Sophia A. Nelson, Esq., is an American award-winning author, former White House correspondent, television personality, and the Huffington Post’s Healthy Living, Women & Business columnist. Sophia appears regularly on MSNBC as a contributor and TV ONE analyst. She has appeared on numerous other networks and television shows such as the BBC, CNN, FOX, C-Span, the Today Show, Nightly News with Diane Sawyer, and more as a political and cultural expert, thought leader, and attorney, covering many topics of national and global interest.

Sophia is the author of the award-winning 2011 nonfiction book Black Woman Redefined: Dispelling Myths and Discovering Fulfillment in the Age of Michelle Obama. Sophia is a highly sought-after motivational speaker and leadership trainer for Fortune 500 companies, as well as universities. She writes a national lifestyle and political column for Newsweek’s The Daily Beast, and is a frequent contributor to USA Today, Essence Magazine, and the Washington Post. Her second book, The Woman Code: 20 Powerful Keys to Unlock Your Life (Revell), is due out in stores worldwide October 2014.

Madeline Albright, former US Secretary of State, said it best: “There is a very special place in hell for women that don’t help other women.” These are powerful and important words. As a black woman professional, one of the things that I see consistently that has me deeply concerned about women in our modern culture is this attitude of competition versus collaboration.

Although men are competitors (and fierce ones at that), they also know how to be fierce collaborators. They know how to get on the golf course, sit in the bar, put on the boxing gloves, play racquetball, work on their business deals, and figure out how they can come together and make deals and dollars. As women, we often miss the mark. Many of us will sit around and tear one another down, and say “I don’t like,” “I heard,” and “she did” instead of finding a way to collaborate with each other to build up one another and succeed.

There is a code, a woman code. That’s the name of my second book and I bring this up intentionally, not to promote a book, but to prove a point: It matters how we live, how we work, and how we play. There are certain roads of living in the spirit of who we are supposed to be as human beings that we should not violate. The women I admire and the women that I know who are successful honor the woman code. They are collaborators. They don’t talk bad about other women. They don’t tear other women down. They don’t gossip. They don’t demean other women. They are too busy being successful for that kind of nonsense, and they don’t have time for it. Successful women cultivate and collaborate, and in doing so, they create success.

I entered the field of journalism after transitioning from a ten-year career as an attorney. There are many more women in journalism now than when I first came to Washington, DC, as a high school student and later, in the late 1980s, as a college student. Women journalists like Cokie Roberts, the late Helen Thomas, and Andrea Mitchell have done spectacular things to take journalism to another level. And while women’s influence in the media is enormous now, I would like to see more women owners running media outlets as opposed to what it is now: a very homogenous group of white males with women in more subordinate, subsidiary-type roles. You have women like Arianna Huffington and Tina Brown, owners of Huffington Post Media and Daily Beast, respectively, who are changing this paradigm. However, it’s been noted in such publications as the Wall Street Journal and Forbes that women just don’t have the capital to own major media outlets. And owners of media-related entities can directly influence what images are seen of women, either positive or negative.

Likewise, there are still things we as women cannot do in the workplace. For instance, we cannot get “upset” in a meeting the same way a man can. We can’t throw papers across the table when we are frustrated or curse as men do. When a man shows emotion in the workplace, it’s seen as him just letting off steam, but for women, such behavior would be a career-limiting move at best and most likely career ending. A woman displaying emotion in the workplace is perceived as having anger management issues. I think most women who are successful know how to play the game while still being strong, smart, and intelligent and having their say and navigating in a way that allows them neither to put men off nor have men see them as a threat or as overly assertive.

Women bring a different perspective and a range of unique experiences, which is a great thing. For me, my mother and my family were pivotal influences on my personal success. My mother worked as a nurse and sacrificed much for her children. She made me the woman that I am today. I know that I wouldn’t be who I am today without the encouragement, sponsorship, and mentoring from the women who have been essential in my life.

Although I think that talent is gender neutral, women have a different way of looking at things and handling them. I also know that as a black woman, my interactions with others are sometimes based on my context (i.e., being a woman of color). My hunch is that the first thing people see of me, and women who look like me, is my race, not my gender. This can be a mixed bag of blessings and curses. I, like millions of other women of color, have learned to be comfortable being the “only one” in the room if need be, but I am hopeful that a day will come that we will all be comfortable in the same room, regardless of what that room’s demographic makeup happens to be!

In the final analysis, we as women are often our own worst enemies and if we can learn to unlock our internal code, we can become our own best friends. We as a sisterhood of women must commit to ridding the workplace of those queen bee–types who feel the need to haze other women because they were hazed. We need to teach women how to get along and lift one another as we climb. We need to get back to our code. It is your obligation and your responsibility as a woman to help other women. It isn’t about whether you like the person or feel you know what’s right for her. Instead, if you see talent and ability, be a mentor or a sponsor and work to nurture those traits the same way someone did for you. Why would another woman expect to have success in her career thanks to the help of others, and yet not feel that she has to help pass it forward?

That’s not cool, and that’s not code. Sisters, it’s time for the universal one woman to emerge. You are your sister’s keeper. It’s time to put the “sister” back in sisterhood.