When Women Lead

What They Achieve, Why They Succeed, and How We Can Learn from Them

By: Julia Boorstin

Narrated by: Julia Boorstin

This groundbreaking, deeply reported work from CNBC’s Julia Boorstin reveals the key characteristics that help top female leaders thrive as they innovate, grow businesses, and navigate crises—“a must-read for all leaders as they consider the future of work” (Eve Rodsky, New York Times bestselling author of Fair Play and Find Your Unicorn Space)

Julia Boorstin was thirteen when her mother told her that, by the time she grew up, women could be just as powerful as men, “captains of industry, running the biggest companies!” A decade later, working at a top business publication and seeing the dearth of women in positions of leadership, Boorstin assumed her mom had been wrong. But over the following two decades as a TV reporter and creator of CNBC’s Disruptor 50 franchise, interviewing, and studying thousands of executives, she realized that a gender-equity utopia shouldn’t be a pipe dream. Yes, women faced massive social and institutional headwinds, and struggled with double standards and what psychologists call “pattern matching.” Yet those who thrived, Boorstin found, shared key commonalities that made them uniquely equipped to lead, grow businesses, and navigate crises. They were highly adaptive to change, deeply empathetic in their management style, and much more likely to integrate diverse points of view into their business strategies, filling voids that their male counterparts had overlooked for generations. By utilizing those strengths, they had invented new business models, disrupted industries, and made massive profits along the way.

Here, in When Women Lead, Boorstin brings together the stories of over sixty of those female CEOs and leaders, and provides “critical insights into how women-founded companies begin, operate, and prosper” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review). Her combination of narrative and research reveals how once-underestimated characteristics, from vulnerability and gratitude to divergent thinking, can be vital superpowers—and that anyone can work these approaches to their advantage. Featuring new interviews with Katrina Lake, Gwyneth Paltrow, Jenn Hyman, Whitney Wolfe Herd, Lena Waithe, Shivani Siroya, Julia Collins, and more, Boorstein’s revelatory book “lays out a new, inclusive vision for leadership and our world at large that we all will benefit from” (Arianna Huffington, Founder & CEO, Thrive).

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2022 Julia Boorstin. All rights reserved. (P)2022 Simon & Schuster, Inc. All rights reserved.

Inspiring and useful

I found the authors use of story blended with research particularly in formative and engaging. Great read for a female entrepreneur.

Eye opening

Data to back up many concepts I have not had enough exposure to and only heard in passing in bits and pieces. Putting it all together is compelling.

Excellent & Timely

I’m glad I listened to Gwyneth Paltrow’s podcast to learn about this book and am grateful to the author and everyone who participated in its creation. I learned a tremendous amount over just a few days at a time when I’m creating the most important project and business of my life. I want to learn more. Congratulations and thank you for the excellent information, observations and reporting.

An inspiring must-read

Every single woman needs to read this book. I could not recommend it enough. So inspiring.

So empowering

This is the book I’ve been looking for: full of data and research showing why a female approach to business works.

Great content. Well researched

Great book. I appreciated the diversity of examples, and the parallel traits that were shared.

Narration was excellent

Very inspiring

The book is telling great female entrepreneurs stories of success. Beautifully written and very factual

Entertaining, Insightful and Surprising

A must-listen for anyone interested in leadership, business, and what it takes to defy the odds- through the lens of amazing women! Loved it and the author’s reading of the book- it came to life!

Would Not Recommend

There are a lot of valuable strategies in this book that child help any reader to understand themselves and apply themselves in interpersonal interactions. There are a lot of strategies in this book that could help businesses capitalize upon their personnel. Unfortunately, much of the capitalization could be built upon the manipulation of traditionally marginalized groups and through the vilification of the traditionally majority group, all while expressing a need for the embrace of such efforts by the villainized.

The author is manipulative of statistics and of language. I don't believe that real progress is made through manipulation.

Misleading title; About women-led start-ups

Based on the title and an interview with the author, I bought this to learn and help my women clients as they transition from employee to leader. Not helpful at all! Most women won’t start companies. More will work in them with hopes of leading them some day, or at least having a seat at the table and a vote. Instead, they find themselves glorified managers and operations staff. They don’t understand the “politics” of advancement of how to read the tea leaves of how a business is organized so they’ll know how to advance, or many other things that often lead to “quiet quitting.” This is a glorification of a few ultra determined women who created companies, not a truly helpful study that can be applied to the vast majority of women who want to go to work with a sense of personal agency and a desire to contribute by doing their best work.