Soaring: Eleven Guiding Principles on the Path from Segregation to Success

A powerful underdog story, Soaring delivers practical leadership advice, business lessons, and tips for success mined from the real-life strategies of Lee E. Rhyant’s forty years as a corporate leader. Born into poverty in the postwar South, Rhyant was the fourth of eight children raised by a family of African American sharecroppers struggling to survive the last decades of segregation. Soaring combines compelling storytelling with practical lessons to demonstrate the transformative power of perseverance.

In the trajectory of his life, Rhyant has achieved many goals considered beyond his reach. Here he shares compelling stories of growing up in the segregated South, working at an early age, graduating from the HBCU Bethune-Cookman University and Indiana University, and ultimately excelling at leadership roles at General Motors, Rolls Royce Aeronautics, and Lockheed Martin Marietta. Rhyant’s life reveals a great deal about the economic, business, and racial climate in the South in the last quarter of the twentieth century and has much to teach students, business leaders, and interested readers about resiliency and determination.