Gloria Steinem's Top Lesson on Overcoming Fear, Per a 30-Year Collaborator
Take The Lead founder Gloria Feldt reflects on three decades alongside Gloria Steinem and the enduring wisdom she'll carry forward.
Gloria Steinem, the iconic feminist leader and activist whose influence shaped decades of American social progress, leaves behind not just a body of work but a set of principles that those closest to her are now working to preserve and communicate. Among the most committed stewards of that legacy is Gloria Feldt, founder of Take The Lead, a leadership organization dedicated to advancing women in positions of power and influence.
Feldt spent roughly 30 years working alongside Steinem, a partnership that gave her an unusually intimate view of how the activist operated under pressure — including how she managed the fear that inevitably accompanies public life and movement leadership. According to Feldt, Steinem's primary antidote to fear was not the suppression of anxiety, but rather a deliberate, action-oriented response to it — the kind of forward motion that transforms paralysis into purpose.
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That philosophy carries particular resonance at a moment when many Americans, especially women navigating institutional and political headwinds, are searching for frameworks to manage uncertainty. Steinem's approach, as Feldt describes it, was rooted in community and collective action — the idea that fear diminishes when confronted alongside others rather than in isolation. It is a lesson that feels both timeless and urgently contemporary.
For Feldt, preserving that wisdom is a form of institutional memory as much as personal tribute. Organizations like Take The Lead now serve as transmission belts for the practical and philosophical tools that Steinem refined over a lifetime of organizing. The challenge, as Feldt frames it, is translating an individual's hard-won outlook into habits and structures that outlast any single figure.
Steinem's legacy, then, is less a monument than a methodology — one that Feldt and others are actively working to embed in the next generation of leaders. Continue reading at US Top News and Analysis.
