Climb: Taking Every Step with Conviction, Courage, and Calculated Risk to Achieve a Thriving Career and a Successful Life

A professional playbook offering guidance to women in the contemporary workplace.

Winner of the African American Literary Awards Show’s Best Self-Help Award for 2018

“Inspiring . . . Sections addressing how corporate diversity and equality efforts have either succeeded and failed are necessary reading.” ―Publishers Weekly

Renowned as a diversity and inclusion strategist, Gadsden-Williams held C-Suite positions at major organizations for many years . . . and then took the off-ramp to probe a different career path, launching Ceiling Breakers LLC, with the primary goal to help women and professionals of color reach their full potential. As a woman of color and corporate executive who has worked and traveled the world for several Fortune 500 companies―all while managing a chronic illness―she provides insight into overcoming the barriers facing professionals in today’s workplace.

In Climb, Gadsden-Williams combines her inspirational life story with pragmatic solutions to address problems facing women in corporate America, offering a professional playbook for tackling today’s most pressing workplace issues.

CAROLYN M. BROWN is an award-winning journalist, author, and playwright. Her work has appeared in Essence, Pink, Black Enterprise, Forbes Executive Edge, the Source, Hispanic Business, AOL BlackVoices, and elsewhere. She is the founder of the True Colors Project, a social enterprise, and the cofounder and executive director of the My True Colors Festival, a multidisciplinary social justice arts event. She is the author of The Millionaires’ Club and Nobody’s Business but Your Own and is a 2012 GLAAD Media Award winner for Outstanding Magazine Article. Climb, with Michelle Gadsden-Williams, is her latest title.

MICHELLE GADSDEN-WILLIAMS is an award-winning global diversity expert, activist, philanthropist, and the managing director and North American inclusion and diversity lead at Accenture. She has more than twenty-five years of experience working in the consumer goods, pharmaceutical, financial, and professional services industries. She has held positions of global responsibility for corporations such as Credit Suisse, Novartis, and Merck & Co. She serves on several boards including the Jackie Robinson Foundation, Lupus Research Alliance, and the Women’s Leadership Board of the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. Gadsden-Williams has a BA in communications with a minor in marketing from Kean College, and an MS in organizational dynamics from the University of Pennsylvania. Climb is her first title.