Adam Torres and Gloria Feldt discuss Take The Lead.
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Show Notes:
Take The Lead prepares, develops, inspires, and propels all women of all diversities and intersectionality to take their fair and equal share of leadership positions. In this episode, Adam Torres interviews Gloria Feldt, Co-Founder and President at Take The Lead. Explore Take The Lead and the upcoming book Gloria will be releasing with Women Connect4Good and Mission Matters.
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About Gloria Feldt
Gloria Feldt is a nationally acclaimed expert on women, power, and leadership with expertise that comes from frontline leadership experience, a bestselling author, and in-demand keynote speaker. Selected for Forbes 50 over 50, she 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.
Gloria is a bestselling author of five books. She is also formerly president and CEO of the world’s largest reproductive health and advocacy organization, Planned Parenthood Federation of America. Recognized as a Forbes 50 over 50 honoree in 2022, she was previously named by Vanity Fair one of “America’s Top 200 Women Leaders, Legends, and Trailblazers,” Glamour’s “Woman of the Year,” She Knows Media Inspiring Woman, Women’s eNews 21 Leaders for the 21st Century, Women Economic Forum Circle of Light award, Texas Monthly’s Texas 20, Martin Luther King Living the Dream Award, Diversity Leadership Alliance Diversity Leader Award, and Forbes 40 Over 40.
Gloria has been widely quoted and published, including by the New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today, The Daily Beast, Forbes, Fast Company, Time, Huffington Post, Glamour, Elle and Ms. She has appeared (among others) on CNN, MSNBC, the Today Show, Good Morning America and The Daily Show, and an infinite number of podcasts as both guest and host.
About Take The Lead
Take The Lead prepares, develops, inspires, and propels all women of all diversities and intersectionalities to take their fair and equal share of leadership positions across all sectors by 2025. Founded in 2014 by Gloria Feldt and Amy Litzenberger, Take The Lead’s bold mission is nothing less than leadership gender parity by 2025.
Take The Lead provides breakthrough training, mentoring, coaching and the immediately actionable 9 Leadership Power Tools. Their supportive cohorts propel women to higher intentions and help them make strategic plans to implement their goals.
Take The Lead delivers custom solutions for organizations to achieve gender parity and inclusion. They are driven by the vision of women and men holding fair and equal shares of top leadership positions.
Take The Lead Drives Change: Change the narrative from problems to solutions through thought leadership.
Full Unedited Transcript
Hey, I’d like to welcome you to another episode of Mission Matters. My name is Adam Torres. And if you’d like to apply to be a guest in the show, just head on over to missionmatters. com and click on be our guest to apply. All right. So today my guest is Gloria Felt and she’s the co founder and president over at Take the Lead.
Gloria, welcome to the show. Thank you, Adam. I’m so excited to be here with you. Ah, Gloria, 10 year anniversary of take the lead. How do you feel? I’m amazed. You know, I was thinking about, I mean, take the lead is a, is a nonprofit organization, but I’ve just done a program. One of our programs called 50 women can change the world that we did for women entrepreneurs.
And what I know is that most businesses start and don’t last 10 years. So I’m feeling pretty good that Take the Lead, a little non profit, has actually made the ten year mark and we’re here and ready to scale up this year. Mission Matters is at eight years and I got my fingers crossed here, we gotta, we’re not out of the woodwork yet, but I digress I’ll take a step back and we’ll, we’ll start this episode the way that we start them all, Gloria, with what we like to call our Mission Matters minute.
So we at Mission Matters, we amplify stories for entrepreneurs, executive experts, and, and enterprises. That’s our mission. Gloria, what mission matters to you? The mission that matters most to me is in a nutshell Mm-Hmm, . And then I’ll tell you the whole mission of Take the Lead. But in a nutshell, for me, it’s that I have always wanted to be able to see women have a fair and equal share.
Of whatever life has to offer. And the mission of take the lead specifically is to prepare, that’s trained, develop, that is to coach to inspire that is through role models and to propel. And that’s through thought leadership that focuses on solutions, not just problems. And all women of all diversities and intersectionalities to take their fair and equal share of leadership positions across every sector.
Get this by 2025. Now that’s, that’s coming soon. And we weren’t anticipating a pandemic or a few other little things that have happened in the, in the interim, but we still think we can move farther, faster today than we ever have to get women to leadership parity. That’s great. I love bringing mission based individuals on the line to share why they do what they do and really how they’re making a difference.
