her expertise and enthusiasm for strategic and effective communication permeate all that she does as a consultant to B2B and B2C technology, manufacturing, supply chain, and publishing organizations to improve business performance and stakeholder relationships by building highly successful and measurable communications programs.

With over 20 years of industry experience, Linda has excelled in helping organizations advance the discussion of important industry issues. She was central to the development and promotion of ThomasNet’s annual Industry Market Barometer® (IMB) survey on the state of manufacturing, the ThomasNet/ISM “30 Under 30 Rising Supply Chain Stars” Recognition Program, and ThomasNet’s North American Scholarship Program. Linda also served as Director of Strategic Alliances for ThomasNet, and for many years was the Publisher of the Thomas Food Industry Register.

Throughout her career, Linda has been an active participant and presenter for manufacturing, supply management, and business associations. She is widely quoted in business and trade media, including Bloomberg Businessweek, Nightly Business Report, and Industry Today. Linda holds an MBA in marketing from Fordham University.

Connect with Linda Rigano on LinkedIn.

SPECIAL GUEST

Gloria Feldt

Gloria Feldt is cofounder and president of Take The Lead, whose mission reflects her life’s passion: to prepare, develop, inspire, and propel women to take their fair and equal share of leadership positions across all sectors by 2025 by providing breakthrough training, mentoring and coaching role modeling, and thought leadership. Its signature 50 Women Can Change the World program is an immersive version of her 9 Leadership Power Tools to Advance Your Career customized by industries for women in early career, midcareer, and executive levels.

She is the bestselling author of four books; the latest is No Excuses: 9 Ways Women Can Change How We Think About Power, the research for which plus her own real world knowledge forms the core of Take The Lead’s programs.

She is formerly president and CEO of the world’s largest reproductive health and advocacy organization, Planned Parenthood Federation of America, capping a 30-year career that included serving as CEO of affiliates in West Texas and Arizona as well as the national CEO.

She teaches “Women, Power, and Leadership” at Arizona State University. She recently served on the board of the Women’s Media Center, the Jewish Women’s Archive, and Emerge America and remains on their honorary boards. She currently serves on the board of Women Connect 4 Good Foundation. She is a member of the New York Women’s Forum, the International Women’s Forum, and the World Academy of Art and Science and is an advisor to the ERA Coalition.