Lauren Wesley Wilson’s career playbook for women of color is reaching more hands than ever before. Less than five years after its hardback debut, What Do You Need? How Women of Color Can Take Ownership of Their Careers to Accelerate Their Path to Success is now available in paperback — a milestone that speaks both to the book’s enduring relevance and to the hunger that exists among women who are determined to take control of their professional lives.
The timing of this release is striking. The book is hitting shelves in a climate that closely mirrors the one Wilson was navigating when she first began writing it — a moment when Black women, in particular, are facing renewed and serious headwinds in the workplace. For Wilson, the paperback edition is not just a publishing achievement. It is a timely intervention.
What a Paperback Release Really Means for an Author
Not every book earns a paperback edition, and Wilson is clear-eyed about what this milestone represents. “It’s an honor that a paperback version gets to be released,” she told Black Enterprise. “[This] means that you sold a significant number of hard copies … then the publisher comes to you and says, ‘We can make your book available to a wider audience because a paperback is cheaper than a hard copy.'”
That distinction matters. A paperback release is not simply a formatting change — it is a signal from the publishing industry that a book has proven its staying power and that demand for it justifies broader distribution. For a career guide aimed at women of color navigating often unwelcoming professional environments, that kind of reach is significant. Wilson’s book is not a niche title for a niche audience — it is a practical, principled guide that has clearly resonated far beyond its initial readership.
Black Women’s Unemployment Is Rising Again — and the Book Arrives at the Right Time
The paperback release comes at an eerily appropriate moment. When Wilson first began writing the book in 2020, Black women were facing some of the most severe unemployment rates in recent history. At the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic in May 2020, the unemployment rate for Black women hit 16.6% and remained in double digits for six months, according to data from the National Women’s Law Center.
Now, those numbers are climbing again. Black women started 2025 with an unemployment rate of 5.4%, and ended the year at 7.3% — the highest rate in four years, according to The 19th. Economist William Michael Cunningham of Creative Investment Research did not mince words about the cause. “The unusual nature of this increase in Black women’s unemployment is a testament to and a direct result of the anti-DEI and anti-Black focus of the new administration’s policies,” he told Black Enterprise. “This is demonstrably damaging to the Black community, something we have not seen before.” Against that backdrop, a book that equips Black women with tools to take ownership of their careers feels less like optional reading and more like essential preparation.
Wilson’s Own Story Is the Foundation the Book Was Built On
What makes What Do You Need? stand apart from many career guides is that it was not written from a place of theoretical expertise — it was written from lived experience. Before Wilson became the founder and CEO of ColorComm, she found herself unemployed during a recession, living in the DMV area and too embarrassed to tell her family she had been laid off. Rather than staying home, she made the hour-long commute from Maryland to Washington, D.C. every day as if she were going to work, and spent eight hours a day applying for jobs from the local library. It took her two months to find another position.
That experience did not just shape her resilience — it taught her a lesson she now passes on to others about managing your public narrative during a career setback. “When people get let go, they oftentimes want to do a big LinkedIn announcement and tell everyone,” she said. “You want to be strategic about the people you tell [because] you don’t want to decrease your value in the marketplace.” That kind of practical, unsentimental wisdom is woven throughout the entire book — and it is exactly why readers have continued to return to it years after its initial publication.
What the Book Actually Covers and Why It’s Built to Last
What Do You Need? covers a wide range of career challenges that women, especially women of color, encounter as they try to advance professionally. Wilson addresses topics including how to navigate being let go, building a personal brand, establishing your worth and confidence, combating burnout, and developing the right professional connections — the kind of content that does not expire because the challenges it addresses are perennial.
That is precisely Wilson’s intention. “This book is meant to last you 15 or 20 years because so much of what’s in it is common basic principles towards advancing,” she said. At its heart, the book is about access — specifically, access to the kind of information that has historically been available only to those with the right networks, mentors, or insider connections. “This book is a guiding light for those who feel like they’re not in control of their destiny,” Wilson said. “I want to be able to provide tools, resources, advice, and tips to help you get to the other side.” The paperback edition of What Do You Need? is now available on Amazon.
Wilson to Speak at Black Enterprise’s Women of Power Summit
The paperback release is not the only reason Wilson is in the spotlight right now. She is also a scheduled speaker at Black Enterprise’s 20th Annual Women of Power Summit in Las Vegas at the Bellagio Hotel on Thursday, March 12. Her session, “Strategic Relationships: The Unspoken Key to Success,” runs from 10:30 to 11:30 a.m. and will focus on how to be intentional with professional connections — specifically, how to ensure you have the right people in your corner at the right moments in your career.
The session topic ties directly to one of the book’s core themes: that advancing in any workplace is not purely about performance. It is also about relationships, positioning, and understanding the unwritten rules that govern how opportunity actually flows. For women of color who are navigating environments that were not always designed with them in mind, that kind of strategic knowledge is not a luxury — it is a competitive necessity. Wilson has built her career on sharing it freely, and this summit appearance, combined with the newly accessible paperback, ensures that even more women will have access to it.