Show Your Worth: 8 Intentional Strategies for Women to Emerge as Leaders at Work

Foreword by Rodney Adkins, Former Senior Vice President at IBM, Chairman at Avnet, and Board Member at PayPal, UPS, and Grainger

Delivering must-have tools to harness the power of intention and strategy to achieve career success—tailor-made for women who are underrepresented in their fields.

Whether you’re just starting out in the working world or a seasoned veteran, Show Your Worth is an incredible resource and a compelling blueprint for women looking to advance their own careers.—Chris Nassetta, CEO, Hilton

If you're a woman, especially a woman of color, you know this already: You face unique challenges and obstacles as you work to scale the corporate ladder. From not seeing other faces in the room that look like you to dealing with the stereotypes and (often unconscious) biases in the workplace, you may know what to do to succeed, but not how to get it done in this environment. Show Your Worth shows you how.

In pages that are both inspirational and practical, Shelmina Babai Abji speaks directly to professional women—especially women of color—about how the power of being intentional and strategic can help transform the headwinds you face into much-needed tailwinds.

Show Your Worth takes you on a deep dive into the 8 Intentional Strategies that will help you achieve success, including:

• Success: Define what success means to you
• Attention: Develop your Personal Success Plan
• Work/Life Balance: Achieve work-life balance in our disrupted world
• Value Creation: Overcome fear, find your voice, and contribute at your maximum capacity
• Growth: Seek relevant and meaningful growth
• Relationships: Connect meaningfully with first-line managers, peers, mentors, and sponsors
• Leadership Branding: Build and preserve your reputation as a leader
• Promotions: Be strategic about earning a promotion

These Intentional Strategies are imperative for women whose confidence can be chipped away daily when they're overlooked because of negative stereotypes and biases due to differences in race, socio-economic, cultural, or academic backgrounds. Through Abji's personal experiences and the inspiring stories of other successful women who have applied these strategies in their own lives, you will come to deeply understand just how important your voice is and know that your unique value makes you a force in any room.

At the peak of her success in corporate America, Shelmina Babai Abji never forgot the impact of how it felt to be "under" when she first started her career in the United States. She felt under-proficient in the language, underprivileged in economic status, and underrepresented as a woman in the tech industry. These "unders" caused her to underestimate her own worth.

In Show Your Worth, Abji reveals how she emerged from under—by intentionally using 8 simple but powerful strategies to propel her journey from being the first person in her family to graduate college to one of the top-ranking woman of color at a global technology company.

Shelmina Babai Abji is a TEDx speaker, board member, former vice president at IBM, and an angel investor. She started her career as a software engineer and then moved into sales and sales leadership leading global teams to deliver over $1B in annual revenues and serving as a key decision-maker in hiring and promoting hundreds of professionals. She received extensive leadership training at IBM, Harvard University, and UCLA.

As a global empowerment speaker, Abji has addressed attendees at companies, conferences, and colleges that include Google, Edward Jones, National Center for Women in Technology, and Black women in STEM., and Harvard.