If You Want Something Done…Leadership Lessons from Bold Women

Rounding out the 2022 Book Festival of the JCC former United States Ambassador to the United Nations and Governor of South Carolina Nikki Haley will appear on Sunday night, Nov. 13 at the Marcus Jewish Community Center of Atlanta in Dunwoody. Haley’s new book is rather diminutive in size, yet voluminous in messaging as “If You Want Something Done…Leadership Lessons from Bold Women.” The title and inspiration are credited to the “go-getting” British female leader Margaret Thatcher, who said, “If you want something said, ask a man. If you want something done, ask a woman.”

Certainly in line with the contemporary genre of easy-to-break-down chapter books compiling subjects in a theme, Haley’s book features a wide range of women who worked against obstacles and opposition as courageous trail blazers. Some are well known like Amelia Earhart, some less so, like Virginia Walden Ford, education advocate, and civil rights pioneer Claudette Colvin.

Favoritism notwithstanding, late Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir is the subject of Chapter 3 which Haley headed, “Winners do what losers don’t want to,” which reportedly came from a fortune cookie saying. Meir is referred to as a “global icon” with some lesser-known facts: Meir lost five older siblings in their infancy, she survived a pogrom, and, later, she committed to the statement that “no one would save the Jews, if they didn’t do it themselves…staying still can be a death sentence.” Stubborn Golda rebuffed her mother’s plan to marry her off to a man almost twice her age, when she combined this stubbornness with idealism for the Jewish state and took off for Denver.

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Another heroine featured is a Yazidi woman, Nadia Murad, a kidnapped ISIS sex slave. ISIS “took her virginity, her religion, her soul. She was beaten, belittled and left as a shell of human flesh.” Now as a speaker and Nobel Peace Prize winner, she has the ear of world leaders.

Referring to herself as a brown Asian/Indian woman facing many odds, Haley recounts how when President Trump asked her to serve in the UN, she agreed to accept only if the position was cabinet level and that she would be in the room when decisions were made. She said, “I am not going to be a wallflower or a talking head.” Many recall her very staunch support of Israel and criticism of some of very bad actors not being called out for favorable treatment at the UN.

Still front and center in national news, she was a recent guest host on the popular “The Five” panel on Fox News. A week prior, she was the subject of negative comments made about her by Sunny Hostin on ABC’s “The View,” where Hostin jabbed at Haley, who was not present, for using her “Americanized” nickname and husband’s last name to cover up her more complicated Indian birth name.

There were two quick and subsequent responses: a co-panelist on “The View” referred to Hostin’s own passport and birth name as “Asuncion,” then Haley herself on news shows retorting that she has always shown photos of her parents in traditional Indian garb and written volumes about them and her heritage pride in her previous book and press appearances. “No hiding there,” said Haley.

Whether you like her politics or not, Haley is sure to engage the audience in Atlanta and satisfy both sides of the aisle in this new book.

Nikki R. Haley, If You Want Something Done: Leadership Lessons from Bold Women
Sunday. November 13, 2022 at 7:30 PM at the Marcus Jewish Community Center of Atlanta
(In Person)