Illuminating and useful.
A distinguished business diversity expert advises women of color on how to move up the corporate ladder.
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.” The author credits much of her success to parents who taught her the importance of “stick-to-itiveness”—in particular, her father, who managed to thrive in corporate management despite discrimination. In her own professional life, the author observed that although black women worked twice as hard to advance, they faced “concrete ceiling[s]” that left them unable to get to the next level. The way Gadsden-Williams managed to get ahead was to become as visible as possible in every organization where she worked. Along a path that took her from product development and marketing to human resources, she realized that her true professional calling was “fighting for the underdog” as a corporate diversity manager. The author’s insight helped her understand that a big part of success had to do with defining “passion and purpose.” Networking both inside and outside the companies where she worked, finding mentors to advise her and sponsors willing to invest in her career advancement, was also crucial. While she counsels strategic behaviors and decision-making throughout, Gadsden-Williams is also very clear that the notion that women can have it all is a “boldface lie.” Drawing on her own experiences living with lupus, she further reminds readers that self-care is essential. Because black women work twice as hard, they suffer “twice as much from certain illnesses than other groups.” 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.Pub Date: May 1, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-61775-624-5
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Open Lens/Akashic
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2018
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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