It also takes a little risk, a lot of networking and the ability to recognize hidden opportunities.Though she's an accomplished pianist, exceptionally brilliant and remarkably poised, Condoleezza Rice is notable to many because she's the most powerful African-American woman in the country and the first black woman to hold the office of secretary of state. But the two qualities most often used to define her—her race and gender—are of far more interest to others than they are to her. Though Secretary Rice grew up in segregated Birmingham, AL, her parents taught her to focus less on the limitations of Jim Crow and more on what she could accomplish through hard work. So this little black girl who wasn't allowed to drink from "White Only" public water fountains, and who lost a friend in the infamous Sixteenth Street Baptist Church bombing, was raised believing in the American Dream. "My parents taught me that you have control of your life, no matter what [others] try to do to you," she says. "And I had a support structure, teachers, community, where they really had all of us convinced that we might not be able to go to Woolworth for a hamburger, but we could be president of the United States if we wanted to."

It seems like a simple enough formula: Dream big, work hard, go far. But the doors of opportunity aren't flung open for everyone, despite their accomplishments. In fact, many women of color, find that those doors are habitually closed to them. And those who do manage to set off on the path to power may discover that it's littered with potholes. Women of color are often at a disadvantage, because they're less likely than their white male counterparts to come from families with money and connections. Yet there are many powerful multicultural women in this country: Indra Nooyi, CEO of PepsiCo; Nina Tassler, president of CBS Entertainment; Andrea Jung, chairman and CEO of Avon; and talk-show host Oprah Winfrey, to name a few.

The secret lies in acknowledging the issues without dwelling on them, experts say. Yes, racism and sexism exist, but they shouldn't prevent you from pursuing your goals, explains Maria Owens, a vice president at the Cohen Group, a Washington, DC-based consulting firm, and a retired U.S. Air Force general. "I find there's a lot of focus on being a minority as opposed to getting your fingernails dirty and doing the work," she says. "My mother is Mexican and had to scrub toilets, shine shoes and clean houses to get an education, but her lesson was not that I was a poor little Mexican. It was to stay focused, keep your nose to the grindstone and go for it."But are hard work and determination enough? While multicultural women now comprise 15.5 percent of staffers at companies with 100 or more employees in America's private-sector workforce—a major increase from a decade ago—they're still underrepresented in senior management positions and on company boards, according to the latest Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) data. "The biggest barrier blocking women of color from reaching the highest levels of corporate management is the continued existence of corporate cultures that aren't always inclusive and supportive of diversity," points out EEOC Chair Naomi C. Earp. To explore the barriers facing multicultural women in their careers, Working Mother interviewed top corporate and government officials. They shared their strategies for success, advocating the importance of working hard but admitting it doesn't end there. If you sit and wait to be acknowledged for your accomplishments, they say, you might never be. Shattering the glass ceiling means taking deliberate steps—building networks, taking risks and sometimes doing the work that no one else wants to do. The message is clear: Nobody is going to give you power; it's something you have to take. Here, ideas from successful multicultural women on how to harness power.

Create Opportunities
Sociologists define power, in its most basic sense, as the ability to impose one's will on others. Depending on how it's wielded, power can represent authority; at its worst, oppression. Power can also effect change. "It isn't about force or wealth," says Senator Claudia Kauffman, the first Native-American woman to serve in the Washington State Senate. "It's more about influence, and the ability to be both good leaders and good followers; to create something greater than we could have achieved on our own."Everyone has the potential to be powerful. "Leaders aren't necessarily born," says Anthony Mayo, director of the Harvard Business School Leadership Initiative and author of Paths to Power: How Insiders and Outsiders Shaped American Business Leadership. "Leadership is something you cultivate." Powerful people often say they grew up with a feeling of limitless potential. "My parents stressed the importance of finishing what you start," says Valerie Williams, an African American managing partner at Ernst & Young. "They instilled in me determination and a strong work ethic. I wasn't trained to marry well. I was trained to be financially independent." Though many powerful people possess intelligence, confidence and charisma, there's no real blueprint for success. Unfortunately, some people still don't believe that women can lead. "Women are thought of as soft, and the attributes associated with being a powerful leader—brashness and confidence—are considered male," says Audra Bohannon, a vice president at Novations, a human resources consulting and training firm. "There's a conflict for some people when a woman of color is in power, because they have to wrap their minds around the fact that she's in a role not meant for a woman, let alone a woman from a supposedly inferior race."

