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Articles by Lynn Wooten
Celebrating Anne Jardim's Birthday and Legacy
I had a wonderful time celebrating Anne Jardim ’13HD on her 90th birthday — and the extraordinary legacy she helped create at Simmons University. Decades ago, Anne and Margaret Hennig were asking questions about women, work, and leadership that much of the business world had barely begun to consider. Their groundbreaking book, The Managerial Woman, examined women’s experiences in the workplace and the barriers they encountered on the path to leadership.
The Circle Continues: Carrying Forward Gloria Steinem’s Legacy
Gloria Steinem spent her life challenging barriers, elevating women’s voices, and expanding what generations believed was possible. Her courage, conviction, and advocacy helped transform the movement for women’s equality and in the process, changed our society in profound and lasting ways. Gloria brought women into spaces that had too often excluded them and challenged assumptions about who gets to speak, who gets heard, and who has the power to create change.
Rethinking the Philanthropic Gap through Dolly’s Legacy
In the days since Dolly Parton's passing, much has been written and said about the extraordinary legacy she leaves behind. She will be remembered for her iconic music, larger-than-life personality, and a legendary career that has influenced generations. What might not be quite as well known is her remarkable philanthropic legacy.
Reflections on Women's Equality Day 2026
More than a century has passed since the ratification of the 19th Amendment, but the question at the heart of Women’s Equality Day remains remarkably relevant today: Who has the opportunity to participate, and who gets a voice in shaping what comes next? Generations of women fought for the right to vote. Their courage and persistence expanded the boundaries of American democracy and opened new possibilities for the generations that followed.
President Wooten’s Summer Reading List
Lynn Perry Wooten President, Simmons University President Wooten shares her summer reading list. Summer offers us a chance to recharge, explore new ideas, and engage with meaningful stories that challenge and inspire us. This year, I am especially excited to share a reading list that celebrates the creativity, insight, and impact of members of the Simmons community and beyond.
Expanding Opportunity Through Higher Education
Watching our graduates cross the stage at Simmons’ 121st Commencement reminded me why higher education matters now more than ever. We were honored to award an honorary degree to Lieutenant Governor Kim Driscoll, whose remarks reflected so much of what makes both Simmons and Massachusetts exceptional.
Women’s History Month: Legacy and Leadership
In 1899, our founder, John Simmons, imagined a radical idea far ahead of its time: a university designed to prepare women for meaningful work, financial independence, and lives of impact. More than 125 years later, that vision remains not only relevant, but essential. Today, Simmons University is one of fewer than 30 remaining women-centered universities in the United States and the only one in the City of Boston. That is not an accident.
Women's Equality Day 2025
Today, on Women’s Equality Day, we honor the generations of women who fought for the right to vote—a milestone in the long struggle for equality that reminds us progress is never guaranteed. As we reflect on this historic achievement, we are called to consider what it takes to advance gender equity in this moment. At the heart of this effort is a modern women-centered education—one that prepares graduates not only to enter the workforce, but to rise, thrive, and lead in it.
Reflecting on Women’s History Month
As Women’s History Month comes to a close, I am reflecting on Simmons’ 125-year history of advancing women and gender equity by educating students to thrive in their professions, communities, and personal lives. We are so proud of the important role Simmons continues to play as the last remaining women-centered undergraduate institution in the City of Boston. This past month I was honored to participate in many powerful events celebrating women and girls in Boston and around the country.
Women’s Equality Day 2024
It is an honor to celebrate Women’s Equality Day, which commemorates the 1920 adoption of the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution that prohibits the states and federal government from denying the right to vote on the basis of sex. On this day, we have the unique opportunity to recognize the many women who have and continue to work toward creating a more equitable world for women and girls in America and across the globe.
The Prepared Leader: The Five Phases of Crisis Management
In The Prepared Leader: Emerge from Any Crisis More Resilient Than Before, two crisis leadership experts — Wharton Dean Erika H. James and Lynn Perry Wooten, president of Simmons University — provide tools and frameworks for addressing and learning from crises. In the following excerpt from their book, James and Wooten identify the five phases of crisis management. Twice a day, the common swift performs something called a vesper flight.
Crisis leadership: Harness the experience of others
LEADING by Erika James and Lynn Perry Wooten How “vicarious learning” can prepare you and your team to weather any crisis. Crises are leadership litmus tests - make-or-break challenges, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, that are often unique and random, appearing out of nowhere with no clear roadmap. Many of those who prevail understand that crises are inevitable and seek to learn the lessons of experience.
Crisis Leadership: Harness the Experience of Others
February 14, 2023 • 6 min read In this Nano Tool for Leaders, Wharton Dean Erika James and Simmons University President Lynn Perry Wooten explain how “vicarious learning” can prepare you and your team to weather any crisis.
The Prepared Leader with Erika James and Lynn Perry Wooten
Schedule Mon Jan 23 2023 at 05:00 pm to 06:00 pm UTC-05:00 Location Rotman School of Management + Livestream | Toronto, ON Erika H. James, Dean, Wharton School and Lynn Perry Wooten, President, Simmons University, discuss their book 'The Prepared Leader'. About this Event Topic: The Prepared Leader: Emerge from Any Crisis More Resilient Than Before (Wharton School Press) By: Erika James and Lynn Perry Wooten Event Co-Presented by: Speaker: Erika H. James, Dean, Wharton School; Former John H.
