Professional Women

As you listen on, you will come across struggle, survival, disappointment, and hope. You will laugh, and you will cry; you will reflect, and you will remember, but most importantly, you will learn, grow, and be transformed by the stories of these resilient women. When a small group of career women met at a Let’s Grow Sip & Paint event in January 2020, they joked that 2020 was the only time they were all going to have 20/20 vision, and they should embrace it and create a legacy for the new decade.

In Unemployable, Alysia Silberg, a start-up investor, AI expert, entrepreneur, and executive coach, shares her powerful story of survival and success, aided by the great equalizer–technology. Growing up in poverty in South Africa, Alysia experienced violence, abuse, and even a gunshot wound. Through determination and an unwavering commitment to learning, she made her way to America and Silicon Valley, becoming a lover and funder of start-ups, with a passion for AI.

When Ketanji Brown Jackson was confirmed to the United States Supreme Court she created hope for the American people, especially Black girls with dreams of blazing a trail for those to come after them. Her nomination has actualized the portrayal of an America that the American people have been dying to see happen since the time of Harriet Tubman.

Leadership and motivational strategies from Pat Fortenberry, a small-town girl from humble beginnings who built one of the top direct-sales organizations in the country and made more than $16 million in the process. In More than Makeup, Pat teaches skills for managing, motivating, leading, and inspiring a sales organization as well as self-improvement tools that can help anyone become a stronger leader and a better sales person.

Woman Lawyer tells the story of Clara Foltz, the first woman lawyer in the West. Famous as a public intellectual, leader of the women's movement, and legal reformer, Foltz faced terrific prejudice and well-organized opposition as she tried cases in front of all-male juries, raised five children as a single mother, stumped for political candidates, and urged the creation of a public defender to balance the public prosecutor.

Standing splendidly in the intersection of two genres – business memoir and gritty personal tell-all - Finding the Exit is a courageous tale of a woman who, against harrowing odds that began in childhood, successfully started and sold a medtech company to a Fortune 100 in less than five years.

After many years of serving others in the medical field, author Miyoshi Umeki Gordon found herself in need of essential medical care. Diagnosed with myositis and breast cancer, the author felt broken and wondered how she would ever survive what she calls multiple unknown illnesses. In addition to the incurable physical diseases in her body, the author was also battling emotional abuse and the effects of living with a drug addict (her first husband). However, despite all the battles placed upon her by life, she never gave up on herself.

Pig Years catapults American nature writing into the 21st century, and has been hailed by Lydia Davis and Aimee Nezhukumatathil as “engrossing” and “a marvel.” As a farmer in Upstate New York and Vermont, Ellyn Gaydos lives on the knife edge between loss and gain. Her debut memoir draws us into this precarious world, conjuring with stark simplicity the lifeblood of the farm: its livestock and stark full moons, the sharp cold days lives near to the land.

More of: You can't make this stuff up. A collection of short true stories from the experiences that made me who I am, including the most deadly indoor terrorist attack. Some are serious, some funny, some sad, some empowering. Beginning with prehospital care going to home health care. Next was a haunted nursing home, then the ER. There are stories that show WHY I can relate and some of the lessons I've learned. These stories are told in the first person because they all happened to me.

Are you ready to become a leader at the top of your game? Start by unlocking the secrets which will bring you unyielding success! Women Who Lead is an easy-to-digest guide offering tips to achieve your dreams. Learn from successful female mentors who will show you the process step by step! These women are influential leaders in their niches, earning the respect and income they deserve. Some of them have been featured on Forbes, TED, international speaking engagements, and high-profile publications.

Throughout history, women's pain and health issues have often been dismissed and viewed simply as an innate part of being female. Whether blamed on a wandering womb, witchcraft or still, to this day, being 'all in our heads' – women's health has been consistently misunderstood. As a result women have, and still are, missing out on receiving the healthcare they deserve. In ‘It’s Probably Nothing’, Naga Munchetty explores the difficulties of being heard, diagnosed and treated.

This is the inspiring, heartwarming story of a mother and daughter’s 50-year journey through the world of cystic fibrosis. Leslie’s medical prognosis was that she wouldn’t live to be seven. Although people with gene-based diseases don’t have spontaneous remissions, Leslie had one. And, despite the odds, she lived a fully functioning life to the age of 50.

Women Space Pioneers is a profile of the lives and experiences of the first eight women astronauts in the U.S. space program when they all became astronauts, and their impact on the future of women's participation in space exploration.

Stuckey's, a roadside oasis for generations of travelers along America's highways, fell into disrepair after decades of outside ownership. When Stephanie Stuckey, granddaughter of Stuckey's founder, is offered the chance to buy the business, she takes it, seeing something that isn't apparent in the bleak financial statements: an emotional connection that she and generations of road trippers had with the brand.

“Proceed as the way opens” is how William Least Heat-Moon put it in his book, River Horse. The line becomes a sort of mantra for Pulitzer Prize-winner Elizabeth McGowan, a melanoma survivor. Having been given a five-year clean bill of health, McGowan decides to bicycle all 4,000 or so miles from America’s West to East Coast. She wants to help other melanoma victims and sets out to use her many miles to raise funds for cancer research. She also wants to better understand her late father, who died of melanoma at the age of 44, when Elizabeth was just 15.

Grada was only 17 years old when she met her soulmate, Peter. By 19 she was married and had migrated from Holland to live in Peter’s homeland, Tasmania, Australia. Grada lived her dream - homesteading at the "back of beyond" with the love of her life, six children, and a menagerie of farm animals. In 2000 she and Peter opened a wellness clinic in their back yard. At the pinnacle of her life, Grada was hit by a truck - literally. During the near-death experience that followed, Grada had to make the decision to return to her body.

People love and remember the novels of Bobbie Ann Mason because they ring so true. This dazzling memoir has the same power. In it, Mason tells the story of her own family - a multilayered saga of three generations, their aspirations, their conflicts, and the ties that bound them to one another.

In Mighty Justice, trailblazing African American civil rights attorney Dovey Johnson Roundtree recounts her inspiring life story that speaks movingly and urgently to our racially troubled times. From the streets of Charlotte, North Carolina, to the segregated courtrooms of the nation’s capital; from the male stronghold of the army where she broke gender and color barriers to the pulpits of churches where women had waited for years for the right to minister - in all these places, Dovey Johnson Roundtree sought justice.

During the 1970s, Alice Combs, undeterred by a former employer's snobbish pronouncement, "You're not corporate material", transformed herself from divorced mother on food stamps to successful entrepreneur. Resolute, Alice overcame her initial ignorance of the recycling trade and recovered from the many novice mistakes she inevitably made while teaching herself to operate Vulcan Wire, which would slowly become a thriving business despite an embezzling partner and cutthroat competitors....

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of A Half Baked Idea by Olivia Potts. At the moment her mother died, Olivia Potts was baking a cake. She was trying to impress the man who would later become her husband. Meanwhile, 275 miles away, her mother was dying. In the grief-stricken months that followed, Olivia came home from her job as a criminal barrister miserable and tired, and baked soda bread, pizza, and chocolate banana cake. Even when it went badly (which was often), cooking brought her comfort.