Books We Love

We've read each of these books cover to cover and can promise —they will provide information, inspiration and encouragement wherever you are in your journey.

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Ask For More: 10 Questions to Negotiate Anything
By Alexandra Carter

Negotiation is not a zero-sum game. It’s an essential skill for your career that can also improve your closest relationships and your everyday life. Still, people often shy away from it, feeling defeated before they’ve even started. In this groundbreaking new book on negotiation, Alexandra Carter—Columbia law professor and mediation expert who has helped students, business professionals, the United Nations, and more—offers a straightforward accessible approach anyone can use to ask for and receive more.

We’ve been taught incorrectly that the loudest and most assertive voice prevails in any negotiation, or otherwise, both sides compromise, ending up with less. Instead, Carter shows that you get far more value by asking the right questions of the person you’re negotiating with than you do from arguing with them. She offers a simple yet powerful ten-question framework for successful negotiation where both sides emerge victorious. Carter’s proven method extends far beyond one “yes” and instead creates value that lasts a lifetime.

Ask for More is “like having a negotiation coach in your corner” (Linda Babcock, author of Women Don’t Ask) and gives you the tools to bring clarity and perspective to any critical discussion, no matter the topic.

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Dear Madam President: An Open Letter to the Women Who Will Run the World
by Jennifer Palmieri

Dear Madam President
is an empowering letter from former Hillary Clinton Communications Director Jennifer Palmieri to the first woman president, and by extension, to all women working to succeed in any field. By using lessons learned during her experiences with Hillary Clinton, President Obama, and Elizabeth Edwards - to name a few - Palmieri through each chapter creates a forward-thinking framework of inspirational and practical advice for all women everywhere - from boardrooms to living rooms - who are determined to seize control of their lives, their workplaces, and their country. Dear Madam President will turn the results of the 2016 election into something incredibly empowering for future female leaders and independent thinkers everywhere.

As a country, we haven't wrapped our heads around what it should look like for a woman to be in the job of President. Our only models are men. While wildly disappointed by the outcome of the election, Palmieri optimistically argues in the book that the Clinton candidacy and all she experienced on the campaign trail - confusion, admiration, hate, love, acceptance, rejection - can now open the country up to reimagining women in leadership roles: And that is what Palmieri takes on in this book - redefining expectations for women looking to lead and creating a blueprint for women candidates and leaders to follow.

 

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Ladies Get Paid: The Ultimate Guide to Breaking Barriers, Owning Your Worth, and Taking Command of Your Career
by Claire Wasserman

You may have found your way to Ladies Get Paid because you’re excited about the future of your career, or maybe you’re here because you’re feeling stuck. Perhaps you’re standing on the precipice of a big change, or perhaps you’re itching to make one happen. Maybe you experienced something at work that was disappointing, frustrating, or downright infuriating. Or perhaps you’re not satisfied with the status quo in your personal life or in the lives of all women. Whatever it is, you’re ready to take your career into your hands. Welcome, you’re in the right place.

-Claire Wasserman

Whether you are looking to navigate a promotion, land your dream job, or make a difference in your workplace, Ladies Get Paid is your road map. Filled with straight-forward advice and inspiring stories, this book is structured to provide guidance for every phase of your career, even those times when you find yourself feeling stuck.

Covering crucial topics from how to combat imposter syndrome to advocating for yourself and your team, Ladies Get Paid is a reminder that you are valuable - both as an individual and as part of a larger community. And ultimately every career choice and every negotiation is about more than your wallet - it’s about your worth.

Recalculating: Navigate Your Career Through the Changing World of Work
by Lindsey Pollak

Covid-19 is directly impacting how people are entering, reentering, or pivoting in the workplace. The pandemic merely accelerated career and hiring trends that have been building across all industries for professionals at all levels. This means that many of the old job-hunting and career success rules no longer apply. We all must learn how to thrive in this “new normal,” which includes a hybrid of remote and in-person experiences, increased reliance on virtual communication and automation, constant disruption, and the need for lifelong learning.

While this new world is complicated and constantly evolving, you don’t have to navigate it alone. Lindsey Pollak, the leading expert on succeeding in today’s multigenerational workplace, guides you through the changes currently happening and those to come. Combining insights from experts and professionals across generations, experience levels, and industries, she provides encouraging, strategic, and actionable advice from building your brand to skilling and reskilling for the future.

With Recalculating, you’ll be prepared with the necessary skills, helpful tools, and positive attitude to succeed today and into the future.

Pretty Powerful: Appearance, Substance, and Success
By Eboni K. Williams

Williams describes how her own career has been positively influenced by making strategic and intentional decisions about her appearance, what works best and when, all while staying true to her own personal style and values. Regardless of the decade, whether they were entering the workforce, seeking a leadership role, or looking to ascend to the C-suite, women (and even men) have always felt the professional need to embody a certain aesthetic appeal and personal power. Women, especially, have been sold the lie that being “pretty” comes at the expense of being taken seriously and that being “pretty” and being capable are mutually exclusive. In Pretty Powerful, Eboni K. Williams encourages readers to reject the knee-jerk reaction to be shamed by this potential advantage and to stop leaving this incredibly powerful asset unused.