So, so great having you on. And I do have to first off, Hey, Dr Nancy, her team, Melissa, thank you so much for for bringing Gloria to the, to the platform and also to our, our book project we have coming up. So for my longtime listeners and my, my hardcore fans, the ones that listen to every episode they know we got a book coming out with Dr.
Nancy. Connect for Good. Gloria, it will be one of our amazing authors in that book. And also Gloria has written and been part of, I believe, five books. Am I off on that, Gloria? Roughly? I have written five books and I’ve been part of. A few other ones as well. I’ve written chapters for other ones. Yes.
What? I always like to do this. This is a shameless plug for myself as a publisher and every publisher out there. Why are books still important, Gloria? Why do they still matter? Well, I, I mentioned the thought leadership part of Take the Leads mission, and there is really nothing quite like a book to, first of all, I think give you the time and space to be able to articulate your full mission.
As opposed to, you know, on most television shows, you get six seconds soundbites. And but in a book you can really lay out all of the issues, all of the information you can provide so much more for people to, to be able to use. But it also is a kind of credibility. I think the book is a kind of credibility.
So it’s really, it’s really great that you’re doing what you do and that you help people put these books together. And then more importantly, get the word out about these books, because it took me five books to understand that it’s not just about writing a book it’s about actually, you know, Getting the book to the people who need the book.
Yeah, thank you for what you do. Thank you. Yeah, and that that’s one of the big deals. So I always like to tell, especially when I have an experienced author like yourself on the line, I want others in my audience to hear it from other individuals, other leaders out there so that they understand that, hey, this isn’t just coming from a publisher side, like thought leadership books, having that space.
Like these are themes that we talk about. All the time. And by the way, for everybody watching just so you know, we’re not going to go too far into the book today where that we’re doing with women connect for good and and Gloria. And the reason is because when the book is actually out and live, we’ll bring Gloria back onto the show and then we’ll do a Full deep dive into the book, into the writing.
But we got, but we got a whole lot of other things to cover today. Before we go further into into the conference coming up and also the organization, maybe take a step back and tell us a little bit more about your background and how you got started on this path. Sure. Well, it’s been a pretty long path at this point.
I have been so fortunate to be able to make my life’s passions into my life’s work, but I didn’t come to that passion immediately. Mm-Hmm. . I grew up in small towns in West Texas and rural communities that were places where women weren’t given or weren’t encouraged to have careers, let alone to even think about.
Equality in, you know, in the power pay position, any of those things, you were there to be a support person to everybody else basically. And I totally drank that Kool Aid while I was a teenager and I wanted to be like everyone else and I was. So like everyone else, so I married my high school sweetheart.
I had three children by the time I was 20, and then I sort of woke up and realized, you know, these are great things and I, I, I am so glad. That I have the Children that I have, and they’ve been the center of my universe. But there were a lot of other things in life, too, that to do. But for the most part, I couldn’t actually do most of them at that time.
I mean, I wasn’t able to get a credit card in my own name. I wasn’t able to to get many jobs. I mean, there’s job openings were listed as help wanted male and help wanted female, and most of the help wanted female were things that I wasn’t very good at, like you could be a nurse or a secretary. Or a teacher.
I, it was pretty good teacher. I am a pretty good teacher. So I chose teacher from among those three, but but I could never have, I was not skilled enough to be able to do the other two. They’re just, they would, they, I couldn’t do it. So I got involved, however, in the civil rights movement. I, I had a passion for social justice in general.
I don’t know exactly where that came from, but I all right. I, I know to some extent where it came from, but it was, it was sort of a natural for me to get involved with social justice issues. And I, I noticed that the women were doing all the frontline work and the men were in all the leadership roles and getting all the.
Well, the credit and I thought to myself, well, you know, if there are civil rights, then women should have them too. And it was at that point in my life, I was a, I was a young mom and, and, and and wife and, and I had many other responsibilities and I was teaching school, but it was at that point in my life that I realized, What I would be giving my life to would be things that would help women have equality in various different ways.
And so the first thing that happened was that I, it, because I had the small children, it took me 12 years to finish college. And I as I was finishing college, I did a term paper on a small new Planned Parenthood affiliate in Odessa, Texas, The Land of Friday Night Lights, if anybody is a fan of that, of that show, the book, the TV show.
