The Memo

**What Women of Color Need to Know to Secure a Seat at the Table**

By Minda Harts

**Estimated Reading Time:** 45 minutes

This book addresses the career questions that mainstream professional advice has ignored for too long. You will learn how to build networks that actually work for you, navigate office politics without losing yourself, negotiate your worth with confidence, and develop the resilience required to thrive in workplaces that were not designed with you in mind. You will also learn why the relationship between white women and women of color must change for real progress to occur, and what accountability looks like in practice.

This book is for every woman of color who has sat in a meeting and felt invisible. For every Black woman who has been told she is too aggressive when she speaks with conviction. For every Latina who has been mistaken for the assistant when she is the director. For every Asian woman who has been told she is too quiet to lead. For every Indigenous woman who has searched for herself in leadership and found no reflection. It is also for the colleagues, managers, and leaders who claim to want change but have not yet done the work to make it real.

The modern workplace tells women of color a familiar story. Work hard. Keep your head down. Wait your turn. And somehow, despite the data showing you are overlooked, underpaid, and underrepresented, the advice remains the same. Lean in. Speak up. Find a mentor. Negotiate harder. But what happens when you have leaned in so far your face is on the damn table and still no one sees you? Minda Harts wrote The Memo because she lived this question. She sat in rooms where she was the only Black woman. She watched talented colleagues get passed over while less qualified people advanced. She experienced the exhaustion of code-switching, the sting of microaggressions, and the frustration of receiving career advice that simply did not apply to her reality. The problem is not that women of color lack ambition. The problem is not that they lack talent. The problem is that the rules of the game were written by people who never had to consider what it means to navigate the workplace while carrying the weight of systemic racism and gender bias simultaneously. Mainstream career advice assumes a level playing field. It assumes that if you follow the steps, you will get the results. But for women of color, the playing field is tilted in ways that are rarely acknowledged. The advice to network assumes you will be welcomed into rooms where you are the only one who looks like you. The advice to find…