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Soaring

Eleven Guiding Principles on the Path from Segregation to Success

Catherine M Lewis author Lee E Rhyant author Kathy Schwaig author

Format:Hardback

Publisher:University of Georgia Press

Published:1st Apr '22

Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

Soaring cover

Practical leadership and business lessons from a corporate leader of forty years

A powerful underdog story, Soaring delivers practical leadership advice, business lessons, and tips for success mined from the real-life strategies of Lee E.

A powerful underdog story, Soaring delivers practical leadership advice, business lessons, and tips for success mined from the real-life strategies of Lee E. Rhyant’s forty years as a corporate leader. Born into poverty in the postwar South, Rhyant was the fourth of eight children raised by a family of African American sharecroppers struggling to survive the last decades of segregation. Soaring combines compelling storytelling with practical lessons to demonstrate the transformative power of perseverance.

In the trajectory of his life, Rhyant has achieved many goals considered beyond his reach. Here he shares compelling stories of growing up in the segregated South, working at an early age, graduating from the HBCU Bethune-Cookman University and Indiana University, and ultimately excelling at leadership roles at General Motors, Rolls Royce Aeronautics, and Lockheed Martin Marietta. Rhyant’s life reveals a great deal about the economic, business, and racial climate in the South in the last quarter of the twentieth century and has much to teach students, business leaders, and interested readers about resiliency and determination.

One of the strengths of the South is that we have several generations, both black and white, that through education have moved from poverty to plenty. Former president Jimmy Carter, Carl Ware of Coca Cola, and Lee E. Rhyant are some notable examples. Soaring is more than Lee’s story, it is also about all the things that make good companies work.


You cannot help but be inspired by Lee E. Rhyant's story. His journey from being a sharecropper's son to the C-suite at some of the nation's most respected companies is breathtaking in and of itself. But the eleven guiding principles he shares throughout Soaring will inspire you on your own journey.


Soaring tells Lee E. Rhyant's story with candor and humor, all while showing how one man's path to the highest levels in the aeronautics industry was made possible by determination, hard work, and a little bit of good luck. It’s a great read that will inspire you.


Rhyant and Lewis's Soaring is well structured, providing readers with a useful and insightful account of Rhyant’s leadership ascension in corporate America that is both engaging and inspiring.


This is a fantastic story: motivating, inspiring, and full of leadership constructs with real examples. I read every word twice and was deeply engaged.

ISBN: 9780820361543

Dimensions: unknown

Weight: unknown

208 pages