It’s all true. I, my kids all graduated from Permian high school. So it’s so I realized that so I, I, I was encouraged, I should say, to do my term paper on this little parented affiliate fast forward. I was offered a position as the executive director of that. And this is in the, and this is in the early days now, now obviously Planned Parenthood.
I mean, most people are going to know that name, big, large organization, but this is the early days is the beginning. It was, it was not the beginning, but it was still, it was, it was right at the point where it started to grow quickly. Okay. I so I still don’t know to this day what possessed me to say yes, but that to be a mantra for my life is like, just say whatever’s in front of you.
Give it a try. You don’t know what’s going to happen. 30 years later, I retired as the national president. And I did that at that time, both because I thought 30 years was a good round number, but also because I wanted to write. Books and articles. And, and I, so I started doing that. And then I, one of the books that I wrote, which is called no excuses, nine ways women can change how we think about power is a study of why women hadn’t reached parody and leadership.
Although during, during those 30 years that I was involved, we had opened doors, we had changed laws. We had seen a woman first, almost everything, we’re still 18 percent or less. Of the top leadership positions in every single industry, every single sector was blown away by that data. And I just had to figure out why, and then I had to figure out what to do about it.
So that was the start of take the lead. And I want to stay stick in the early days, a little bit, a little bit longer. So you being involved in the civil rights. Like in that entire time period and as a woman, I always, just as a person, not just a woman, I always wonder like, what was that like? Like, what was that experience like for you?
In Odessa, Texas, it will not surprise you to know. It wasn’t exactly a large movement, so I had to find my people. I had to find my people. I was teaching headstart and that, and that’s why I think it would be almost isolating. I don’t want to put words in your mouth, but that’d be, that’d be tricky. You know, I, I suppose it could be, but, but if you believe in something, it’s not tricky if you believe in something, you just figure out how to do it.
And because I had been living in the community for a long time, I understood the culture and I understood how to communicate. understand, understood how to communicate with people who might have very different points of view. But you know, if you sit across the table from people and you talk to them and you maybe break bread with them, somehow you, you can still get along even if you disagree about things.
Oh, yes. I remember, I remember being one of the few families that welcomed the first black family into the, into the neighborhood. Things like that, that they weren’t treated very well. And, but I found That I found that the more I did those kinds of things, the better I felt about myself. Is there a sense when you’re fighting for other people, you’re, you’re actually fighting for yourself.
Was there, was there a moment or was it a buildup or like an epiphany? Like, so you’re in the middle of all of this change, we’ll say a lot going on in the country and for you to think about, you know, that, that role. And that, and that gender equality, I guess now we use that word, right? Or we have these type of words, but back then to think that, wait a minute, all the men are in leadership positions.
All the women are on the front lines doing their, like, what’s going on here? Was that like a moment? Was it a buildup? Like, how did that, cause that’s, so. Super like observant. I feel like to be able to observe and to see that in the midst of everything that’s going on, heightened emotions, heightened tension, everything in the country.
Like how did that happen? It came upon me slowly, but I just, I do remember being at a particular meeting where the women were serving. They were, but, but I knew that they had actually They had actually organized the whole thing. Organizers of this whole event, and then they were taking a back seat. And I also.
I should say the other thing that I learned from the civil rights movement, which is totally guided my life, is that people working together, even if they have no formal power, they can, people working together can change anything, but you have to have a strategy. You have to be willing to work together.
And I will say that that is, that is a huge lesson that I learned and I will always be grateful for, for, for learning from the civil rights movement. I mean, if you think about it, people started from nowhere, from nothing. And especially in a culture like, I mean, Texas was part of the, of the deep South Texas, you know, it was part of the Confederacy, but they were making change everywhere.
They were, you know, they were changing, they were changing all kinds of rules. They were getting rid of, of segregation. They were, they were. This was like, this was such huge. Oh yeah. And that’s what I learned. And I, and I was able to apply those lessons in the next phase of my life. How do some of those early lessons translate into what you’re doing now with with the power up, whether it’s the power up concert and conference, or it’s some of the other things you’re doing around women power and leadership.
Like how does some of that stuff carry over? Cause it feels like it’s a, it’s a lifetime of buildup to now what you’re doing. It is, Adam. It is a lifetime of buildup. And I will tell you that the one of the biggest epiphanies that I had when I was writing No Excuses was that actually, at that point, women actually had the power that we needed.
