Published in 2018
256 pages
Stacey Yvonne Abrams (born December 9, 1973) is an American politician, lawyer, and author who served in the Georgia House of Representatives from 2006 to 2017, and served as minority leader from 2011 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, she was the party’s nominee in the 2018 Georgia gubernatorial election, but lost to Brian Kemp without conceding the election. Abrams was the first African-American female major-party gubernatorial nominee of the United States. In February 2019, she became the first African-American woman to deliver a response to the State of the Union address.
Abrams, one of six siblings, was born to Robert and Carolyn Abrams in Madison, Wisconsin and raised in Gulfport, Mississippi. The family moved to Atlanta where her parents pursued graduate school and later became Methodist ministers. She attended Avondale High School and was the school’s first African-American valedictorian. While in high school, she was hired as a typist for a congressional campaign and was later hired as a speechwriter at age 17 based on the edits she made while typing.
In 1995, Abrams earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Interdisciplinary Studies (Political Science, Economics and Sociology) from Spelman College, magna cum laude. While in college, Abrams worked in the youth services department in the office of Atlanta mayor Maynard Jackson. She later interned at the Environmental Protection Agency. As a Harry S. Truman Scholar, she studied public policy at the University of Texas at Austin’s LBJ School of Public Affairs and went on to earn her J.D. from Yale Law School.
Abrams worked as a tax attorney at the Sutherland Asbill & Brennan law firm in Atlanta, with a focus on tax-exempt organizations, health care and public finance. She was appointed the Deputy City Attorney for Atlanta at age 29.
Abrams co-founded and served as the senior vice president of NOW Corp. (formerly NOWaccount Network Corporation), a financial services firm. She co-founded Nourish, Inc., a beverage company with a focus on infants and toddlers, and is CEO of Sage Works, a legal consulting firm, that has represented clients including the Atlanta Dream of the WNBA.
Abrams has had an extensive writing career, penning several best-selling novels under the nom de plume of Selina Montgomery.
What is this book about?
Leadership is hard. Convincing others—and yourself—that you are capable of taking charge and achieving more requires insight and courage. Lead from the Outside is the handbook for outsiders, written with an eye toward the challenges that hinder women, people of color, members of the LGBTQ community, and millennials ready to make change. Stacey uses her hard-won insights to break down how ambition, fear, money, and failure function in leadership, and she includes practical exercises to help you realize your own ambition and hone your skills. Lead from the Outside discusses candidly what Stacey has learned over the course of her impressive career in politics, business and the nonprofit world: that differences in race, gender, and class provide vital strength, which we can employ to rise to the top and create real and lasting change.