How do women leaders make it to the top of an organization? How can women stay at the top when most of their colleagues are men? What should women do to exercise leadership well? This book tells the stories of four powerful women who knew the answers to these three questions. Therefore, this book also explicitly identifies the key factors in these leaders' career success, and it elucidates the competencies that enabled the women to exercise leadership effectively. The four success stories offer women who already serve in leadership roles and those who aspire to become great leaders both inspiration and practical lessons that can be applied to real-world challenges.

"A wonderful selection of much-needed role models of powerful women who shaped their time with distinctively authentic styles, all their own. An inspiration for both men and women of what more gender balance in global political and economic roles has to offer the world."

Avivah Wittenberg-Cox, CEO 20-first and best-selling author of Why Women Mean Business and How Women Mean Business.

"We all know we can learn a lot from history. Leadership Strategies for Women does this in the unexpected context of gender diversity. Nicely written and original, the book is a powerful example of how looking back can help us moving forward."

Frank Uit de Weerd, Vice-President HR Innovation, Research & Development, Royal Dutch/Shell

"Aninspiring narrative that creatively leverages lessons from four women from the past, each of whom had to play the cards she was dealt, and each a force of nature who prevailed against the odds and shaped her world. Today's crop of aspiring women leaders, who often start from scratch and face a bewildering array of options and tough performance expectations, would do well to absorb this book's tightly drawn lessons."

Ingo Walter, Seymour Milstein Professor of Finance, Corporate Governance and Ethics, NYU Stern School of Business

Introduction