Thanks to blogger Jill Miller Zimon for bringing this to our attention at her blog Writes Like She Talks:
Cleveland’s Inside Business magazine has just released its “Power 100,” its annual lists of top area leaders in various categories.
Zimon points out that the magazine’s list of “Top 10 leaders Under 40” contains just a single woman. NorTech president & CEO Rebecca Bagley, who’s 39, is surrounded by nine men, including East Cleveland Mayor Gary Norton, Oliver Institutional Baptist Church pastor Jawanza Coleman, East 4th street developer Ari Maron, Youngstown Congressman Tim Ryan, and Lorain’s new 27-year-old mayor Chase Ritenauer.
While the paucity of women on the other lists could be chalked up to the fact that they’re filled with older, established names — ever heard of Sam Miller and Albert Ratner? — the lack of younger women leaders leaves Cleveland looking a bit musty and old-fashioned and doesn’t bode well for a more diverse future for our sometimes stodgy region.
That sense is reinforced by a glance at the top 25, headed by county executive Ed FitzGerald, whose forward-thinking leadership in the community is undeniable.
But the rest is a ho-hum laundry list of predictable, old-school names, heavy on conservative powerbrokers like Joe Roman, Terrance Egger, Steve LaTourette, Tim Timken, and Umberto Fideli. It’s packed with corporate chiefs, hospital heads, college and university presidents, and foundation leaders, and light on entrepreneurs and the go-getters with 21st-century ideas.
People like Greenhouse Tavern chef Jonathan Sawyer, who appears on the Top 10 Under 40 list, are scarce. And unsurprisingly, only three of the top 25 are women. Taken as a whole, the lists suggest that Northeast Ohio needs to think more broadly about what constitutes leadership worth recognizing and nurturing. — Anastasia Pantsios
This article appears in Jan 4-10, 2012.
Thanks, Anastasia. You did a nice job summing up my thoughts. Erick Trickey has left a comment on my blog post and I’m going to take IB up on its suggestion that I suggest some names. I hope that they review their process for choosing individuals for that list and it might even be a good springboard for them to make sure they link to other features they do on leadership in business & beyond around the year. I am 100% certain that there are more women that belong on that under 40 list but if I am in fact wrong, then we have got to be talking a hell of a lot more about THAT, because then? There is something terribly wrong here. Or somewhere. And we should locate and fix it.
I think she’s H O T .
The biggest problem we have in America is leadership and the perception of what good leaderhip constitutes in our country and the world at large. Because the media dictates our choices so far as who is even in a leadership position and what individual leaders stand for or believe, it is impossible to get an idea of what people are really like. Intrviews are granted or not and the interviews are controlled by a PR group who has an idea of what they want the public to think about someone. This is simple politics and should not be used as a reason to like or dislike , respect or draw any real conclusions about an in-the-spot-light person. Until the public is educated through a media which seeks to find out truth rather than what the PR folks want someone to represent we will continue to see the same sorry names thrown out through the PD and other main stream media rags as to who is who and what they think.
The two biggest power leaders in Columbus for instance are the head man of business which controls the media in central Ohio, and the man who has made the most money in Columbus history. The media man is part of a family who has controlled the media for over one hundred years in the Columbus market, and the richest man made his billions in womens clothing. Both of these men dictate not just to the area but to much of America what is good and right and what looks good and how girls should look and act. VS of the women’s clothing empire in Columbus sends out soft porn to nearly every household in the country with pictures of young women who have great bodies and rarely smile while wearing sexy underwear. The impact of this advertising to the masses in America does not change or provide a practical pupose yet has more power over thinking in America than almost anyone or any business. When combined with the control of the main stream media we see that the two men who have the most power in Columbus deal in little more than illusions of what we are to perceive as truth and ideals and what we should strive to become.
If we in Ohio worship such men and consider them the best of a group because they control media and make money providing meaningless fashion based in illusion, what are the ones further down the list? I have an evaluation process which I use to better understand the worth of a leader and the businesses which they represent and run. The first question is what do they produce and what purpose would this product serve if the world were based in a more survival oriented system focused on peoples and the world’s actual needs. In this model I ask the question what does our seven billion people on this planet need to be more comfortable as they do time on the planet. It is fresh and safe drinking water which I rank as the number one need as one billion people do not have that basic need. In a world where everyone in America can get a glossy magazine featuring young and ‘hot’ women in underwear as well as fresh and safe drinking water, what does our country really stand for and what is the perception which people here and elsewhere should have pertaining to our priorities and leadership perceptions.
Take each leader and evaluate what they really give back and what they take and discuss the purpose of leadership and what it would be in a more real world. And when you are dieing of thirst what would you rather have: Fancy underwear advertisements or clean, fresh, safe water?