Eleven Women. One Billboard. A Movement Born in Times Square.
How Inspired Tenacity’s Cathy Derkins and Linda Sunshine of Action Takers Publishing brought together a global cohort of women authors and gave them a moment the world could literally see.
There is a moment; fleeting, electric, unmistakable — when a dream stops being a dream and becomes something you can photograph. For eleven extraordinary women who gathered recently in the heart of New York City, that moment arrived in three-second bursts on the most famous stretch of real estate on earth: Times Square.
The retreat was the vision of Cathy Derkins of Inspired Tenacity and Linda Sunshine of Action Takers Publishing — two leaders who understand that authorship is not just about writing a book. It is about stepping fully into your story and letting the world witness it. Together, they orchestrated a gathering that brought eleven women from different corners of the globe together as co-authors of an international bestselling book series centered on one unifying theme: leadership.
The Energy of Eleven Worlds Colliding
When the authors arrived, the air in the room shifted. These were not strangers in the usual sense — they had poured themselves onto the same pages, shared the same creative mission, and were now meeting face to face for the first time in the city that never sleeps. Every handshake carried the weight of a story. Every conversation opened a door to a different life lived, a challenge survived, a lesson hard-won.
Stories flowed across the table — from different continents, different industries, different chapters of life. What each woman wrote about in her book was as unique as her fingerprint, and yet the thread connecting them was undeniable: they had all chosen to be seen. To be honest. To believe that their personal journey held something worth teaching.
The Billboard: Three Seconds of Forever
Now add the spectacle of Times Square to that energy, and you have something truly unforgettable. Cathy and Linda had arranged for each author’s respective book cover to appear on the Times Square billboard — a triumphant visual exclamation point on a journey that began with pen on paper and ended in lights visible to thousands of passersby.
But here is the thing about Times Square: it does not wait for anyone. Each billboard slot was available for just three seconds every hour, rotating in back-to-back sequences of five authors at a time. That meant the photography team had a two-second window to capture each author in front of her book cover before the billboard cycled to the next.
From Pen to Print to Billboard: The Full Circle
For many of the authors, seeing their book cover tower above one of the most iconic intersections in the world was the moment the full arc of their journey finally became real. The idea had started as an intention — perhaps even a whisper — and had grown through late nights of writing, moments of doubt, the courage to share something deeply personal, and the discipline to see it through to publication.
And now, there it was. Forty feet tall. In Times Square.
What Cathy Derkins and Linda Sunshine understood in designing this experience is that visibility matters. Publishing a book is one kind of statement; standing in front of its image on the most watched billboard in the world is another. Both matter. Together, they create something irreversible — a permanent shift in how an author sees herself and how the world sees her brand.
Personal stories, after all, are what make brands unforgettable. A company, a coach, a consultant without a story is just a service. Add the truth of who you are — the hardship, the turning point, the thing you survived and then built something from — and suddenly you are no longer interchangeable. You are a movement.
More Than a Retreat. A Reckoning.
What Cathy and Linda built in Times Square was not simply a photo opportunity or a marketing moment. It was a reckoning with what it means to show up fully — as a woman, as an author, as a leader, and as a human being shaped by every scar and every triumph that came before the book.
Eleven women from all over the world gathered, and for one afternoon on the corner of the world, every one of their stories was in lights. That is not a retreat. That is a declaration.
Check out this blog post on the power of transformational photography
