Build It Boldly

How Daring Business Leaders Can Grow Influence & Create Impact

A book about the experiences of an award-winning business leader and activist, Build It Boldly: How Daring Business Leaders Can Gain Influence and Create Impact, is a memoir of Kimberly McGlonn’s life and her journey to become a recognized brand architect.

The book is the tender tale of a Black American family and its collapse, but beyond that, it is a beautiful invitation to business leaders brave enough to reflect and then to become agents of change. With candor and timeliness, McGlonn calls for bold new practices—approaches that center the best interest of people and the planet.

Rich in insights, Build It Boldly offers hard-earned, honest reflections on the value of relationships, mindsets, storytelling, fundraising, and wellness for the world’s most influential leaders who are disheartened by the clear consequences of business as usual.

Inspiring and full of generous wisdom, Build It Boldly: How Daring Business Leaders Can Gain Influence and Create Impact is the captivating story of a visionary leader’s journey to shape the world’s most savvy business leaders and to redefine our collective expectations.

Chapter One

Where We Start the Story Matters

“I’m sure I didn’t reflect on it in this way at the time, but living this duality of bouncing in between identities didn’t mean behaving differently for me. Throughout my life, I continue to be known by many names. It never created identity confusion for me. If anything, there’s a richness and complexity about being known in different ways by very different people that just proves how complicated life is. I was a girl who became a woman at ease with being a multi-hyphenate, with being many things at once.”

  • "It was a super read for me. This is my first time teaching social entrepreneurship and I had some hesitations about the idea of entrepreneurship as an unrealistic option for students. Kimberly's book helped me understand the promise of social enterprise and the value of bold thinking."

    Todd Schifeling | Professor, Temple University

  • “From a teacher who never stops learning, Dr. McGlonn tells her story the way she lives – with boldness and success. Sharing her approach, experience, and advice she leaves readers not only a strong tool but a motivating one.”

    Ellen Yin | JBF Outstanding Restauranter 23'

Chapter 5

Becoming an Entrepreneur: Lessons Learned

“Innovative disruption theory gave me a framework for understanding things business leaders need to consider:

● Disruption is a process.

● Disrupters offer something unique.

● Disrupters define success differently ... and not all efforts at disruption are met with success.

● Disruption requires strategic partnerships.

● Disruption requires struggle.

● Disruption requires artful iteration”

About the Author

Dr. Kimberly McGlonn’s life is a story of two childhoods and two Americas. Born on the North Side of Milwaukee, a city Dr. Martin Luther King once called the “Selma of the North,” she was afforded all the comforts of middle-class life.

However, when McGlonn was twelve, all that changed. What came next taught her about the consequences and shame of poverty, the pathways that can lead to incarceration, and the obstacles poor women must navigate. These lessons shape her views on not just the global economy, but the way forward for the common good in America.

Here, she calls on the world’s 524 million entrepreneurs to embrace a new kind of activism and legacy-building, one that puts people and the planet in the balance of the pursuit of profit, challenges racism and protects us from the worst of the climate catastrophe. She offers sage wisdom on what daring leadership requires and how we can use business design to create powerful impacts.