Take Risks
To circumvent such roadblocks, women of color have created their own opportunities, often by taking unconventional routes. "If you look at women of color or other 'outsiders' who were barred from certain positions in business in the early twentieth century, they sought out opportunities in industries where there was less competition," says Mayo. The same process applies in today's corporate world: Often, women of color find their way to the top by walking the road no one else wants to travel. "My willingness to take risks helped differentiate me," says Valerie. Whenever opportunity knocked, she answered, even if it meant moving halfway across the country. "I left Houston to work in Ernst & Young's New York City office, which was risky because I'd been successful in Houston, but I needed to prove that I could also succeed in New York. That experience helped me make partner."

Maritza Gomez Montiel, a regional managing partner for Deloitte & Touche's Southeast Region, also took a risk early in her career. "I was a senior manager in our South Florida office, and our business was shrinking," she says. "In our industry, going after government business isn't thought of as sexy. But I went after it and built a very successful government practice. I converted it into a major market at a time when the firm needed it most."

Keep Networking
Maritza was promoted, and as the third woman and  first Latina hired at her office, she was highly visible. However, her hard work was often overlooked: "The road to partner was really difficult. But I was blessed to have a mentor who inspired me to be tenacious and told me to hang in there whenever I was overwhelmed and thought the challenges were too big." According to Mayo, of the four factors essential in gaining power—credentials, experience, perspective and a professional network—that last one, building a network and finding mentors, is key. It's often the only way that people from disadvantaged backgrounds gain access to power. "This whole rags-to-riches story in America is really only true as long as you can make connections or have a benefactor," he says. June Yee Felix has worked hard throughout her career to make such connections. She started off as a chemical engineer at Procter & Gamble and reinvented herself several times along the way to her current position as general manager of IBM's multibillion-dollar global banking division. Her Chinese parents had taught her to believe the Confucian wisdom that the poorest person from the tiniest village could become the most powerful, as long as he or she was able to pass the right tests. "I was raised just like any other Asian-American girl, believing that all I had to do was work hard," says June. "But I realized from watching my father, a brilliant engineer whose work was never really acknowledged, that it would not be that easy." She soon recognized that to move up the ladder, she would need to build relationships. And so she did. Thanks to her connections, June was able to transition from P&G's engineering division into brand management—a division that accepted few people who didn't have a Harvard MBA—when her boss in engineering put her name forward. She later left that firm and ultimately landed a managing consulting position at Booz Allen Hamilton, a job she heard about through someone she'd known at P&G. At IBM, her first position saw her working for one of her former colleagues from Booz Allen Hamilton.Mentors can help not just by opening doors but also by nudging you through them. "Early in my career, I had a mentor who always placed me in situations where I had to speak in public or testify before congressional committees," says Senator Kauffman. "Knowing yourself and trusting yourself are important steps, but you have to push yourself, or sometimes have others push you, outside your comfort zone into leadership roles."

Influence Others
Finding the right mentor and building a strong professional network requires a delicate combination of hard work and people skills. The same goes for forging relationships of any kind in the business world, especially once you're in a position of power and need to persuade your team members to work together to achieve a common goal. "In your twenties and early thirties, you get promoted because you're just really smart and work hard," says June, "but after that, you need to develop the skills that allow you to figure out how to influence people and navigate certain circumstances."June, who is petite, realized that she would need to become a skilled orator to make her voice heard. "Communication skills are fundamental. Public speaking is critical. Being able to debate respectfully is key in the business arena," she says. "Asian women are often stereotyped as being meek, so my strategy is to establish my position early in meetings and always have something intelligent and relevant to say." June has also worked internationally with men who, because of their culture, are uncomfortable collaborating with female team leaders. So she adapts. "It's important to make people like that feel at ease," she explains. "In those cases, I'm maybe not as strident or up-front. I still make my points, but in a less aggressive way."Despite popular beliefs, women may actually be better equipped than men to take on leadership roles. According to a 2005 study by Caliper, a management consulting firm, female leaders tend to be more assertive and persuasive, are more interested in taking risks and feel more of a need to accomplish specific goals than their male counterparts do. "You don't need to mimic powerful men to be a powerful woman," says Senator Kauffman. "By speaking from the heart and being a witness to truth, you will be powerful." Of course, even when women are at their most empowered, their confidence and intrepidness can be perceived in a negative light. "I've been criticized at points in my career for being too aggressive—ironically, by men who were extremely aggressive," says Melissa James, a managing director at a top investment bank. Rather than react negatively to the criticism, Melissa, who is African American, tried to view herself as her critics saw her. In the end, she decided to moderate her behavior and become more diplomatic. It wasn't so much about changing her personality to match her colleagues' perception of how she should behave as it was about practicing strong leadership skills. "Good leaders tend to have the ability to read a situation and find the right mechanism to solve the problem," says Mayo. By assuaging her colleagues, Melissa made them feel more comfortable—and that made them easier for her to work with. "The most successful people I know have the ability to temper their most extreme qualities—and we all have them," she acknowledges. "Part of achieving success is being able to work around your personal weaknesses."

