Darah Katz-Newton is an author, speaker and consultant who has spent the last two decades writing about leadership. She served as a corporate manager for the DaimlerChrysler Corporation, General Motors, IBM and Daimler/Chrysler’s Chrysler Division, with experience in sales, marketing, human resources and executive coaching. In 2002, Katz-Newton became the first woman and the first black CEO of a major automaker. She left the Fortune 100 company in October 2014 to become CEO of global research firm Quantas, the biggest provider of airport-nautical management technology and research services to more than 275 international airlines. Katz-Newton spent the next two years as CEO of Women Helping Women, a consulting company that raises money to support female entrepreneurs in developing countries. In 2016, she founded Rassos®, a consultancy that helps people use storytelling and form new habits of creative thinking to change their lives and organizations. Her new book, “Raising Your Game: How to Build the You You Really Want,” will be published next month by Simon & Schuster.
For more than 30 years, working from her apartment in Battery Park City, I had often written down what I would tell a business friend, when I was just getting started. The book I wanted to write captured my search for meaning, but it always included a picture of the beach. The piece might be slightly tacky, but the idea was that in order to be a good leader, I needed to have a life, complete with a boardwalk and palm trees to take the edge off a day of meetings, late nights and sweaty exercises.
That 20-year-old proposal never materialized, but a little more than two years ago, I began to focus my business on the cultural challenges facing today’s business leaders. “Raising Your Game” appears now in print and on e-book. I hope it’ll be an encouragement for aspiring leaders of all types.