Ican!: A Young Woman’s Guide to Taking the Lead

By Holly Rodgers Wescott and Joanne Grady Huskey

Our goal in writing this book was to share our “path to leadership” curriculum with young people worldwide—particularly young women—who have dreams they hope to achieve. We especially wanted to reach out to the many young people who didn’t have the chance to attend an iLive2Lead Summit. Don’t let your dreams die! In these pages, we have laid out the steps toward actualizing a full-fledged project. We’ve shown how we developed our program and shared the lessons we learned along the way. Following the steps we’ve outlined, you have a road map to achieve your goals. Work to make them real, give them substance, plan how you will accomplish them, communicate and connect about your ideas, and continue to grow and learn throughout the process. We hope you will share this book with your friends and inspire them and all of us by your actions. Start today to do what makes you feel passionate and alive, because the world desperately needs many more people who are ready to make a difference.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Aug 6, 2018
• ISBN: 9781984542533

Book preview

COPYRIGHT © 2018 BY HOLLY RODGERS WESCOTT AND JOANNE GRADY HUSKEY

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CONTROL NUMBER:      2018908806

                     ISBN:             HARDCOVER             978-1-9845-4255-7

 SOFTCOVER               978-1-9845-4254-0

                                            EBOOK                         978-1-9845-4253-3

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Photo credits: Maggie Rheinstein and Dominique Cahn

Rev. date: 08/03/2018

Xlibris

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

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This book is dedicated to young women worldwide who are seeking

to make their dreams a reality.

There I was, a college student from South India, sharing the moment with girls from Egypt, Kyrgyzstan, Indonesia, Liberia, and the Philippines, along with others from all over Europe. Coming from contrasting cultural milieus, we all chased the same goal — to impact the lives of those around us, to make a difference where it counts, to be a leader in our own little spheres. At iLive2Lead’s International Young Women’s Leadership Summit in Munich, Germany, we all spent a week together learning the arts of leadership, networking, and teamwork, introspecting to find our mission and inspiration and getting the opportunity to practice these skills at the DLDwomen Conference in Munich afterwards.

I learnt everything, from the tangible how to network effectively to the intangible think about what makes you happiest. … I got access to the DLDwomen Conference … and the chance to talk of cultural awareness and shared goals to an audience filled with independent women… . How do you explain … the camaraderie that you feel, when you run in open fields with a dozen girls from around the world? Or the sadness that creeps in when you board that plane leaving all those beautiful young women behind?

—Yashasvini, iLive2Lead alumna from India

CONTENTS

PREFACE

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER 1—IL2L CURRICULUM: THE PATH TO LEADERSHIP

•   Characteristics Of A Leader

•   Dream

•   Plan

•   Communicate

•   Connect

•   Learn

•   Inspire

CHAPTER 2—DREAM

•   What We Taught: Identifying Your Dream

•   What We Learned: Our Dream and How We Pursued It

•   Dream: Lessons Learned

CHAPTER 3—PLAN

•   Strategic Plan

•   Action Plan: Elements of Effective Planning

•   What We Taught: Planning Techniques

•   What We Learned: Planning

•   Conclusion

•   Plan: Lessons Learned

CHAPTER 4—COMMUNICATE

•   What’s Your Passion?

