GIVING WOMEN WINGS

When Brooke Skinner Ricketts was growing up in Kentucky, her parents told her she could be anything she wanted to be. She wanted to be a bird. Although Ricketts might not technically have wings, she’s definitely soaring—and as President of Beyond Barriers, she is helping other women to do the same.

In 2020, together with her wife, Laura Ricketts, and friends Nikki Barua and Monica Marquez, Ricketts co-founded Beyond Barriers, a career accelerator that helps women-identified professionals and the companies they work for go further faster. “Women are the largest group of underleveraged employees worldwide. Most companies are leaving profit and performance on the table because they don’t know how to enable and empower their people. Many companies struggle to find great talent at the top, but so few are investing in women when the data show we lose them— mid-career,” says Ricketts.

“We are four queer women who have been very successful climbing a broken corporate ladder—we saw the opportunity to enable greater results by empowering professional women with the strategies, tools, and community they need to succeed,” observes Ricketts.

Ricketts’ other childhood dream was to be Shawon Dunston, shortstop for the Chicago Cubs. “I shared that with Laura when we met, and she didn’t believe me,” she laughs. Ricketts actually played Little League baseball with boys “until it got awkward.” She also played softball and field hockey. Now, she runs marathons, nine so far, and is on the board of Cubs Charities, which has developed nationally recognized sports-based development programs to serve Chicago’s youth.

Ricketts is also a mom, sits on three corporate boards, and has held executive positions at Twitter, Digitas, and Cars.com, where she started as Chief Marketing Officer and was soon promoted to Chief Experience Officer. She had a CEO role in her sights but the pandemic prompted her to shift gears.

“I always thought my career goal was to be CEO of a publicly traded company,” she says. “And then I did some soul-searching and realized that, after years of driving growth for other companies, it was time for me to build something of my own. With Beyond Barriers, I saw the opportunity to scale my impact and create the change I want to see in the world.”

Beyond Barriers was born from a Zoom wine date in late 2020, during which the four women realized they shared a commitment to helping others and to expanding economic opportunity for women. “Results are more powerful when everyone is empowered,” Ricketts explains. “If only 50 percent of your employees are fully empowered, are you really at peak performance? If your leadership team all comes from the same background or has the same experience, can you really expect breakthrough growth?”

The group got together in person to imagine the platform that would accelerate the success of professional women and the companies they work for. These early meetings led to the development of Beyond Barriers’ data-driven methodology that is designed to disrupt the barriers limiting women’s advancement in the workplace.

Ricketts says each of the four founders brings a different piece of the puzzle and the result has been “magical.” She is focused on marketing, product development, growth strategy, and operations. “It’s such a privilege because we get to help companies unlock improved results, and we get to witness the personal and professional transformation of our members. Every day is a gift.”

The Beyond Barriers platform functions “like a fitness platform for your career,” Ricketts explains. “Not unlike physical fitness, many women experience a professional plateau mid-career. We provide proven success strategies and data-driven diagnostics for sustained success. Rather than a point-in-time course, it’s an ongoing investment that nets personal and professional dividends in the form of career momentum.”

Ricketts’ own career began in 1999 when she was only 19 years old. She graduated from high school early and then graduated in just three years from Bard College at Simon’s Rock, a school created for students like Ricketts who were ready for more, earlier than most.

Some might describe her as fearless; Ricketts calls it empowered naivete. “I didn’t know what I didn’t know, so I assumed everybody should listen to me.” And they usually did. She rose quickly in corporate ranks with, “the assumption that I could handle whatever came my way.”

On the Beyond Barriers website, you’ll see each founder associated with a moniker. Ricketts is the “The Power Generator,” and that is more than a nickname. “Part of our program is to help women position themselves for success,” Ricketts explains. “When you lead with the value you bring, people remember that. It’s so much more impactful than describing the role that you’ve been assigned at work.” Every Beyond Barriers member has a moniker and the community is encouraged to introduce themselves with it. Ricketts feels her moniker represents her two-pronged superpower: “helping people discover their own power and synthesizing solutions to complex problems in a way that nurtures potential and delivers impact.”

With Beyond Barriers, Ricketts is unleashing this superpower to lift professional women up and help move them forward to become the best versions of themselves. She truly is giving women wings.

For more information, visit gobeyondbarriers.com.