If you’re a person of color or a woman and want to move up the corporate ladder, you won’t find strategic career blueprint or helpful tips directly targeted to yon in any textbook. And while an MBA program can teach you about profit add loss, running a business, and acquisition and growth strategies, you won’t learn how to break through the glass ceiling and granite walls. Textbooks and MBA programs are too formal and academic to teach you the nitty-gritty details of how to select a mentor, understand the politics of what makes a corporation tick, overcome the fact that you haven’t been raised in a privileged environment, and master networking effectively, especially outside your own ethnic group.

In my experience as an attorney specializing in employment discrimination cases and as the CEO of one of the country’s leading executive search firms with a detailed practice in diversity recruitment, I’ve seen the obstacles that corporations place in the way of minority advancement. I’ve observed the patterns that minorities fall into that prevent their gaining entrance into the power positions of corporations.