During her trip to the Mideast, for the 2007 International Women’s Forum conference, the author first began asking women leaders from countries as diverse as Cameroon, Russia, Ecuador, Israel, Mexico, Canada, China, and Jordan, “What would you like to say to American women about leadership?” Though their words differed, the message conveyed was nearly always this: “American women underestimate the ability and responsibility they have to help lift their global sisters throughout the world. When you rise, it helps us all rise.” They were asking for American women Achievers to become Leaders.

Powering Up: How America’s Women Achievers Become Leaders is a call to leadership heeding women to step up, realize their full potential, and become the leaders they are meant to be. Individual leadership, however, isn’t enough. Every woman for herself is losing strategy. A few lone women, no matter how exceptional they are, have little impact on the conversation of a nearly all-male group, let alone its decisions. It takes critical mass to shift group dynamic. Powering Up will require women to get beyond their differences and recognize how interdependent they are.

Each generation of American women Achievers in the workplace today has a unique role to play in determining how quickly women will begin shaping the nation and engaging in the world equally with men. As a cultural tribe, women will rise or remain stalled together.