What Girls Need: How to Raise Bold, Courageous, and Resilient Women

""A powerful book about how we can raise girls to become bold, ambitious women." --Adam Grant A former White House strategist and fighter jet pilot now at the helm of one of the premier schools for girls in the country illuminates the ways parents and educators can support audacity and ambition in girls everywhere What do girls really need to succeed? As a student at the all-girls Baldwin School outside of Philadelphia, Marisa Porges was raised in a community designed to produce strong, independent women. After earning a BA in geophysics from Harvard, she fulfilled her childhood dream of flying jets off aircraft carriers for the US Navy and served as a counterterrorism expert in Afghanistan and the Obama White House. In 2016, in an unexpected move for someone whose ambitions had taken her so far from home, Porges returned to head The Baldwin School. In doing so, she began to see with great clarity how small moments and turning points in her early education gave her the tools she would eventually sharpen and deploy to excel in areas that were traditionally perceived as being part of "a man's world." What Girls Need combines lessons Porges learned along her career path with the practices she and her colleagues are developing at The Baldwin School to help today's girls cultivate the skills and traits they need to become tomorrow's leading women. The traditional means of commanding a room have often been dubbed "unfeminine" and women of previous generations were pressured to behave like a man in order to winthe day. But the ways we define leadership are changing, and the women now stepping into leadership roles are mapping new paths to inhabiting traits such as grit, resilience, audacity, and self-confidence. Porges is writing to prepare the next generationto confidently hold their own later in life in whatever fields they enter, whatever challenges they face, and to celebrate and own the ways that traits which might have been undervalued in the past--empathy, collaboration, and an evolving mind-set--can and will define the future's leaders"--
The former White House strategist and jet pilot turned headmaster of Philadelphia's Baldwin School for girls draws on career insights to counsel parents and educators on how to support audacity and ambition in girls everywhere.
"A powerful book about how we can raise girls to become bold, ambitious women." --Adam GrantWhat do girls really need to succeed? Children today face an uncertain future, and parents and teachers can&;t fully predict what&;s in store for their daughter and sons. But one thing is clear: Our kids need a new set of skills to succeed. Girls, in particular, must nurture essential traits to fully flourish. Students hit the ground running today, entering a school system that carries high expectations on their way to a college application process that is more demanding than ever. After school, young women enter a competitive job market, still complicated by sexism and the possibility of harassment. But the ways we define leadership are also changing, and the women stepping into those roles are mapping new paths to inhabiting traits like grit, resilience, audacity, and self-confidence. What Girls Need shows how parents and educators can foster these critical twenty-first-century skills in our girls and help them to recognize and nurture their inherent strengths&;to not just thrive but also find joy and purpose as they come of age in our ever-evolving world. As a student at the all-girls Baldwin School outside of Philadelphia, Marisa Porges grew up in a community designed to produce strong, independent women. After graduating from Harvard, she fulfilled her childhood dream of flying jets off aircraft carriers for the U.S. Navy and served as a counterterrorism expert in Afghanistan and a cybersecurity advisor in the Obama White House. Then in 2016, in an unexpected move for someone whose ambitions had taken her so far from home, Porges returned to head the Baldwin School. In doing so, she saw how small moments in her early education gave her the tools she needed to excel in a &;man&;s world.&; Combining compelling research, personal stories, and practical advice on timely questions, Porges delves into hot-button subjects like how to harness girls&; voices and boost girls&; self-esteem, and shows how little things have a big impact when nurturing vital skills like competitiveness, collaboration, empathy, and adaptability. What Girls Need empowers us to support the next generation of women so they can confidently hold their own no matter what the future has in store.