Sally Helgesen

Forbes's world's premier expert on woman's leadership and best-selling author, speaker and leadership coach

HOW WOMEN RISE - Keynote

Women’s distinctive strengths and behaviors provide them with many advantages. Yet the very habits that help them early in their careers can hold them back as they seek to rise.

In this program, Sally draws on her work with #1 ranked executive coach and New York Times best selling author Marshall Goldsmith to help women identify and address the habits most likely to get in their way as they seek to move to a higher level.

These habits include: Reluctance to Claim Your Achievements, Expecting Others to Spontaneously Notice and Reward Your Hard Work, Overvaluing Expertise, Building Rather than Leveraging Relationships, Failing to Enlist Allies from Day One, Putting Your Job Before Your Career, The Disease to Please, The Quest to be Perfect, Speaking While Emotional, Minimizing, Ruminating, and Letting Your Radar Distract You.

Using targeted questions, interactive exercises and vivid real-life examples that resonate and inspire, Sally will help participants:

Identify the specific habits or (cluster of habits) most likely to hold them back

Understand how these habits can hinder them at a higher level

Initiate simple behavioral tweaks that can smooth their path going forward

Hold themselves accountable for changes that can benefit them and their organizations

Become a more powerful resource for other women seeking to rise

Participants will come away from this program with:

An enhanced understanding of their individual strengths

A clear-eyed recognition of their individual challenges


An actionable template for addressing these challenges

A proven means for strengthening their webs of support

A program of action for engaging male champions in women’s ongoing development

Sally Helgesen, cited in Forbes as the world’s premier expert on women’s leadership, is a best-selling author, speaker and leadership coach. For 30 years her mission has been to help women recognize, articulate and act on their greatest strengths and help organizations build more inclusive cultures.

She has been named Number 6 on the Global Gurus list of top leadership experts and as the Thinkers 50 Marshall Goldsmith #1 Coach for Women Leaders. She was also chosen by the coaching consortium MEECO as International Thought Leader in Cultural Transformation.

Sally’s most recent book, How Women Rise, co-authored with legendary executive coach Marshall Goldsmith, examines the behaviors most likely to get in the way of successful women as they seek to move to a higher level. It became the top-seller in its field within a week of publication and rights have been sold in 12 languages.

Previous books include The Female Advantage: Women’s Ways of Leadership, hailed as the classic in its field and continuously in print since 1990, and The Female Vision: Women’s Real Power at Work, which explores how women’s strategic insights can strengthen their careers. The Web of Inclusion: A New Architecture for Building Great Organizations, was cited in The Wall Street Journal as one of the best books on leadership of all time and is credited with bringing the language of inclusion into business practice.

Sally develops and delivers leadership programs, workshops and coaching sessions for corporations, partnership firms, universities and associations around the globe.

She has consulted with the UN on building more inclusive country offices in Africa and Asia, led programs at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and Smith College and been visiting scholar at Northwestern University, U-Nordic Stockholm, and the Lauriston Institute Melbourne AU.

She is a contributing editor for Strategy + Business magazine and a member of the MG Top 100 Coaches Network and the New York and International Women’s Forums. She lives in Chatham, NY.

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