Expect Great Things!
How the Katharine Gibbs School Revolutionized the American Workplace for Women
Contributors
By Vanda Krefft
Also available from:
- On Sale
- Mar 4, 2025
- Page Count
- 320 pages
- Publisher
- Algonquin Books
- ISBN-13
- 9781643753171
It’s a safe bet that most of the secretaries on the TV series Mad Men would have attended the Katharine Gibbs School in New York City. The iconic institution was in its heyday in the 1950 and ’60s synonymous with supplying secretaries—always properly attired in heels, ladylike hats, and white gloves—to male executives. In Expect Great Things! Vanda Krefft turns the notion of a “Gibbs girl” on its head, showing us that while the school was getting women who could type 90 words per minute into the C-suite, its more subversive mission was to get them out of the secretarial pool to assume positions of power on the other side of the desk. And Gibbs graduates did just that, tackling the sexism of the era and paving the way for 21st-century women to succeed in any profession.
Katharine Gibbs was one her own success stories. She started her school when, as a 46-year-old widow, she was left near-broke with two young sons. The school taught typing and stenography but Gibbs also hired accomplished professors from elite colleges to teach academic subjects—it was a well-rounded education that produced early feminists ready to tackle the sexism of their era. “Expect great things!” was her motto and her philosophy. Within a decade she’d opened schools in three elegant locations. With nostalgic period photographs throughout, Expect Great Things! takes us back to Katie Gibbs’s life and tells the stories of the women she influenced. We meet Gibbs graduates who worked for the Walt Disney, Marilyn Monroe, and Robert F. Kennedy. Others forged pathfinding roles as an Emmy-winning television star, a women’s rights advisor to four U.S. presidents, a writer of Wonder Woman comic books, the head of the Women’s Marines, a best-selling young adult author, and a U.S. Ambassador.
For readers of The Barbizon and Come Fly the World, Expect Great Things! reveals the seismic impact the Katharine Gibbs school had on the American workplace—and on women’s opportunities today.
Genre:
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“Readers can indeed expect great things from Vanda Krefft’s engaging new book. Deeply researched with vivid historical details, the book both inspires and entertains. This cinematic portrait of the Gibbs women is Mad Men in reverse—sure to be picked up for its own television series!”Heath Hardage Lee, author of The League of Wives and The Mysterious Mrs. Nixon
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"The Katharine Gibbs School trained tens of thousands of women—white gloves and all—to battle sexism and succeed in business, government, entertainment, politics, and more. The struggle for workplace equality continues."Ellen Cassedy, author of Working 9 to 5: A Women’s Movement, a Labor Union, and the Iconic Movie
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Price
$29.00Price
$38.00 CADFormat
Format:
- Hardcover $29.00 $38.00 CAD
- ebook $13.99 $17.99 CAD
- Audiobook Download (Unabridged) $27.99
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