Building a New Leadership Ladder: Transforming Male-Dominated Organizations to Support Women on the Rise

Strategies for transforming workplace cultures to support a new generation of women leaders.

When it comes to the gender gap, it is not enough to ask women to “lean in” and demand promotions and raises. Organizations have an obligation to level up and provide women with more opportunities for advancement. In this book, leadership and governance expert Carol Geffner makes a strong case that for women to reach their full potential, workplaces and their leaders must take a more proactive role in combating gender discrimination.

Based on over 200 hours of interviews with women leaders in the United States and abroad, Building a New Leadership Ladder demonstrates that even when women are promoted to leadership positions, they are rarely given access to the same support networks as their male colleagues. Covering sectors as diverse as higher education, health care, law enforcement, and the military, the book identifies common strategies that all organizations can use to remove obstacles for women’s advancement.

More than a how-to guide on how women can ascend to the top, Building a New Leadership Ladder is a bold call to action for organizations and their leaders to proactively foster the conditions under which women’s efforts to rise up are consistently recognized and rewarded.

Interviewer:
Dr. Carol Geffner, Director of the Executive Master of Leadership Program at the USC’s Sol Price School of Public Policy

Interviewees:
Alma Burke, former LAPD, currently head of security at USC
Yasmin Beers, former City Manager, Glendale, CA
RaShall Brackney, Chief of Police, Charlottesville, VA
Coco Brown, CEO Athena Alliance (SaaS company for HR)
Mary Sue Coleman, chemist, interim president of University of Michigan (she previously served as president from 2002-2014)
France Cordova, director of National Science Foundation
Tiffany Felix, Senior Vice President, Environmental Health and Safety, Paramount
Jennifer Grasso, LAPD’s first female SWAT officer
Heidi Hammel, Executive Vice President of the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy
Stephanie Jarvis, (couldn’t immediately confirm her current role)
Nannerl Keohane, former president of Wellesley College and Duke University
Fiona Ma, California State Treasurer
Anni Mu, Deputy Group Commander, CA Air National Guard
Laura Mosqueda, Professor of Family Medicine and Geriatrics at USC Keck School of Medicine
Janet Napolitano, former Arizona governor, former Secretary of Homeland Security
Sharon Papa, Chief of Police, Hermosa Beach, CA
Ellen Stofan, Under Secretary for Science and Research, The Smithsonian
Mirtha Villereal-Younger, multiple leadership roles within CA military, currently President/CEO of Agile Construction
Hiltrud Werner, Volkswagen Board member
Joy White, Executive Director of the Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center
Maria Zuber, Vice President of Research, MIT

In addition, three women were interviewed who, due to the nature of their positions and sectors, asked that they not be identified in this book.