About Me
Francine Parham
Francine Parham is the founder and CEO of Francine Parham & Co, a company focused on women’s leadership and the advancement of women and women of color in the workplace. She has held the position of global vice president for General Electric and Johnson & Johnson, and she currently serves as a senior fellow for the Human Capital Center at the Conference Board, a global think tank. Parham is a frequent public speaker, and she has been recognized as a women’s leadership and career advancement expert by the Women’s Media Center.
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The key to your career advancement is understanding how power works–who has it, where it hides, and how it’s used. Please Sit Over There teaches Black women the career skills they need to navigate an uneven playing field and achieve long-lasting professional success.
Black women continuously navigate systems that were never intended for them while playing by a set of rules they never agreed to or were ever trained for.
In this book, Francine Parham shares her knowledge as a Black woman and a former global executive of two major corporations on how to move up in the workplace while maintaining a sense of sanity. The key skill–one that Black women are rarely taught–is understanding the power dynamics within your organization and learning how to “shift the power” to your advantage. Parham shows how to use your voice, strategically build the right relationships, and support others once you have achieved a powerful position–tools any woman can use to increase her power and ensure a successful, fulfilling career.
Parham says Black women are already empowered; there is no shortage of qualified professional Black women in the talent pipeline. But it does not feel empowering when organizations force Black women to work every day to overcome biases, discriminatory institutional practices, and unwritten rules of power at play that hinder their career development and professional advancement.
Please Sit Over There honors the painstaking work being undertaken to deconstruct broken institutions and demonstrates how Black women can achieve their goals while those institutions still exist—effectively opening doors for all women of color.
“Black women can’t afford to wait around for broken systems to be fixed. Francine Parham knows what it takes to gain influence and fight for inclusion in an unfair world, and she shares her extensive experience and practical advice on how to overcome intersectional barriers and biases.” –Adam Grant, New York Times bestselling author of Think Again and host of the TED podcast WorkLife
Adam Grant
“Through personal anecdotes and lived experiences as a Black woman, Francine teaches us the importance of power, how to obtain it, harness it, and use it to your advantage – from the receptionist to the CEO and, most importantly, from within yourself. A must-read for women wanting to advance in their career.” –Lisa Kaplowitz, Executive Director, Rutgers Center for Women in Business
Lisa Kaplowitz
“Parham helps set the table in Please Sit Over There to help remind Black women they belong at every table and, most importantly, how to recognize when it’s time to find a new one.” –Minda Harts, bestselling author of The Memo