Wow. We were already, that’s a big epiphany by the way, we’re already earning 57 percent of the college degrees and had been for two decades. We were prepared for whatever work was out there that needed to be done because we’re in an economy that is based on brains, not brawn now. Right. And it’s all about what you can innovate and create.
And it’s not about how strong you are physically. It’s about what you can do. What your brain can, can create. So women already had that. The data was really clear that companies with more women in their leadership were more profitable. So, and also that women were the. We had the power of the purse. We are the purchasers or the deciders about what’s getting purchased for about 80 percent to 85 percent of all of the goods and services that are sold.
Which marketers know they figured that out in a fifth, have a long time ago, hence madmen, right? Like, yes, exactly. And, and so then I had to ask, well, then what’s the problem? We have the power, but I realized we just didn’t always know it because we had come from a culture that told us we didn’t have the power.
And so that what I realized I needed to do in this next phase of my life, to the extent that I could do it, was to help women know, their power and to embrace it and to be able to embrace it with confidence and authenticity in a way that is, is authentic to us as women, not to try to be men. I love men.
That’s not a, you know, it’s not the issue, but we have, we bring certain things to the table and we need to value those things. And so I wanted to be able to do that. You know, they’re always talking about women’s empowerment. It’s just like a noise me because I don’t believe women need to be empowered.
And that makes it sounds like you don’t have power, you actually power. So what I concentrated on was created a, a program and a curriculum that helps. Women have the mindset to understand the power that they have to literally be able to identify their points of power. What is this special talents and abilities that they bring?
And then how do they want to deploy those? So we have a curriculum that not only teaches women leadership skills, But it helps them identify where their powers of leadership are and create a plan for themselves to get to where they really want to go. Identify, clarify where they want to go and then know how to get there.
And it makes so much sense. And I love that you say the you’re, I mean, everything’s in words and language for me. So when you say you don’t use the word empower because then that assumes they don’t have the power. I’m like, duh, I just have my own aha moment or my own epiphany. Yeah, you’re right. Well, I wouldn’t be trying to empower you.
I mean, right? Yeah. Everything’s in the nuance there. I want to, let’s, let’s get into a little bit further into it. And the first time, by the way, I don’t know if you know this, Gloria. So the first time that I met Dr. Nancy was, Was actually at your power of the last year’s power up conference, which I just have to say was amazing.
I think it was at UCLA on the UCLA campus and LA, right? Not too far away from myself, but it was an amazing event. I saw the people there, the, the I can see the vendors. I could see the conversations happen. I could tell the, the atmosphere the branding, I’ll just say I’m a branding guy. I was like the brand, everything else.
I was like, Oh my gosh, this is amazing. I stumbled upon this whole world that I was unaware of. So I’d like to maybe for you to give my audience a little bit of a taste or a flavor of what that world is like. Thank you so much for saying that because it was, I’m not just saying that it was, it was, it was amazing.
Well, and, and, and thanks to Dr. Nancy for having been a supporter, literally since. Since we launched 10 years ago, came to our launch event, which we had at Arizona State University and in Tempe, Arizona, and she was there and she was just mesmerized and she has been a great supporter ever since. So we are, we are like in lockstep.
step in so many of the things that we do. And I I appreciate that. And, and so the conferences that we do, people really feel that there’s a culture of these conferences where they feel it’s not just being talked at, but that they are actually engaged in the conversations and we have we, we, now we have a concert as well.
And that sort of sets the right conference and concert. Yes, and concert and getting people involved in the music set the tone because it music is music is like the universal language and everybody, everybody can feel it. feel the music. So that’s a good thing to it’s been a good addition. But in the conference content itself, we work very hard to be very current in what our topics are and to honor people who have exemplified leadership.
So we have a leading women award. We have a leading man award. We have a leading company award. And we have award we call where the shirt award, which is someone or some organization that has lived its values. publicly. You know, they, they wear the shirt of their convictions. That’s one of my power tools.
So that’s where that comes from. So we, we like to honor the people who really deserve so much to be honored. And and we, we, we, we, for example, the year that we were just coming out of the pandemic, we, that conference theme was the big re. What are you rethinking? What are you rewiring? What are you re re redoing in your life?
Because people were really in that space. So last year we were, we, we had a theme of being, how you can be more intentional about achieving what you want to achieve. Now, this year we’re going to have the event in Washington, DC, and we are going to, is that been confirmed? That’s good. I think last time we talked to you, it’s done.
