One Size Never Fits All

Women are achieving equality in professional service firms by many metrics, but they continue to trail their male counterparts in making it to the very top leadership positions. While the public conversations have largely focused on women's concerns about work-life balance and their hesitation to lean in for opportunities, research demonstrates that the ability to develop business is a greater obstacle for women's success than any other reason. While most firms actively tout an active commitment to advancing women at all levels, they also adhere tightly to the use of traditional business development strategies, strategies that are unequivocally failing to capture the strengths of talented women in these firms. Through original research, detailed in the book, Dr. Reeves illustrates how women often are more successful in certain aspects of business development (networking, establishing relationships, delivering excellence in client service), but firms primarily reward closing the sale and getting the credit for the sale--two areas where women are less successful using traditional business development techniques. Dr. Reeves explains why most women (and also most men) fall prey to this flawed traditional business development approach and offers a series of alternative approaches that professional women (andmen) as well as the firms in which they work should use instead. Dr. Reeves's groundbreaking research and innovative solutions will revolutionize business development for women (and most men), and propel women into the leadership roles which have evaded them in the past. Praise for Arin Reeves and One Size Never Fits All "Dr. Reeves brings great clarity and depth to the challenges that exist for women in developing business for professional services firms. She has introduced a solid road map for navigating these obstacles for female (and male) professionals, and she introduces a new way of thinking for Firm leadership. Firms that employ these new ideas can create cultures that attract the best talent and create platforms for different profiles to be successful in developing new business." Lori Stanovich Tucker, Senior Manager, Business Development, Deloitte Financial Advisory Services "Dr. Reeves has proven herself as a pioneer on advancing women in the workplace. She has shifted the conversation beyond recruiting and retaining women to focus on understanding how the one model fits all approach to business development should change to help drive gender equality in professional services firms. I see her book as a blueprint for women (and men) to better understand, define and create new business development strategies for themselves and their organizations. One Size Never Fits All is an must-read for women in advertising." Debbi Vandeven, Global Chief Creative Officer, VML "This is the book for firms that want to develop more business. This is the book for women who are frustrated and tired of wearing someone else's shoes as they try to develop business. And, this is the book for men who want to understand why the women who read this book and implement the strategies are climbing to the top of the compensation and leadership positions (i.e., money and power)." Catherine Lamboley, General Counsel (retired), Shell Oil Company and Leader-in Residence, Center for Women in Law, University of Texas Law School

In 1990, one of Shirleys good friends took note of her beautiful prose in letters and suggested Shirley consider writing professionally. At first, it sounded like a crazy idea, but as soon as Shirley started writing, the words flowed. Since that day, she has written hundreds of poems and songs, been published many times, and even won awards. She wrote Chapter One of her collection, One Size Fits All, several years ago, and wrote Chapter Two recently at the age of eighty-one, disturbed by the ugliness spewed during the American presidential campaign. Barely recognizing her beloved country, she wrote with fury and passion while expressing her emotions regarding the anger and protests that occurred. In this collection, Shirley invokes raw emotion as she tells stories of inspiration, discusses God, and tries to guide the reader down a right path. She utilizes humor, charm, and sometimes fury, depending on the word journey. Her poems encompass multiple genres while her words are sincere, factual, and honest, intended to open the eyes and soothe the soul.

Know yourself -- that's great advice, but how do we get there? In a lively conversation about the meaning of life, three characters explore a wide range of concepts, including friendship and love, self-discipline and self-respect, trust and justice.