In each chapter, Williams is joined by other powerful women like Meghan McCain, Marcia Clark, and Desiree Rogers and explores how many others have learned to balance their “prettiness” with substance - to both look the part and express their intelligence in a way that is authentic and respected. While opinions may have differed through time, one fact remains: a personal “pretty” brand is perhaps the most immediate and obvious tool in a woman’s professional arsenal.

Dream First, Details Later: How to Quit Overthinking & Make It Happen!
By Ellen Marie Bennett

You’ll never know where to start…until you start.

As a twenty-four-year-old line cook, Ellen Marie Bennett couldn't stand the kitchen staff's poorly designed, cheaply made aprons. So when her head chef announced he was ordering a new batch, she blurted, "Chef, I have an apron company" - even though she had no company, no business plan, no plan at all - just a glimmer of a design idea. Through hustle, and a willingness to leap into the unknown time and time again she built that first order into a multimillion-dollar company called Hedley & Bennett, making aprons and kitchen gear worn by many of the world's best chefs and by home cooks everywhere.

Dream First, Details Later shares Ellen's journey and her forged-in-the-fire personal playbook for starting before you stop yourself - and for using creative problem-solving to conquer the inevitable shit storms. If you're procrastinating on a goal, career change, or business idea, this book will help you shove aside your inner worrier and launch into action.

And to all the dreamers, doers, and hustlers out there. Anything is possible and everything is worth it.” - EMB

Unapologetically Ambitious
By Shellye Archambeau

My purpose for writing this book was to share how a person, no matter their background, can achieve their aspirations. When I decided I wanted to become a CEO, a CEO in tech no less, the odds were very much against me. I was a Black girl from modest means whose father didn’t have a college degree and whose mother was a homemaker.  My early years were during the 60s, a very racially charged period. By the time I reached high school and set my goal, I didn’t see people who looked like me running businesses.

In Unapologetically Ambitious, I share how to be intentional in setting goals, making plans and then living your plan. It covers how to be strategic in your choices, manage your career and deal with the obstacles you will inevitably face. Discover tactical and tangible tips for things you can do right now to improve your odds.

Brag Better: Master the Art of Fearless Self-Promotion
By Meredith Fineman

Does talking about your accomplishments feel scary or icky because you're worried people will think you're "obnoxious"? Does it feel more natural to "put your head down and do the work"? Are you tired of watching the loudest people in your industry get disproportionate praise and rewards?

If you answered "yes" to any of the above, you might be self-sabotaging. You need to learn to Brag Better. Meredith has built a career working with "The Qualified Quiet:" smart people who struggle to talk about themselves and thus go underestimated or unrecognized. Now, she shares the surefire and anxiety-proof strategies that have helped her clients effectively communicate their achievements and skill sets.

Bragging Better doesn't require false bravado, talking over people or pretending to be more qualified than you are. Instead, Fineman advocates finding quiet confidence in your opinions, abilities, and background, and then turning up the volume. In this book, you will learn the career-changing tools she's developed over the past decade that make bragging feel easy. If you're ready to tell the truth about your accomplishments with grace, this book is for you.

The B Words: 13 Words Every Woman Must Navigate for Success
By Tricia Kagerer

Utilizing my own experiences from more than 20 years in the workplace as well as those of other women, I identified13 “B Words” to establish and explain the internal and external challenges facing women today and provide practical strategies for handling problems. Navigating the workforce as a woman can feel like making your way through a minefield. Step too far in one direction, and suddenly, you’re considered bossy and overbearing and difficult to work with. Too far in the other, and you lose your power and voice. If you try to stay in the middle, you could still be contributing to generations’ worth of a stagnant mindset that has hindered women from reaching true equality.

I explore how obstacles can manifest themselves during various stages of life and creates a map to help women identify what holds them back and what they can do to propel themselves forward. Rather than preaching “work-life balance,” I challenge readers to achieve “self-defined success,” a life intentionally designed your own way.

Intentioning: Sex, Power, Pandemics, and How Women Will Take The Lead for (Everyone’s) Good
By Gloria Feldt

I wrote Intentioning to show how we can build back stronger with women. Through the lens of women’s stories, you’ll learn leadership tools, skills and concepts that help all women reach their highest intentions, purposefully creating new norms, while guiding institutions to break through the remaining barriers to gender and racial parity.

I’ve been working with diverse women to embrace their personal power to lead with intention, confidence and joy. But once you embrace your power, the next question becomes: “the power to what?” In other words, how will you use your power? That’s Intentioning.

I not only unveil the next step in advancing gender parity in all spheres of business and life, but I also lay out the vital next steps in the overall advancement of our economy and civilization. The “Lead Like a Woman” framework and the “9 Leadership Intentioning Tools” are designed so that, by 2025, women will have attained their fair and equal share of leadership positions across all sectors of industry and society. Women must be at the vanguard of reimagining and reconstructing a vibrant and sustainable future for us all.

Intend it. See it. It will happen.