discussing the works of Gandhi, Hobbes, and Locke with sixteen other extremely accomplished young leaders, particularly because the seminar was moderated by Skip Battle, the retired titan of Arthur Andersen Consulting and former CEO of online search engine Ask Jeeves. “Pearls of wisdom fell from his mouth,” she recalls. When the week came to a close, Battle turned to her. “Mellody, no doubt you will do good in our society,” he began. “But are you willing to put yourself in harm’s way?”
At thirty-one, Hobson had already done a lot of good. She was president of Ariel Investments, steering a firm with over $3.5 billion in assets under management. In her community, she served as director on the boards of the Chicago Public Library, the Library Foundation, and the Civic Federation of Chicago. She also sat on the boards of the Field Museum, the Chicago Public Education Fund, the 21st Century Charter School, the Women’s Business Development Council, Do Something, and St. Ignatius College Preparatory. And yet she knew exactly what Battle was getting at: was she daring to speak her truth, as a black woman—however uncomfortable it would make those around her? Was she capable of being that kind of leader?
In the ensuing years, Hobson seized every opportunity to speak out where she felt her truth might make a difference, using her board seats to advocate for membership to include more women and people of color, and using her platform as president of Ariel to help people grow their financial literacy. Wherever she went, whomever she was with, she elected to be “unapologetically black.”
Then, in May of 2014, presented with the opportunity to command the TED stage, Hobson delivered a fourteen-minute talk called “Color Blind or Color Brave?” She talked openly about her own challenges as a person of color, and then she urged listeners to talk openly about differences.
It was undeniably a risky truth to speak. Friends and colleagues alike had told her not to do it. “People will see you as militant,” they warned. “They’ll typecast you, make you ‘the race issue,’ see you as having your fist in the air—and that will hurt Ariel.” Moments before she took the TED stage in Vancouver, an exchange underscored the wisdom of their advice. A woman Hobson knew turned to her in the green room to ask what her speech was about. “Race,” Hobson told her. “Grace?” the woman responded, smiling. “What a great topic!” Hobson calmly repeated herself. The woman’s smile collapsed, and she looked away. “She didn’t know what to say,” says Hobson, recalling the tension in that room. “But I had something to say, and I was the perfect person to say it.”
Today, Hobson is known for many things in addition to her stewardship of Ariel Investments: her seat at the head of the table at DreamWorks Animation; her circle of friends, which includes Sheryl Sandberg; her marriage to filmmaker George Lucas; and her daughter, Everest. Vanity Fair profiled her in 2015; TIME magazine named her one of the World’s 100 Most Influential People.38 But what Hobson is most proud of, about herself as a leader, is choosing to speak out about, and model, being color brave. Because she delivered that inconvenient truth well before Michael Brown’s shooting in Ferguson, MO, and Freddie Gray’s death in Baltimore, MD, Hobson forced the nation to confront its own complicity in systemic discrimination and acts of unconscious bias.
“I didn’t know I was ‘early,’” she says, reflecting on her speech in Vancouver. “I said my truth about needing to seek out difference, challenge our own assumptions about others, because it’s worked really well for me. Some of the power I have today is related to living that truth.”
Putting oneself in harm’s way, she clarifies, doesn’t mean stepping in front of a metaphorical bus: when a client’s bias or bigotry makes her the person in the room unlikely to advance the interests of her team, she will step back to let someone else own the relationship. “There are times I know, I’m fully cognizant, that my presence may not work,” she says. But living her truth means acknowledging that she will make others uncomfortable and accepting that there may be negative consequences. “I’m okay with that,” she asserts. “It’s as Skip said: What are you willing to stand up for? What idea, what value, will you quit for? It starts with the individual. You have to make it happen. I’m supported by some amazing people here; my environment helps me stand up for what I believe. But I hold myself accountable.”
As editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan and an editorial director at Hearst, Joanna Coles is one of the most talked-about powerhouses in the media world. Her celebrity derives in part, certainly, from making herself highly visible on celebrity circuits. She’s taken lead roles on Project Runway, dispensing fashion advice in place of Tim Gunn. She’s joined Mika Brzezinski on Morning Joe to discuss executive presence as well as to kick off New York’s Fashion Week, where she was photographed alongside the runway, chatting up Miley Cyrus. In her platinum pixie cut, stiletto heels, and chic designer sheaths, Joanna Coles is as much a fashion doyenne as she is a media titan.
But Coles continues to make headlines because she has taken the most widely read women’s magazine in the world and used it as a platform to elevate women’s issues as they dominate politics, social policy, business, and the workplace. If under Helen Gurley Brown Cosmo’s mandate was to empower women in the bedroom, under Coles that mandate has expanded to empowering women in the boardroom, as well. She recruited Sheryl Sandberg to oversee and launch the magazine’s first-ever career guide, focusing on financial advice because Coles believes that nothing is more liberating for women than having the know-how to attain financial independence. She’s reallocated resources to do serious investigative reporting, offering readers insight on everything from how to press charges when raped to how to choose the most effective birth control.39 Painstakingly professional coverage of controversial topics has gotten Cosmo nominated, in turn, for prestigious industry awards; in 2014, Cosmo picked up its first-ever National Magazine Award, and in 2015, it made finalist for Magazine of the Year.40 Advertisers have taken notice: the September 2013 issue set a record in the magazine’s 128-year history. Readership at Cosmo, with one hundred million readers in more than one hundred countries worldwide, is also at an all-time high.
Coles’s business savvy and breathless schedule—this is a woman whose desk is positioned above a treadmill—have made her the subject of countless articles, from a New York Times glimpse of her home life (she’s married to screenwriter and human rights activist Peter Godwin, with whom she has two sons) to a Fast Company recounting of how she ascended to Hearst’s highest office. But what Coles wants to stress is how much she relishes the voice that her visibility and media platform afford her.
“I didn’t realize before I became editor-in-chief how much I was going to enjoy being in charge,” she says. “I’ve been so exhilarated creating direction for this magazine, seeing my ideas of what a magazine for women should be and watching it take shape over a number of issues—it’s thrilling. Of course it requires a lot of other people; I’m not doing this on my own. But I’m the person making the decisions. It’s my vision I’m putting out there. And it’s absolutely fabulous.”
To look at women like Hobson and Coles, one might conclude that, despite their different starting gates, black women and white have finally arrived.
These women are not simply lining corridors of corporate America, lending support to those in power. Rather, they occupy the C-suite’s corner office. They’re at the top of their respective professions, widely recognized for their achievement, amply rewarded for their acumen. Each has embraced leadership, shouldering its responsibilities both on the job and outside in the wider community. Each has enjoyed career success that has enriched, rather than impoverished, her personal life. And each has chosen to wield her power for good, driving change for an entire generation of women both black and white.
In many ways, they embody the feminist ideal. They exercise ably all of the choices that women before them fought hard for decades to bestow.
But our research reveals that they are also, lamentably, the exception among exceptional women. Ambitious, capable women today do not inhabit the C-suite in numbers anywhere near parity with ambitious,