Digging Deep, Aiming High is a memoir of my career as a teacher and administrator in the New York City public schools. My experiences teaching in the middle school and my tenure working as an assistant principal and principal at the Manhattan Center High School for Science and Mathematics paint a contrasting picture. Both schools were dramatically different in terms of providing job satisfaction and student achievement. It is remarkable how two different schools could produce incredibly different results when teams of dedicated educators truly put kids first. Manhattan Center attracted trailblazers who made it their mission to defy the odds, to raise the bar, to reject mediocrity and encourage all children to succeed. As a team, we decided early on to evaluate all of our programs and academic results by digging deep and aiming high to work toward the highest level of educational achievement for our kids. Failure was never an option, yet we realized that the bureaucratic challenges of working in a large school system and in an impoverished inner-city neighborhood would pose numerous roadblocks in accomplishing our goals. The school was created in 1982 as a collaboration between the high school division and District 4 located in East Harlem. This project was an educational experiment, it being the first high school to accept students from anywhere in the city, as long as they were willing to make a commitment to the rigors of a college bound program and a longer school day. The campus was unique in that the school also housed an elementary school and junior high program in the same building. Working in this environment was especially gratifying for staff to be surrounded by kids of all ages and by students who were accepted regardless of their zip code. The parents and their children were especially grateful for the opportunity to attend a school of their choice, rather than be forced to accept their neighborhood school which, in many cases, had a poor academic rating. What makes this story so noteworthy is that we, the stakeholders in this one special school, recognized that we would need to seek out numerous public and private partnerships to assist us in the task of educating our youngsters. With the abundance of resources and the generosity of time provided by organizations such as General Electric, NBC, Mt. Sinai Hospital, local universities(NYU, COLUMBIA, HUNTER COLLEGE) and the Children's Aid Society, a community based organization, to name a few, we were able to create miracles for kids. With the help of hundreds of mentors and many volunteers, together with teachers and auxiliary personnel working 10-12 hour days and often on weekends, we created a top-notch academic program. Our entire school population was accepted into colleges with prestigious scholarships and financial aid packages, thanks to the dedication of a very talented teaching staff. Building the school from scratch in 1982 was far from easy. The growing pains of attracting competent staff willing to work collaboratively and dedicated leaders who were willing to work tirelessly to provide an environment for teachers to flourish were always a challenge. The explosive issues of funding for public education, desegregation, privatization of schools, the role of law enforcement and the involvement of the unions were very real then, and continue to be current problems facing educators today. Digging Deep, Aiming High will provide the reader with a thorough examination of the ways in which our team dealt with these controversies, as well as with the politicization of diversity, equity, and inclusion issues. It is my hope that our best practices in this one very unique high school will serve as a road map to the resolution of many of the obstacles facing our public schools nationwide today and tomorrow.

Business runs on emails, yet we rarely give them enough thought. Too often, our messages are misunderstood, misfiled, or ignored. In a world filled with remote collaboration and virtual teams, people who master email writing rise above the noise. You can be one of those people. Learn how to make your emails work for you rather than against you with this short, practical guide. Topics include - Crafting effective subject lines - Writing emails that people respond to - Protecting yourself from accidental misfires Whether you’re just starting in your career or have been emailing for decades, you’ll find valuable advice and tips you can put into practice right away. Read it now and see the difference you can make with a few simple practices and habits.

Advocates of rational choice theory in political science have been perceived by their critics as attempting to establish an intellectual hegemony in contemporary social science, to the detriment of alternative methods of research. The debate has gained a nonacademic audience, hitting the pages of the New York Times and the New Republic. In the academy, the antagonists have expressed their views in books, journal articles, and at professional conferences. Mark I. Lichbach addresses the question of the place of rational choice theory in the social sciences in general and in political science in particular. He presents a typology of the antagonists as either rationalist, culturalist, or structuralist and offers an insightful examination of the debate. He reveals that the rationalist bid for hegemony and synthesis is rooted in the weaknesses, not the strengths, of rationalist thought. He concludes that the various theoretical camps are unlikely to accept the claimed superiority of the rationalist approach but that this opposition is of value in itself to the social sciences, which requires multiple perspectives to remain healthy. With its penetrating examination of the assumptions and basic arguments of each of the sides to this debate, this book cuts through the partisan rhetoric and provides an essential roadmap for the future of the discipline. Mark I. Lichbach is Professor of Government and Politics, University of Maryland.

In his new book The Strange Case of the Rickety Cossack, human paleoanthropologist Ian Tattersall argues that a long tradition of "human exceptionalism" in paleoanthropology has distorted the picture of human evolution. Drawing partly on his own career—from young scientist in awe of his elders to crotchety elder statesman—Tattersall offers an idiosyncratic look at the competitive world of paleoanthropology, beginning with Charles Darwin 150 years ago, and continuing through the Leakey dynasty in Africa, and concluding with the latest astonishing findings in the Caucasus. The book's title refers to the 1856 discovery of a clearly very old skull cap in Germany's Neander Valley. The possessor had a brain as large as a modern human, but a heavy low braincase with a prominent brow ridge. Scientists tried hard to explain away the inconvenient possibility that this was not actually our direct relative. One extreme interpretation suggested that the preserved leg bones were curved by both rickets, and by a life on horseback. The pain of the unfortunate individual's affliction had caused him to chronically furrow his brow in agony, leading to the excessive development of bone above the eye sockets. The subsequent history of human evolutionary studies is full of similarly fanciful interpretations. With tact and humor, Tattersall concludes that we are not the perfected products of natural processes, but instead the result of substantial doses of random happenstance.

A humorous approach to self-confidence, emphasizing a positive outlook on life rather than a gloomy one, tinged by the lack of a perfect body. A "big, beautiful woman in a narrow nervous world", Higgs' infectious joy for life inspires women everywhere to begin to truly appreciate themselves.