Thought Leadership for Women’s, Gender, Sexuality Studies Professionals Deborah Siegel, PhDGirl w/Pen Consulting

National Women’s Studies Association 2014

Who I am…

…author of books + opeds…

I blog…

I give talks…

I help start things…

…and I help others (including writers, scholars, community educators!) get

focused, gain mad skills, and learn to lead publicly with their ideas.

Girl w/Pen Consulting

Why “thought leadership”?

Road MapI. Deborah’s definition of “thought leadership”II. What it looks like in practiceIII. A story / othersIV. TakeawaysV. YOU

“PLATFORM”

“Social media presence”“voice”

“Thought Leadership”

“Audience!”

A few definitions…“Thought leadership is about furthering a

discussion that leads to action.” – Joel Kurtzman, strategy + business

“Thought leadership is the ability to aggregate followers around ideas to educate, influence and inspire.” – Jeanine Moss

“[A thought leader is a] trusted source who moves people with innovative ideas.” – Scott Ginsberg

See Tracy Sestili:  http://socialstrand.com/2012/07/27/what-is-thought-leadership/

Putting it all together…

A thought leader is a trusted source with innovative ideas who educates, influences, or inspires her audience and furthers discussions that lead her audience to action and CHANGE.

Where are the women?

So, ok, what does this look like, in practice?

1. Multi-purpose. Don’t Multi-task.

Multi-tasking—doing many divergent activities at once—dilutes time.

Multi-purposing—doing the same thing in multiple formats—saves time.

If it’s good enough to do once, it’s good enough to do multiple times—and in different forms.

Example:A talk a blog post or oped (and, of course, a video!)A blog post or oped a talkA talk, blog post, or oped a newsletter

2. Spoke the HubChoose an online “home” that becomes your hub, and let everything else be a spoke, ie a way of pushing what’s on your hub out into the world.

3. Only connect

http://feministing.com/tag/the-academic-feministhttp://janellhobson.comhttp://www.tanishacford.com http://www.shiratarrant.comhttp://alisonpiepmeier.comhttp://www.crunkfeministcollective.com/peoplehttp://thefeministwire.com/2011/11/introducing-darnell-l-moorehttp://msmagazine.com/bloghttp://www.racialicious.com/who-we-are

7 Habits of Highly Effective Gender Centers• Articulate core values of your program in way that compels (stop

pretending only businesses do it)• Steal shamelessly from business/leadership/psychology models

for the benefit of WMGS (you’re not a sellout)• Spend serious time on visual culture and PR (stop rolling your

eyes about millenials and print vs visual culture)• Strategize to meet students where they are; fun is not dumb (stop

complaining about them)• Lead with the WMGS field because our scholarship is awesome

(you know your field is tops so stop apologizing)• Build cross-over/outside academia connections; solve your

College’s problems• Do your own fund raising (stop saying that you’re not trained or

paid to do it-this is higher ed now)

So let’s turn, now, to you…

How might the principles of “thought leadership” we’ve been talking about help you think more expansively about your work, your platform, and your influence?

THINK WIDE“PLATFORM”

“Social media presence”“voice”

“Thought Leadership”

“Audience!”

What’s the relationship between social media, audience, and

leadership?

“As you engage in these activities, your blog readers and social media followers and friends are watching what you say and do online. They are learning from your example. Whether you know it or not, you are leading them.” – Ananda Leeke

Q&Awww.deborahsiegelwrites.com

Twitter: @deborahgirlwpenFacebook: Girl w/Pen Consulting

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Blog: Girl w/Pen Email: deborah@deborahsiegelwrites.com

“Wait. Stop. I’m overwhelmed!”