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ProfileIssue: Gemini 09 - The Summer Reading Issue

Read About Women Who Are Changing the World

If you don't know who Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Wangari Maathai, and Nina Disesa are, then you have some reading to do this summer!

ayaanhirsialism_107Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Memoirs by these three women gave me inspiration and courage because each of them learned how to survive and succeed in male-dominated environments that were oppressive to women.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali who was raised as a traditional Muslim in Somalia, was married off by her father to a distant cousin in Canada against her wishes. She fled to the Netherlands where she was given asylum and eventually citizenship. Ms. Hirsi Ali is now a champion of free speech and women's rights.

wangarimaathaism_109Wangari MaathaiWangari Maathai is the first woman in East and Central Africa to receive a Ph.D., and in 2004, she became the first African woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. Born in Nyeri, Kenya in 1940 and educated in the U.S. in the same exchange program that brought President Obama's father to the states, Ms. Maathai founded the successful Green Belt Movement in 1977.

Nina DiSesa, Chairman of the largest advertising agency in the world made it to the top by learning how to understand ninadisesasm_110Nina DiSesaand manage men. About halfway through her career, Ms. DiSesa decided that if she was going make it in the advertising business, she had to aim for the top. What she didn’t realize was that getting to the top meant she would have to make some major adjustments to gain access to that world – the world of men where arrogance and sexual humor prevail – the boys club!

See all three memoirs in the advertising section on the right. dots

 

by ann janda

Profile Archives (total entries: 38)

Leo 09 - The Leadership Issue

Rebecca Lolosoli Provides Safe Haven for Vulnerable Women in Kenya

polaroid_rebecca_lolosoli_181Rebecca Lolosoli is much more than the matriarch of Umoja Village, an all women's community located in the Samburu District of Kenya. She put herself on the line for others…her life has been threatened for going against the indigenous Samburu traditions and culture. What started in 1991 as a group of 16 raped women, denounced and outcast by their families, on a patch of sun-dried, neglected land, granted to them by the Kenyan government at the behest of Rebecca is today a unique group of 50 flourishing, happy women and girls, orphans and widows and even a few beloved goats. (read more)

Aries 08

Nina DiSesa Shares Uncensored Tactics for Winning at Work in Her Book “Seducing the Boys Club”

ninadisesa_165Why are there still so few women in top management positions in the corporate world? Nina DiSesa, Chairman of McCann Erickson in New York, thinks it is because women don't understand men and tend to follow the rules and this doesn't work. She explains that women need to learn how to handle men in business in much the same way we do in our personal relationships - through what she calls S&M, seduction and manipulation. Nina says this has nothing to do with sex, and that in the end, everyone wins. In her book "Seducing the Boys Club" she gives the rest of us who think that all we need to do is work hard to get ahead, a swift kick in the butt!

Cancer 10

Linda Furiya Writes About Growing Up Japanese in the Midwest

linda_furiya_150“Many of the meals I ate at home in rural Indiana were Japanese. My mom used what ingredients she could get her hands on then put it out on the table effortlessly. The sensual aspect of Asian food and Mid-west sustainability is ingrained in me. Those are the basic roots of why I love cooking, “ says Linda.

(read more)