Acknowledgments

This book exists because eighteen women professionals chose to share their insight, experience, and wisdom in order to build bridges to new opportunities for the next generation of women who will become leaders. I can't thank them enough for their time and their inspiration. It was a delight to listen and to learn from them, personally and professionally.

This book also was made possible by their “gatekeepers” whom I've come to admire, respect, and appreciate. Assistants, associates, secretaries, public relations personnel—among their many titles—are the people to whom successful leaders delegate their schedules as well as their best interests. They challenged me to prove that this project would be worthy, so I am grateful to them for making me work to earn their confidence.

I would like to acknowledge just a few of today's women in media—leaders themselves—who have made it their business to highlight and advance the word about women of achievement and women in leadership. These would include Alice Krause, who hosts and writes the blog www.NewsOnWomen.com; Sheila Ronning, President & CEO of Sharp UpSwing and founder of Women In The Boardroom; Joann Lublin of the Wall Street Journal and Moira Forbes of Forbes Woman, both of whom regularly write respectfully about women leaders. There are more, but these women especially spoke up and wrote positively about accomplished women at a time when it was way too easy simply to write about the challenges.

I am grateful for friends and advisors like Dr. Susan Murphy, co-author with Dr. Pat Heim of In the Company of Women, who taught me to look for women who inspire me and make me stretch—and that the decision to do so was a choice that I could make.

I am sincerely grateful to Jeff Olson, who brought the idea for this book forward and who spent so much time teaching me what I need to know to improve my craft. Thank you.

Kristen Ng gave me back hundreds of hours of writing time by her wonderful work transcribing the recorded interviews. And Kimberly Burton took the fine-tooth comb through the copyedit process. Thank you to these and to all the other production staff, without whom this book would not have happened.

Jessica Belanger, from start to finish, advised, edited, trained, coached, and cajoled me in so very many facets of the writing process. Thank you.

There are a host of unnamed but very appreciated friends, family members, and colleagues who kept asking me “How's the new book progressing?” Their interest in the subject enflamed my own ardor. Their expectations pushed me toward my goal. When the women in my life—whether it was my dental hygienist, my dry cleaner, my doctor—kept asking me whom I'd interviewed lately, I knew the subject of women in leadership had hit that chord that now echoes resoundingly.

Thank you also to the very many men from my work and my life who suggested names of women in leadership whom they considered worthy of inclusion. It gives me great personal satisfaction to know that I have such open-minded and enthusiastic advisors.

Thank you to Hans and Cynthia Ghaffari for all their help during challenging days and weeks over the past year while this project has been underway.

Finally, thank you to my friend, partner, mentor, coach, muse and husband, Fereydoon—who probably is the only person who truly understands what it took to complete this book—because he has been there from the beginning.

Elizabeth Ghaffari
Los Angeles, California
November 2011