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The Publishing Industry Has a Strategy Problem. DeVasha Lloyd Is Solving It.

Women's Journal Staff on June 19, 2026

By: Jessica Smith

Every year, millions of books enter a marketplace that is simultaneously more accessible and more competitive than at any point in publishing history. The barriers to publication have never been lower. The barriers to visibility have never been higher. And the gap between those two realities is where most authors quietly lose.

DeVasha Lloyd has been watching that gap widen for two decades, and she has spent the last several years building a company designed to close it.

Why Most Books Fail to Find Their Audience

The problem isn’t writing. It isn’t even quality. The publishing industry’s most persistent challenge is strategic, and it begins with a fundamental misunderstanding of what a book is for.

Most authors, particularly first-time authors, think about publication as a destination. They work toward it, arrive at it, and then wait for something to happen. What they discover, often too late, is that the book’s release is not the moment the work pays off. It is the moment the real work begins.

DeVasha has watched this pattern repeat itself throughout her career at Forbes Books, WebMD, Everyday Health, and across the hundreds of conversations she has had with authors, executives, and thought leaders at every level of the industry. The books that struggle aren’t usually the weakest ones. They are often the ones that simply had no strategy for what came after the launch.

That observation is the founding principle of Elevation Publishing Group.

A Different Kind of Publishing Company

Elevation Publishing Group operates as a hybrid publisher, but the model is less about the label than about the philosophy underneath it. DeVasha built the company around a belief that authors deserve professional quality, full ownership of their work, transparent support, and a genuine strategy for turning their book into something larger than a single title.

The company’s process moves from publishing strategy consultation through manuscript development to professional production and targeted promotion, all within a four to six month window that respects the pace of today’s content environment. Authors can write their own manuscript or collaborate with a ghostwriter. They can publish under their own business imprint. And throughout the process they work with a team that is invested in the outcome, not just the output.

What DeVasha brings to that process is something most publishing companies, regardless of size, cannot replicate. A career’s worth of understanding about how content performs across platforms, how audiences are built, and how the right positioning at the right moment can turn a book into a career-defining asset rather than a one-time project.

The Bigger Picture

DeVasha’s partnership with Forbes Books gives Elevation Publishing Group clients access to one of the most respected publishing imprints in the business world. Her relationships with major health systems, media organizations, and Fortune 500 brands give her an unusually clear view of what decision-makers, patients, and consumers are actually looking for in the content they choose to engage with.

That perspective informs every project she takes on. Not just whether the book is well-written, but whether it is well-timed, well-positioned, and built to travel beyond the people who already know the author’s name.

What the Industry Needs More Of

The most honest thing DeVasha says about publishing is also the most clarifying. The book is not the destination. It is the entry point. The authors who understand that from the beginning are the ones who build real platforms. The ones who don’t are the ones who publish once and wonder why nothing changed.

Her company exists to make sure more authors understand it from the beginning.

In a publishing landscape that produces more content than it can possibly support, the authors who rise are the ones with a strategy behind the story. DeVasha Lloyd has spent twenty years building that strategy for other people’s platforms. Now she’s building it into her own.

Discover more about DeVasha Lloyd and the vision behind her work at Elevation Publishing Group.

How Kristina Rasmussen Built The Heart Company Around Human Emotion

Women's Journal Staff on June 19, 2026

For decades, the fragrance industry has sold a dream.

Luxury campaigns featured glamorous celebrities, exotic destinations, and carefully crafted images designed to communicate status and aspiration. Consumers were taught to shop for perfume by scent family, ingredient lists, and designer labels.

But according to entrepreneur Kristina Rasmussen, that approach misses the most important part of why people actually buy fragrance.

“They buy it because of how they want to feel.”

That simple belief became the foundation of The Heart Company, a fragrance brand Rasmussen created during the uncertainty of the COVID-19 pandemic. While much of the beauty industry focused on appearance, she became fascinated by a different idea: could fragrance play a role in emotional wellbeing?

The result was a company built around emotions rather than trends.

Instead of launching perfumes centered on luxury lifestyles or fashion statements, Rasmussen introduced fragrances with names like Love in a Bottle, Kindness in a Bottle, Happiness in a Bottle, Good Vibes in a Bottle, and Positivity in a Bottle. Each scent was designed to represent an emotional state rather than a target demographic.

Building a Brand Around How Women Want to Feel

Rasmussen believes modern consumers, particularly women, are changing the way they engage with beauty products.

Today’s purchasing decisions are often influenced by wellness, mindfulness, self-care rituals, and emotional connection. Consumers increasingly seek products that contribute to how they feel throughout the day, not simply how they look.

Fragrance occupies a unique place in that conversation because scent is closely connected to memory and emotion.

A familiar fragrance can instantly transport someone to a meaningful moment, boost confidence before an important meeting, or provide comfort during stressful times. In Rasmussen’s view, these emotional experiences are far more important than technical descriptions of fragrance notes.

That philosophy has helped The Heart Company establish a distinct identity in a crowded beauty market.

Photo Courtesy: Kristina Rasmussen

Creating a Beauty Brand for the Digital Generation

Like many successful female founders, Rasmussen recognized early that consumer behavior was changing rapidly.

Beauty discovery no longer happens primarily in department stores or glossy magazine advertisements. Instead, consumers find products through TikTok, Instagram, YouTube creators, Amazon reviews, online communities, and increasingly, artificial intelligence platforms.

This shift has created opportunities for founder-led brands that can build trust directly with their audiences.

