I’m not sure I’m going to state this exactly right,” she said, sitting amidst a sea of convention-related activity and daytime wine drinkers in the Westin hotel lobby in downtown Charlotte. “But I think there are some who believe they are actually protecting women, you know, and that it is better for women to be taken care of. I think women want to take care of themselves, and I think having a voice in how that is done is very important. And frankly, I don’t understand — I mean, I’m obviously a card-carrying Democrat — but I can’t understand why any woman would want to vote for Mitt Romney, except maybe Mrs. Romney.

Paul Ryan mostly got raves for the “optics” of his speech Wednesday night before the Republican National Convention, winning the image battle on the biggest night of his young political life. But by the time the reviews came piling in after midnight, the Republican vice presidential nominee had taken a serious beating for straying repeatedly from the facts.

The GOP’s newly minted Boy Wonder, just 42, bent or ignored the record on issues ranging from Medicare, to President Obama’s debt-reduction commission, to the closing of a GM plant in his Wisconsin hometown, to the beneficiaries of federal stimulus spending — according to a couple of fact-check organizations and news outlets such as the Los Angeles Times and Washington Post.

Business women who operate in feminine ways are often not seen as leaders. They may not “look the part” of a leader so may not get to try out for the role. Or there may be more focus on how they do things than on the results they get. Successful business women, consciously or unconsciously, learn to operate in masculine ways. But, if they operate in too masculine a way, they are disliked. This double bind creates a barrier that keeps many women from the top.

Many social media best practices that were tried and true just 6-12 months ago no longer apply. A good social media manager understands this and evolves with their communities and quickly adapts as the tools themselves change – and it’s clear when you study the nonprofits below that their social media managers not only understand this, but embrace it.

When Craig Kielburger was 12 years old, he saw a newspaper article about a child slave who was about his age. The article inspired him to eventually found Free the Children, an organization that 15 years later has student groups in 3,500 Canadian schools that have helped build 650 schools around the globe.

Kielburger didn’t wake up one day and discover he was an activist. His deep engagement with the cause of children’s rights began with a rather low-commitment action of reading a newspaper article. Many people who argue for the value of social media as a tool for social change feel that the “like” button can function, like the article did for 12-year-old Kielburger, as the first step in a ladder of engagement.

“You’re not going to get everyone who liked your Facebook Page to volunteer their summer building schools and helping out, but it’s still part of that journey,” Kielburger says.