Find Lots of Support
Some of the most powerful women in our society are childless, which sends a subtle signal to others in the business world that having children can derail a woman's ascent to power. One challenge is that high-power positions often involve long hours and lots of travel, making it difficult to balance work and family life. "I think the issue for women is that they struggle to find support systems," says June. "I waited until I could afford a lot of help before I had my son. I have live-in help and a husband who supports my career—that's how men do it, they delegate a lot to someone else."Like June, Melissa had already risen through the ranks at work before she gave birth to her first child. Nevertheless, she still advises her younger colleagues to have children when it works best for them personally, rather than obsessing about the effect that having children will have on them professionally. Now a mother of three, Melissa says that while balancing work and motherhood is always a challenge, it has given her perspective and actually helps her to do her job better than she did before. "In this industry, people get a bad reputation for being very self-absorbed and arrogant. Having children makes you more human and more vulnerable, and it has made it easier for me to connect with my clients," she says. And here's an intriguing fact: According to Moe Grzelakowski, author of Mother Leads Best: 50 Women Who Are Changing the Way Organizations Define Leadership, working mothers are actually more likely to rise to the top of their companies than are nonmothers. They have let go of perfection, yet still feel in control, which makes them more effective leaders.Senator Kauffman is herself the mother of three children ranging in age from 14 to 22. From 1984 to 1991, she also took in ten foster children—all of them teenage girls who were initially considered "hard to place." She was able to do all of this with help from a supportive husband and a large extended family, and is proof that women can raise children and rise to positions of power at the same time. "My work has always centered around issues of community, safety, fairness and advocating for families," she says. "My career path has been consistent with my goals as a mother, and motherhood has helped me identify the needs of my constituents."

Pass It On
Most of the women that Grzelakowski interviewed for her book said that when they became moms they were able to take their skill set up a notch. Motherhood, they said, made them more empathetic, and it's that ability—shared not just by moms but by most women—that has made them likely to use their skills to help others as well as themselves. "I think there's a downside if you don't use your power to support a bigger cause, to make a better world, to make a difference," says human resources consultant Bohannon. At IBM, June works with some of the biggest financial institutions around the world to improve their bottom line but is most proud of the impact her work has had on a global basis. "We've put microfinance systems in place in India to grant access to capital to people who might not otherwise have the money they need to reach their full potential," she says. "It's important to me that the work I do effects some sort of change on a global level."Many powerful women of color feel an urge to make the path to power a little easier for the next generation. Like the women interviewed in this article, they know they would not have achieved their goals if not for the trailblazing women who came before them. "Sometimes, sitting in the great domed Senate chamber, I can't believe I'm really there," says Senator Kauffman. "It's a humbling experience to know that a new door has been opened for other Native-American women." While she moves forward, she continues to honor her past: A traditional Native-American honoring ceremony was held for her in the evening after she was sworn in. As Kauffman listened to the sacrifices her foremothers had made so that she could be where she is today, she acknowledged that for women to attain power they need to work together. "We all stand on the shoulders of our ancestors," she says. "We do not achieve anything on our own."

Top 10 Corporate Women of Color
These inspiring multicultural women (alphabetized by company name) prove that it's possible to break through the glass ceiling, no matter what the obstacles.