Book Review: Business Doing Good: Engaging Women and Elevating Communities by S. Deer & C. Miller

Business Doing Good by Deer and Miller is, at first glance, a business book aiming to guide companies hiring and taking well-deserved chances on women from difficult life circumstances. Upon further examination, it is a book for adult educators as we collectively endeavor to leverage the social justice orientation of our field to support positive life outcomes for all learners. The authors’ purpose is to present the business case and six corresponding strategies for businesses hiring and women “overcomers,” women who have experienced poverty, addiction, incarceration, sex work, or some combination of challenging conditions. They succeed in this purpose and additionally bring light to an important but marginalized group of workers and learners. The book is organized into eight chapters. The first six chapters each outline one of the principles: experiential learning, immediate leadership opportunities, entrepreneurial culture, translation of prior experience to new work contexts, restorative justice, and partnerships. These chapters are bookended by powerful vignettes of women overcomers that introduce and contextualize the content. For example, in Chapter 1, strategies and benefits of applying experiential learning in the workplace are grounded in the story of Cara, a woman overcoming poverty and working her first office job. In that job, she is tasked with “figuring it out” and, as a result, builds a strong sense of her own capabilities and professional potential. The seventh chapter presents the challenges of employing women overcomers and provides explicit and actionable strategies to address those challenges. The final chapter discusses the structures of business operations that would need to be adapted or implemented to incorporate the six principles. The book concludes with an appendix of practical and concrete worksheets and checklists.