EMPOWER YOURSELF FOR AN AMAZING CAREER

An executive outlines best practices for climbing the corporate ladder.

De La Rosa shares her personal journey through three decades of working at a Fortune 500 company. With accessible language, the author offers sound career advice. Highlighting her minority status as a Hispanic woman without a postgraduate degree, the author shares her own employment trajectory as she first entered corporate America: a short stint at a law firm and then a career at an energy company, where she rose from temp to full-time secretary to associate and then manager. De La Rosa weaves practical tips and wisdom into her storytelling, including how to break into a corporate job, manage tough bosses, create a personal brand, be your own best advocate, identify a mentor, prove your worth and climb the corporate ladder. She relays specific tools for how “women can confidently showcase their power by openly displaying their knowledge, skills, and being prepared when addressing management, peers and competitors.” She addresses challenges women can face in large companies as they try to get ahead and how both men and woman can be sexist. De La Rosa identifies skills women glean from motherhood that transfer to leadership positions, as well as the downfalls that affect women in corporate environments. Women, she claims, tend to take business decisions personally, hold grudges and become more emotional than their male counterparts, which potentially prevent them from advancing professionally. She asserts that the solution is to “focus on the now, on what is right in front of you. Yesterday is the past, and it is exactly where it belongs, behind you, and tomorrow is not here yet.” Also included are tips for smooth business travel as well as advice on how to juggle kids and a demanding job to create a healthy work/life balance.

An accessible guide for empowering women to advance in their careers.