Yes, yes, yes. It’s done. Oh my gosh, that’s amazing. Congratulations. What a great year for it to be in Washington D. C. I mean, we’re for people that are watching this far into the future. This is going to be in 2024. It’s a big year for the country. So for you to be there. Oh my gosh, this is amazing. Yeah. And women’s leadership will be front and center in all of the issues that people are going to be concerned about.
And of course, as a 501 c three, we don’t do electoral work, but we can certainly inform people about the issues. We could also do one of the things I really love to do is to do a workshop that I call how to be an effective citizen because so many people don’t know how they can have an impact. So again, I take those lessons that I learned so many years ago.
Wow. Try to share them so people understand. Yes, you actually can make a difference. You can make a difference. These are just some simple things that you can do to get there. So we, we, yes, we haven’t, we narrowed it down to two probable places, two possible places, but we’ll, we’ll, we’ll be talking more about it as time goes on and very excited about that.
And so that theme will, will have some element of how you can be an effective citizen and why that is part of leadership. It’s part of leadership to be engaged in your community and to be civically engaged and to, to have an impact on the issues that are of concern to you. And so yeah, so it’ll be.
It’ll be good. We’re, we’re, we’re starting to get, we’re starting to line up some speakers, but I can’t talk about them yet. Of course. Cliffhanger. Don’t worry. It’s okay. I’ll get them out of you. We’ll get them out of you as soon as we get closer to the event. That’ll be fun. That will be fun. And the timing it’s around August.
Am I right? The timing now that we decided that our day should always be Women’s Equality Day and Women’s Equality Day is August 26th. Does that move year by year? I’m just curious. No, no. Always August 26th. Okay. 1973, it has been, Women’s Equality Day has been August 26th and it was actually designed and it was approved by Congress.
to celebrate the anniversary of when women’s right to vote was actually put into the Constitution. Now, in truth, knowledge today. I’m loving this, Gloria. I feel so much smarter. I do. I’m serious. I’m not serious. Thank you. Stay with me. I got a lot of this stuff. And, and, and then, but the truth is that it was also intended to call attention to how much further we have yet to go.
You know, there’s so much we, for example, the equal rights amendment. is not in the constitution yet. And so women are not recognized in the constitution. And so that, that will be a topic of our, of our conversation at our conference too. So this is a lot of things you can be doing after a, you know, successful 30 year career at a large organization, many other accomplishments you’ve had in your life.
What motivates you to continue down this path and to continue doing this work? What motivates me the most is that I, I know from having had the opportunity to be involved in changing history in many ways, you can make change when you, when you, it’s like, it’s like the feedback that you get when you are, say, trying to learn how to play a sport and you get better at it and you get.
Get so you’re kind of hooked on it, play all the time. Well, that’s, that’s kind of how I am. I, I just, I want to, and I want to I, I, I, I want to stay with it until I really can see women have full. equality. Now that may be a big, that may be hard to do, but that, that is truly my motivation. And so for as long as I am able to, to speak and act and work that’s what I will be doing.
Amazing. And I think that is a good way to end it, Gloria. If somebody if somebody would like to learn more about take the lead, whether it’s the conference or anything else, like how do they do that? They can go to take the lead women. com. And they can find out everything. And in particular, if you are watching this before 2 p.
m. on the 19th of this month of the 19th of February, I encourage you to check out and maybe join us for a free virtual conversation we’ll be having on women, power and leadership between myself and Gloria Steinem and facilitated by the wonderful Jamia Wilson. So I’m so excited. That’s how we’re kicking off this 10th anniversary.
Conference will be the other bookend. So, and then stay tuned. There’ll be lots of things in between. Oh my gosh. This is amazing. Well, well, Gloria, again, thank you so much for coming on the show today. I look forward to continue to work with you to get this book out. Of course, you’ve been working on for the last six months.
months or so, maybe more. I don’t know. Time flies. And to the audience as always, thank you for tuning in. If this is your first time with mission matters and you haven’t hit that subscribe button yet, I don’t know what you’re waiting for. This is your invitation. Hit that subscribe button. And if you’re feeling really friendly, we don’t mind reviews either.
It keeps the show going, keeps us growing. So thank you so much. And Gloria again, can’t wait to the next time we get to work with each other and I’m gonna get those speakers out of you as well. So thank you again for coming on. Adam, thank you so much. It’s been my pleasure.