•   Elements of Effective Communication

•   What We Taught: Communication Techniques

•   What We Learned: Developing Our Own Communication Skills

•   The Impact of iL2L: Young Women Speaking Up

•   Communicate: Lessons Learned

CHAPTER 5—CONNECT

•   What We Taught: Making Personal Connections through Networking

•   What We Learned: Connecting to Leverage Our Capacity

•   The Value of Establishing Partnerships

■   Partnering with Women’s Organizations

■   Private Sector Business

■   Partnering with Governments

■   Partnering with Universities

■   Partnering with Filmmakers

■   Partnering with Women Ambassadors

•   Partnering: Lessons Learned

CHAPTER 6—ACT

•   iLive2Lead Young Women’s International Leadership Summits

■   United States

■   China

■   Mexico

■   France

■   Germany

■   Kenya

■   India

•   Act: Lessons Learned

CHAPTER 7—FUNDRAISING

•   What We Taught: Fundraising

•   What We Learned: Fundraising

•   Fundraising: Lessons Learned

CHAPTER 8—LEARN

•   What We Learned: Key Cultural Insights

•   Adding Young Men to the Mix

•   Sensitivities Beyond and Surrounding Our Summit

•   Maintaining Cultural Connections through Social Media

•   What We Taught: Thinking and Acting Globally

•   Lessons Learned

CHAPTER 9—THE ICAN ATTITUDE

•   Young Women Who Are Changing the World

■   Yashasvini, India

■   Jessica, Mexico

■   Zanele, South Africa

■   Inès, France

■   Vivian, Kenya

■   Zhanara, Kyrgyzstan

■   Sinazo, South Africa

■   Roseval, Philippines

■   Lande, United States

■   Lisa, Germany

■   Gtia, Indonesia

■   Chiara, Italy

■   Anna, United States

■   Anu, India

•   Alumnae Awards

CHAPTER 10—FINALLY … INSPIRE OTHERS!

•   Conclusion

•   Final Lessons Learned

OUR GRATITUDE

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PREFACE

This book is intended to inspire young women to make things happen in their lives by giving them the tools to succeed. It is for young women who have an idea they want to bring to fruition but who may feel stymied by custom or culture or may lack the skills or confidence they need. It is for those who may have the germ of an idea but want guidance or inspiration to bring it into focus more clearly. Our goal with this book is to help young women surmount these obstacles and achieve their goals.

For the past seven years, we have been in the business of leadership. With young women from many nations, we have sought to define what makes strong and effective leaders and to sharpen the skills needed to be those leaders in today’s world. We all want leaders who speak with integrity and honesty, stand up for our moral values, make us a better society, and inspire active inclusion and participation. It cannot be left to others. Each of us is needed.

We started our organization, iLive2Lead (iL2L), with young women in mind. Working with these young people, ages fifteen to twenty-three years, around the world, we had the opportunity to share our curriculum with them in leadership training summits and to see its value as they put it into practice in their lives. In this book, using our iLive2Lead curriculum as a guide, we detail the steps needed to bring an idea to fulfillment. Through our experiences in setting up iL2L, we developed a training curriculum that specifically addresses the challenges young women may face. We are pleased to share these lessons here.

Through our own lives spent living with our families in many countries around the world, we came to realize the critical importance of enabling young women to step up and speak out. We found that by planting the seed of inspiration in the mind of a young girl, offering targeted support, and helping her develop the right kinds of skills, we could open an entire world of possibility. To encourage a young woman to lead is to enable her to take up her rightful role alongside others in working on solutions to local and global problems. That is why we founded iLive2Lead.

This book is about how we took that early vision and created an organization that inspired thousands of young women to have an iCAN—I Commit to Act Now—attitude. This is the tale of how we turned our own dreams and aspirations into reality and how we shared our vision with young women by hosting international leadership summits in five continents so that they could take risks and step out, use their voices, and create change. We trust that this book and our Path to Leadership curriculum will help make that happen for many other young women.

We wrote this book to reach out beyond those who attended our leadership summits to other young people in every nation who have dreams and want to see them realized. We want to provide an inside look at how young women can achieve their potential and bring their ideas to fruition. We use our own organization, iLive2Lead, as an example. We walk you through the development of iL2L, documenting the steps we took and the skills we learned, our successes and our setbacks—all of which were part of the learning process as we moved forward.

This book’s organization echoes our Path to Leadership curriculum, with chapters representing steps in the curriculum. We explain how we clarified our vision, planned, communicated our ideas, created connections, and acted to make something happen—all within the context of providing inspiration to young women around the globe. Finally, we share with you the lessons we learned. This is what we taught our young women leaders, and this is what we want to share with you.

