Women Leaders: The Glass Ceiling has Cracked! | San Francisco Womens Journal

Women in Leadership…It is Up to YOU!

Let’s take a look at how the year has started for women in corporate leadership. In the month of January well over fifty women were given major job appointments at large corporations.

by Dr. Barbara Mark, CEO Full Circle Institute

Dr. Barbara Mark

Companies such as Intel, Farmers Insurance Group, Sempra Energy, Associated Press, Microsoft, Citi Private Bank, AK Steel, Procter & Gamble, Gatorade, Scripts Networks Interactive, Westinghouse, TV Guide Network, B of A, McGraw-Hill, Cost Plus, Interpublic Group, Comcast Cable, TIAA-CREF, McDonalds, Credit Suisse, Business Wire, Williams Sonoma, A&P, Webster Financial, Frontier Communications, Accenture, and Private Bancorp, are among the companies who promoted women into to top roles.

This is well above last year and the year before! Women in education, women in non-profits and women entrepreneurs are out there rockin’ and rollin’ as well.

Knock and Opportunity will Answer

The opportunity to lead in large venues is there if you aspire to it. Yes, you have to want it and you have to work hard to get it, but you won’t be stopped by the proliferation of various types of ceilings that used to stand in our way.

Women are gaining ground, credibility and influence. It is a great time for women to express the need for more flexibility, more access to training and more access to coaching to create enhanced opportunities, skills and confidence. These are opportunities that should not be wasted!

Leadership Opportunities Exist in Other Areas of Your Life

And, while these opportunities are out there in corporate America, you can be a leader in many other environments. Look around your life and you’ll find opportunities to be a leader in your family, your neighborhood, your church, and your children’s schools. The list is almost endless.

It is your time to express yourself and contribute in ways that are meaningful to you and to whatever group you choose to contribute to.

Post 2009 Era is Welcoming Women

However, let’s get back to women in corporate America – whether it is your corporation or someone else’s, the post 2009 era is one that is particularly welcoming to women. Women have more economic influence than ever and more women are graduating with advanced degrees. More women are starting businesses and more women are getting advanced to senior levels!

There are sectors that are still a bigger challenge – tech, science for examples – but the trend is started, let’s keep it up.

Lend a Hand-Up to Other Women

As women we can go a long way to support each other and to build each other’s confidence while we build our own.

We have the chance and the obligation to reach out to peers, to co-workers, to direct reports, to our global neighbors and to our young women and girls to show them that we believe in them and ask them to believe in us.

We can mentor and be mentored and we can watch the workforce of women grow at all levels. We can lend a hand out there to make significant changes in the world we live in – to make it the world we want to live in.

Yes we can!

Barbara Mark, Ph.D. is the CEO and Founder of Full Circle Institute. FCI is a leadership development company for female executives. Dr. Mark is a thought leader in the area of Women in Leadership and Leadership for the Future. She has been working with women in business for nearly three decades and is committed to the advancement of women for the good of all. You can learn more by visiting Full Circle Institute.

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