Sylvia Ann Hewlett

Sylvia Ann Hewlett is an author, an economist and an entrepreneur. She is CEO of Hewlett Consulting Partners and founder of the Center for Talent Innovation, a think tank where she built a Task Force of 90 global companies focused on Leadership in an Age of Inclusion. Dr. Hewlett’s high-profile books quantify the “value of difference,” and provide vivid word portraits of highly qualified women, people of color and LGBTQ employees attempting to gain traction in their careers. Organizations as different as Cisco (’19), Goldman Sachs (’20), DraftKings (’21), Cartier (’21) and the State Department (’21) find her presentations, which blend hard data with in-depth storytelling and concrete solutions, immensely helpful in their urgent efforts to create more inclusive leadership cultures.

Dr. Hewlett has the distinction of being the most published author ever in the Harvard Business Review (17 articles and counting). She’s also written 16 critically acclaimed books, some of which are bestsellers. They include When the Bough Breaks (winner of the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Book Award); Forget a Mentor, Find a Sponsor (an Audible bestseller); Executive Presence (an Amazon Best Book of the Month); and #MeToo in the Corporate World (an Inc. magazine Best Book of the Year). She has been honored by Google with its Global Diversity Award and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Dr. Hewlett is a celebrated speaker. She has presented at Davos and at the Mobile World Congress, keynoted the FT conference on “Women at the Top,” and spoken at the White House. She is also a Glamour magazine “Woman of the Year,” has been interviewed on 60 Minutes, Panorama, Oprah, Morning Joe and PBS Newshour—and has been lampooned on Saturday Night Live. Her writings have appeared in the New York Times, Financial Times and Vogue. She is an Influencer on LinkedIn.

Dr. Hewlett has taught at Cambridge, Columbia, and Princeton universities. A graduate of Cambridge University, she won a Kennedy Scholarship to Harvard University and earned her Ph.D. in economics at London University. Dr. Hewlett, who grew up in a family of six sisters in a coal mining community in South Wales, has made her home in New York City. She lives on the Upper West Side with her husband and children.

Books

• When the Bough Breaks: The Cost of Neglecting Our Children (1991) ISBN 0-465-09165-2
• Child Neglect in Rich Nations (1993) ISBN 978-9280630268 ebook
• A Lesser Life: The Myth of Women's Liberation in America (1996) ISBN 0-688-04855-2
• The War Against Parents (co-authored with Cornel West) (1998) ISBN 0-395-89169-8
• Creating A Life: What Every Woman Needs to Know About Having a Baby and a Career (2002) ISBN 1-4013-5930-2
• Off-Ramps and On-Ramps: Keeping Talented Women on the Road to Success (2007) ISBN 1-4221-0102-9
• Top Talent: Keeping Performance Up When Business is Down (2009) ISBN 1-4221-4042-3
• Forget a Mentor, Find a Sponsor: The New Way to Fast-Track Your Career (2013) ISBN 1-4221-8716-0
• Executive Presence: The Missing Link Between Merit and Success (2014) ISBN 978-0-06-224689-9
• The Sponsor Effect: How to be a Better Leader by Investing in Others (2019) ISBN 978-1-63369-566-5
• MeToo in the Corporate World: Power, Privilege, and the Path Forward (2020) ISBN 978-0-06-289919-4