Elaine Meryl Brown & Rhonda Joy McLean: Empowering Black Women Leaders in Corporate America

About this episode

Monica Wisdom interviews Elaine Meryl Brown and Rhonda Joy McLean about their experiences and insights on building lasting careers as Black women leaders in corporate America.

The legends are here. Elaine Meryl Brown and Rhonda Joy McLean have spent decades doing the latter. These are not surface-level careers. These are rooms entered, decisions made, systems navigated, and influence built over time. They are pioneers in their respective fields, women who did not simply rise through the ranks but learned how to move within them with precision, strategy, and staying power. In this conversation, Monica Wisdom sits with Elaine Meryl Brown and Rhonda Joy McLean, co-authors of The Next Little Black Book of Success , to talk about what it really takes to build a career that lasts. Elaine Meryl Brown built her career at the highest levels of media, shaping stories and strategy inside HBO and beyond. Rhonda Joy McLean spent decades inside corporate law at Time Inc., advising global brands and leading at the highest levels of decision-making. Together, along with the late Marsha Haygood, they have spent more than a decade documenting what it actually takes to lead, advance, and sustain success. This is a conversation about experience. The kind you only earn by staying in the room. They speak openly about what it required to build their careers, what they had to…

People in this episode

Host: Monica Wisdom

Guests: Elaine Meryl Brown, Rhonda Joy McLean

Topics covered

• empowerment
• leadership
• career development
• Black women in corporate America
• success strategies

Keywords

• Black women
• leadership
• corporate America
• career success
• empowerment

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: HBO, Time Inc.

Books & works: The Next Little Black Book of Success

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