In her Foreword to Breaking Through: Stories and Best Practices From Companies That Help Women Succeed, written by Martine Liautaud and published by John Wiley & Sons (April 2016), Christine Lagarde acknowledges that empowering women is certainly about fairness “but it is also about economic growth: 865 million women could contribute more to the global economy. If women were employed at the same rate [for the given work] as men, GDP would increase by 5 percent in the United States, by 9 percent in Japan, and by 27 percent in India. Closing these gaps would be transformative — and it could be achieved through what I have called the The Ls:

o Learning: Investing in schools and making sure girls have a good education, especially in poorer countries.

o Labor: Supporting working women through parental leave, affordable and high-quality childcare, and taxes that do not discourage mothers from having a job.

o Leadership: Letting women show their true potential by rising to the top, based solely on their abilities and talents.

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Christine Lagarde is Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund.

I highly recommend Breaking Through to all women who are determined to accelerate their personal growth and professional development. They will need help and need to know that an abundance of valuable information, insights, and counsel is provided in this book.