If you are a young woman, we hope this book will inspire you to take the lead and create change in your own society. And of course, if you are a young man, all these lessons apply to you as well! This book is chock-full of ideas to help you achieve your vision. It is for everyone who has an idea and wants to understand how to implement that idea and make a difference.

We urge you to think of yourself as someone who has a role to play. Don’t wait for others to step forward; rather, begin to think of yourself as a catalyst for change. We hope the lessons we share in this book will inspire you to commit your energy, skills, and talents to being an active member of your community and a leader in a better world.

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INTRODUCTION

To address effectively the myriad of economic, social, environmental, and cultural problems facing the world today, we need to engage all the minds we have. We need everyone to contribute their ideas for improving life on this planet. Yet around the world, young women are a critical, underrepresented sector, without a voice or an active part in creating solutions. To include their voices, we must first ensure that young women learn how to speak up. We need to invest in young women and give them the skills to participate and contribute. We need to unleash their talents and build on their life experiences, their energy, and their aspirations.

There is a palpable energy and potential in young women around the globe, a brewing expectation of things to come, an excited hopefulness that transcends culture, class, economic background, and race. Study after study shows that educating a girl and giving her the proper tools and the chance to be a contributing member of her society ensures that she will improve not only her own life but also the lives of her family, her children, her community, and ultimately, her nation.

Why Women?

A new global wave of female energy is shaping the future, marked by the ascendance of women to leadership positions around the world. Christine Lagarde leads the International Monetary Fund, the organization that oversees the global financial system. Jacinda Ardern of New Zealand is the youngest female prime minister in the world. Janet Yellen led the US Federal Reserve for four years. Former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton insisted on bringing women to the table as she traveled the world and ran a powerful campaign for the US presidency. Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook, encourages all women to take their place at the table and lean in. Angela Merkel, who has been chancellor of Germany since 2005, has emerged as a—perhaps the—leader of the free world, maintaining European stability in the face of huge challenges to the old social and economic order. Liberia’s Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Africa’s first female head of state, won the Nobel Peace Prize for her commitment to bringing women into the peace process. Malala Yousafzai, another Nobel laureate, has become a beacon of hope for girls everywhere who crave a decent education.

Other changes are bringing women as a group more prominently and equally onto the world stage: Saudi Arabian women have earned the vote and the right to drive, while in Afghanistan, almost one-third of parliamentarians are women. Change is coming to the developed world as well: In the United States, there are now more women than men studying in medical and law schools, and women earning a bachelor’s degree outnumber men significantly (according to Statista, 0.81 million male and 1.08 million female students earned a bachelor’s degree in the United States); on the political scene, more women than ever before are stepping up to run for public office, recognizing that their voices are valuable and necessary. In 2018, 472 women entered the race for the US House of Representatives in the US Congress, a record number.

Yet in many parts of the world, women are still held back by cultural norms and sidelined as second-class citizens. In much of the world, women are fighting for basic rights. The worldwide #metoo movement is exposing the extent to which women must fight off sexual harassment in their professional lives; Pakistani girls face dangerous obstacles in going to school; the US is ranked nearly 100th in the world in the number of women in elected office and has never yet had a woman president. In India, girls are forced into child marriages and fear being raped as they travel to work and school, while girls and women are being systematically raped in South Sudan, where their basic safety cannot be ensured. As Sheryl WuDunn and Nicholas Kristof have pointed out in their book Half the Sky, sex trafficking of women is the present-day equivalent of human slavery, which shames us all. While one-quarter of US college presidents are now women, in 2017 only thirty-two of the Fortune 500 companies were run by women despite the fact that research shows that women bring qualities that add economic productivity to any business. While efforts are being made in Europe to legislate gender quotas, still the Fortune 1000 corporate boards average only 20 percent women. Amazingly, today in 2018, women in the US earn only about $.90 for every dollar a man earns.

In short, the world is not fully benefiting from the talents and energies of half of the population. Investing in women improves society as a whole. Empowered women re-invest directly in education, in the next generation, and in peace and public welfare. Tapping the abilities of women has large payoffs for all societies and makes sound economic,