The Memo
What Women of Color Need to Know to Secure a Seat at the Table
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $17.99
Publisher Description
From microaggressions to the wage gap, The Memo empowers women of color with actionable advice on challenges and offers a clear path to success.
Most business books provide a one-size-fits-all approach to career advice that overlooks the unique barriers that women of color face. In The Memo, Minda Harts offers a much-needed career guide tailored specifically for women of color.
Drawing on knowledge gained from her past career as a fundraising consultant to top colleges across the country, Harts now brings her powerhouse entrepreneurial experience as CEO of The Memo to the page. With wit and candor, she acknowledges "ugly truths" that keep women of color from having a seat at the table in corporate America. Providing straight talk on how to navigate networking, office politics, and money, while showing how to make real change to the system, The Memo offers support and long-overdue advice on how women of color can succeed in their careers.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Harts, an assistant professor of public service at NYU's Wagner School and CEO of career-coaching company The Memo, issues a direct rejoinder to Sheryl Sandberg's Lean In in this urgent career guide. While reading Sandberg's book, Harts recalls, she realized that all of the books she had read about female business success came from a white perspective. Moreover, she had no interest in a narrative of overcoming career roadblocks by just working harder, when systemic injustice is the obstacle in place. By writing this book, Harts explains, she wants to keep women of color from leaning out of the workforce because of bias and limited opportunity. Buoyed up by examples from her own experiences, such as how she confronted a white colleague who consistently called her "the black girl," Harts provides a necessary guide written from and to women of color, focusing on "building your squad," navigating office politics, managing in a world that is anything but postracial, and investing in oneself and one's career. "Don't take sh from anyone," she advises, followed by a much-needed wake-up call for her white readers, in how and how not to be an ally. The result is a much-needed new perspective on an overwhelmingly white genre.
Customer Reviews
What a gem!
I’m so happy I started with this book for Black History Month. It has so many gems to navigate the workplace for women of color. I wish I had read this book before I entered the workforce. You learn the importance of networking, advocating for yourself and how to navigate office politics. The author does a great job at providing ressources for professional development too. This is a great book not only for women of color but for men and other races as well as White people. I can’t say enough how precious this book is. What I like the most is that she encourages us the reader to use our voice to change the status quo even if we don’t have a seat at the table. She gives many examples how to proceed with this in her book.