Member Spotlight: Gail Evans

For a woman whose career has spanned nearly six decades across politics, media and consulting as an executive, author and speaker on women in business, Gail Evans has walked in many shoes. To celebrate the launch of TFR’s first collection of high-performance luxury shoes—and the unstoppable women who wear them—we sat down with the leadership expert to discuss career longevity, navigating transitions, and how to keep putting one foot forward, even when the road ahead is unknown.

Skimming Evans’ resume, it’s clear she’s left her mark over a long career. The trailblazer has contributed to defining cornerstones of American policy and the news cycle we know today. Evans first got her start on Capitol Hill, where she worked as a special advisor to LBJ on equal opportunity and the Civil Rights Act, setting up the president’s committee that eventually became the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in 1965. She was among the first employees when CNN launched in 1980 in Atlanta, where she’s still based. For decades, she’s been a sought-after consultant in politics and women’s leadership. 

Put simply, if anyone could be described as unstoppable, it’s Evans: She has had a pioneering career with such impact, she once tried to retire as an 80th birthday present to herself—and it didn’t stick. 

“That lasted for six weeks,” she says with a laugh. Because of the demand for her leadership and expertise (and her insatiable drive), she quickly boomeranged back into consulting when the first intriguing project came across her desk. 

Even in her 80s, Evans is proving she’s far from finished. She’s still consulting on women-centered projects for clients like Delta Air Lines (on an initiative to get more women into top management positions), the Helen Gurley Brown Foundation, and in politics where she began. 

Embracing Evolutions

Fast forward from her time in the White House, and Evans was writing books and lecturing about women in business. 

“I feel as though my life is circular,” she says. “I took a 30-year detour to have a career to discover all the things that I believed when I was 21 were true. And now I come back to it 50 years later and actually have the empirical evidence that it was true.”

It might feel nice to be right, but Evans would’ve rather been wrong about where women would be today, even if her book “Play Like a Man, Win Like a Woman” is still in print and selling copies 25 years later. 

“I really believed, when I wrote it, that books like that would be irrelevant 25 years later,” she says with a frankness that’s characteristic of her books, lectures (and this interview). “That actually isn't exciting to me because that means 25 years later we're still dealing with issues we dealt with 25 years ago that I wish for my daughters and granddaughters and great-granddaughters would just be gone.”

Reflecting on her journey in male-dominated spaces, Evans has seen some progress but not enough.

“Every place I went, it just seemed like there were 14 men and me in the room,” she says of where she started. “I think that's changed today. It's probably five men and me. But it's still a battle.”

On the evolution of roles for women in her various industries, Evans is blunt, but she also tells a great story, the kind with juicy historical trivia that commands respect for being in the room where it happens. She has been in the game long enough that she was there as an early contributor—but not exactly getting the credit for it. When asked about her role in shaping the landmark policy of the Civil Rights Act, we get to talking about job titles of the time, and Evans spills the tea. 

“I can tell you, back in those days, by and large, a little in the Kennedy administration, and then the Johnson administration, [for] the majority of women, the title was ‘Secretaries’—except that we were researchers,” she recalls. “We were everything. We did everything that the boss needed for the background to make it happen.” 

Story time. Evans has a treasure trove of illuminating anecdotes that, when weaved together, offer a timeline of how far we’ve come, even if we do have further to go. 

“It was a very different kind of world. We had a lot of freedom and a lot of policy got written and researched by young women and probably young men who worked on Capitol Hill and worked in the agencies,” she says of the White House “secretaries” who were actually writing the policy that became equal opportunity law. 

It was on Capitol Hill that Evans found agency and ownership over her career, but the role Evans says she learned the most from was being one of CNN’s early employees. She joined CNN a month after the network was on air, at a time when few believed it would succeed. She quickly learned that there’s nothing you can't do if you're strategic, smart, and willing to work hard.

“Everybody laughed at us and said, ‘You're nobody, you can't do it.’ They called us the Chicken Noodle Network, and every day we came in and said, ‘Okay, we can figure this out.’ And we did.” 

Unlocking Your Inner Power—and Your Best Performance

For Evans, finding your inner power is the driving force behind tuning out the haters and turning a tough transition into a brilliant transformation. Evans’ twofold philosophy to unlock her power—staying present and avoiding the trap of multitasking—has guided her through decades of high-stakes work. 

“When you are multitasking, you are never fully focused,” she says. “If you want to access your real power, you can't be doing 12 things at once.”

Presence, on the other hand, leads to better decision-making and fewer mistakes. Evans says she gets all of her power from focusing on the present moment, a trick that works even when you’re not perfect. 

“Most people live in the past or in the future,” Evans says. “I show up ready to play, focused on what's happening now. And you have a lot more power, knowledge, [and] ability if you're in the present.” 

In addition to the countless pearls of wisdom Evans brings from her experience in live TV and entrepreneurship, Evans embodies the TFR philosophy that a frictionless life leads to peak performance. Whether it’s a crisis strategy, a grounding mindset or a supportive slingback to get you through your week, the tools in your playbook should empower you to thrive under pressure and perform your best. 

“Very successful people in very stressful businesses stay calm and frictionless when things are at their worst,” Evans says. 

When things inevitably go wrong, Evans says inner power is finding the courage to cut your losses, strategize your next steps, and move forward with clarity. For her, inner power isn’t about perfection. It comes from knowing you’re already good enough, equipped to overcome setbacks, adapt and grow without feeling the need to constantly "fix" yourself.

Evans’ parting advice for today’s young professional women: Never settle for less than you can truly achieve.