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Title details for Expect Great Things! by Vanda Krefft - Wait list

Expect Great Things!

How the Katharine Gibbs School Revolutionized the American Workplace for Women

by Vanda Krefft
Eliza Foss
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A fun and fascinating social history of the famed Katharine Gibbs School, which from the 1910s to the 1960s, trained women for executive secretary positions but surreptitiously was instilling the self-confidence and strategic know-how necessary for them to claim equality, power, and authority in the wider world.

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.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    March 4, 2025

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781668646168
      • File size: 310791 KB
      • Duration: 10:47:27

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Booklist

      February 1, 2025
      "Expect Great Things!" was the motto of Katharine Gibbs, founder of the secretarial school bearing her name. As a 48-year-old widow, she founded this school in the 1910s, which turned out well-rounded graduates known as "Gibbs Girls." The women's reputations were second to none, having been schooled in typing and stenography, and also taught academic subjects by elite professors, making them attractive job candidates. Gibbs believed that there was no "right background" or connections needed to make it in the business world. Her goal was to help young ladies find meaningful employment in the arts, government, and other sectors so that they wouldn't have to marry for financial security. In addition, she poised them for success beyond secretarial roles. Krefft delves deeply into the importance of Gibbs and her impact on women in the workplace. The book features impressive stories and photographs of students who worked for Disney, became television stars, found work as writers, and more. Readers interested in women's rights, feminism, and the history of the Barbizon Hotel for Women (where many students resided) will find this piece of history informative and entertaining.

      COPYRIGHT(2025) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

    • Kirkus

      February 15, 2025
      A boon for working women. Author and journalist Krefft draws on school records, personal papers, oral histories, and published material for a lively history of the famed Katharine Gibbs School, which empowered young women to reinvent their role in the working world. Besides perfecting secretarial skills, Gibbs students learned "how to walk, talk, dress, and behave so they belonged among the swells." Katharine Gibbs (1863-1934) was a 40-year-old widow with two young sons when she faced dire financial straits: When her husband died suddenly, without a will, inheritance law left her with nothing. Despairing of finding a job, she decided to become an entrepreneur and open a secretarial school. With a six-week secretarial studies course at Simmons College in Boston as preparation, she founded the Katharine Gibbs School of Secretarial and Executive Training for Educated Women, with branches in Providence, Boston, and New York. Admission standards were high, dress codes unbending (hats, white gloves, trim suits), and the curriculum rigorous--"a combination of skillset boot camp and C-suite finishing school," with visiting instructors from Harvard, Columbia, Brown, MIT, and Wellesley. Krefft creates succinct biographies of many Gibbs students, examining their motivations for enrolling and their subsequent careers. Loretta Swit, for example, went to Gibbs to have a fallback in case her dream of becoming an actress didn't pan out. Among her jobs after graduation was as personal secretary to newspaper columnist Elsa Maxwell. Others found positions in government, the military, and the entertainment industry. One helped create Wonder Woman; some launched careers as authors. By the late 1960s, though, the school seemed out of date, as women's aspirations changed. By 2011, it closed permanently, after more than five decades of offering its students a much-desired path to independence. A fresh contribution to women's history.

      COPYRIGHT(2025) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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