A Blessing: Women of Color Teaming Up To Lead, Empower and Thrive

Stewart (vice president, Global Partnerships, Google) and Adams (communications strategist, CBS news correspondent), two Black women who have succeeded in business, wish to encourage other Black women to do the same. To do so, they offer lessons from their own lives and the lives of others, backed by extensive research. Although Black women have made marked advances in recent decades, they still face obstacles that impede their path. Stewart and Adams stress in particular that large corporations often hire only one or at most a few Black women. How do Black women respond to this discriminatory treatment? Here the authors rely on a survey of several generations of women of color. Those from an older generation tend to emphasize the need for hard work and persistence, while those born later are more apt to affirm their own worth. But, they say, this is not enough; society must intervene against unfair treatment of women of color. Tokenism must come to an end.