3 Impactful Practices for Navigating Leadership
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Prepared Leadership as Your Fourth Bottom Line
Crises are never one-off events. They happen again and again, though they always seem to catch us off-guard. They shouldn’t. Knowing that crises are inevitable actually empowers us to prepare for them. And the time to prepare for the next crisis is now—and always. In The Prepared Leader: Emerge from Any Crisis More Resilient Than Before, we argue that as a leader, it falls to you to prepare for the next crisis already facing your organization.
4 common ways leaders fail to learn from a crisis
By Erika H. James and Lynn Perry Wooten 7 minute Read Crises have a habit of creeping up on us. They can take many forms–supply chain issues, inflation, disruptions to the labor force, technology failure, even a global health pandemic–and often feel like they are arriving out of the blue. But crises are inevitable, and they happen over and over again. The good news is that you can prepare for a crisis just as you would for anything else.
In a Crisis, Great Leaders Prioritize Listening
How leaders navigate a crisis — big or small — has an enormous influence over the impact that crisis will have on their organization, not to mention the personal impact it will have on the people and leadership of that organization, in its aftermath. The pandemic — a crisis on a global scale — created a series of smaller crises for organizations worldwide. Some floundered at this immediate disruption. Others emerged more resilient than before.
The Parent Trap: How to Stop Overloading Parents and Fix Our Inequality Crisis
Nate Hilger is a data scientist for the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, former economics professor at Brown University, and a dad. Below, Nate shares 5 key insights from his new book, The Parent Trap: How to Stop Overloading Parents and Fix Our Inequality Crisis. Listen to the audio version—read by Nate himself—in the Next Big Idea App. 1. Parenting involves two very different kinds of jobs. We think parenting involves one job: raising kids.
It seems women have been leading the way during the Great Resignation, perhaps sensing that after the pandemic the old ways—the two-hour commutes, no time for the family, or the gym—were creeping back. Whether the Great Resignation is really a thing or a passing phase, we are undoubtedly living through times of deep uncertainty and economic stress.
Simmons University President: Higher Education in 2022
Lynn Perry Wooten: It is this notion of transformational learning experience. When you come to college, you come as one person (and it could be undergrad or grad) and you should leave someone fundamentally different because of the knowledge you acquire, the people you met, and the experiences that you had. About Simmons University Michael Krigsman: Today, we're talking about the future of higher education. That's Lynn Perry Wooten, President of Simmons University in Boston.
Prepared Leadership as Your Fourth Bottom Line (SSIR)
The Prepared Leader: Emerge from Any Crisis More Resilient Than Before Erika H. James & Lynn Perry Wooten 170 pages, Wharton School Press, 2022 Buy the book » Crises are never one-off events. They happen again and again, though they always seem to catch us off-guard. They shouldn’t. Knowing that crises are inevitable actually empowers us to prepare for them. And the time to prepare for the next crisis is now—and always.
4 New Books to Help You Deepen Connections, Battle Burnout and Embrace Growth
Arrive and Thrive: 7 Impactful Practices for Women Navigating Leadership By Janet Foutty, Lynn Wooten, and Susan Mackenty Brady Women face unique challenges as leaders, with systematic barriers making achieving success more complicated. Arrive and Thrive outlines seven actionable practices that will help women overcome obstacles in business in order to thrive, not just survive, when they get to the top of their professions.
The long-term success of a wider spectrum of students must be a priority for colleges during the pandemic (opinion)
As colleges pivot, delay or reverse plans for fall instruction, we risk losing sight of what is the greatest potential tragedy for higher education: millions of students have had their learning and path to their degrees disrupted, again. Low-income, first-generation and minority students are hit the hardest. And it’s not a one-and-done for the 2020-21 academic year, either.
Colleges need to think beyond this fall - CommonWealth Magazine
IN THE MIDST of all the discussion among colleges and universities about whether to return to campus this fall, who can return, or how to return, I fear we risk losing the big picture: What can colleges do to ensure students stay on track and well prepared for their future? It is critical to stay laser-focused on helping college students achieve their goals in this time of monumental upheaval. Certainly, it is true that the pressures on colleges at this time are real and sobering.
Of Billy Graham, log cabins, cat’s names and stoplights
By Lynn Wooten In a corner of my office, atop a file cabinet, sits a prized memento from a past life. It’s a small double picture frame given to me by friends at The Gazette when I left for new adventures in 1998. On one side is a miniature Gazette front page featuring a relished business scoop I had written about Parkdale Mills. The other side holds a second front page, this one of my profile of the Rev.
Do a Personal Power Audit
How indispensable are you at work? How can you tell? One way you won’t be able to tell is by looking at the organization chart. Companies operate less in vertical silos now and more like a matrix of interconnected groups. The ability to work across those groups defines your value, says Michigan Ross Professor Maxim Sytch.
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