Rather than relying on traditional advertising, The Heart Company has focused on authentic storytelling, user-generated content, customer relationships, and community engagement. Rasmussen believes that transparency and authenticity are becoming more valuable than perfection.

In today’s beauty industry, she argues, consumers trust people more than they trust brands.

The Intersection of Beauty and Artificial Intelligence

One area where Rasmussen’s perspective stands out is her focus on how AI is reshaping commerce.

As more consumers use platforms such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and AI-powered search tools to discover products, she believes beauty brands must learn how to communicate clearly to both people and machines.

In her view, AI optimization is becoming as important as traditional search engine optimization.

Consumers increasingly ask conversational questions such as “What is the best vegan perfume?” or “What fragrance makes a meaningful gift?” The brands that provide clear answers and strong emotional positioning are more likely to be discovered in this new environment.

Why Human Connection Still Matters

Despite embracing technology, Rasmussen remains convinced that the future belongs to brands that preserve their humanity.

As artificial intelligence becomes more powerful, qualities such as empathy, kindness, creativity, and emotional connection may become even more valuable. This belief sits at the heart of everything The Heart Company represents.

All of the brand’s fragrances are certified by The Vegan Society and created by master perfumers at Givaudan, reflecting Rasmussen’s commitment to combining ethics, quality, and emotional relevance.

Today, the company operates in both Germany and the United States, with ambitions for broader international expansion. Yet regardless of geography, Rasmussen believes the brand’s core message remains universal.

Love is understood everywhere.

Kindness is understood everywhere.

Happiness is understood everywhere.

And in an increasingly digital world, those emotions may become one of the most valuable assets a brand can offer.

As Rasmussen often says, “As technology becomes smarter, emotional brands become more valuable.”

Learn more about The Heart Company at https://www.theheartcompany.co and https://linktr.ee/theheartcompany.

How Lana Johnston is Reshaping the Way Organizations Experience People Strategy

Women's Journal Staff on June 19, 2026

By: Aman Jalan

Lana Johnston is not your typical HR consultant. She does not arrive with a templated framework, a generic culture audit, or a one-size-fits-all program. She arrives with questions.

As the founder and CEO of Taking It Forward (TIF), a Brisbane-based people-led transformation advisory, Lana has spent more than 25 years in organizations, and a significant part of that time watching the same gap appear, again and again. The gap between what a business says about its people and what its people actually experience.

Closing that gap is the work she has built her business around.

A Career Forged in Real Accountability

Lana’s professional journey did not begin in a consulting room. It began on the floor of a bank branch, where she became one of the youngest female Business Banking Managers at NAB, leading a large, geographically dispersed team with up to 29 direct reports across mixed accountabilities.

That early experience was formative. She was not just learning about people management. She was doing it, in real time, with real consequences. She was topping results while managing the complexity that comes with leading people across different locations, different roles, and different pressures.

She carried that grounded, delivery-focused mindset through more than 15 years of executive roles across industries as varied as the arts, financial services, and major corporate brands.

Board and committee positions were a way to foster her deep commitment to community, shaped in part by her upbringing, by a father who coached, mentored, and served on committees, and by a childhood that instilled in her a belief that showing up for others is not optional. It is foundational.

The Five Qualities That Separate Good Leaders from Lasting Ones

Reflecting on her executive career, Lana identifies five qualities she has seen again and again in leaders who perform and also leave something behind worth keeping.

  • Curiosity: The best leaders ask questions and genuinely listen. They seek to understand before they act, and the decisions they make are better for it.
  • Courage: Leadership requires making difficult calls, clearly and with conviction, even when those calls are uncomfortable.
  • Self-awareness: Understanding your own strengths and blind spots is what allows you to build teams that complement rather than replicate you.
  • Adaptability: The business environment does not wait. Leaders who thrive are the ones who can read a shift and respond with intent, not panic.
  • Accountability: Owning what goes wrong and genuinely celebrating what goes right builds the kind of trust that makes teams want to follow.

At the center of all of it, she says, is something simpler than any framework: a genuine care for the people in the room.

“When people feel that you actually care, they do not just do their jobs. They bring themselves to their jobs. And that changes everything.”

The Gap That Would Not Close

Taking It Forward was not born from theory. It was born from a pattern Lana could no longer ignore.

After years of watching organizations invest in sophisticated HR systems, carefully worded values statements, and well-intentioned initiatives, and still struggle with the same challenges, she started asking a different question.

Not: what are we doing?

But: what are people actually experiencing?

The clearest moment came during a major transformation project. The technical components were in place. The process was sound. But the outcomes only shifted when the team stopped focusing on the structure and started focusing on the people inside it, on their concerns, their uncertainty, and the stories they were telling themselves about what the change meant for them. That became the foundation of TIF.

What Taking It Forward Actually Does

TIF operates across two core areas: Organizational Design and People Practices.

On the organizational design side, TIF works alongside businesses managing significant structural change, including transformations, restructures, mergers, demergers, and acquisitions. The work is strategic. It is not about drawing a new org chart. It is about understanding what the organization needs its people to do and designing the conditions that make that possible.

On the people practices side, TIF provides high-value HR project work that organizations either lack the internal capacity or the specific capability to deliver themselves. This includes people planning, strategic workforce planning, capability frameworks, and people-centered program design.

TIF also offers leadership coaching for individuals, teams, and boards working through complexity or transition.

What runs through all of it is a consistent starting point: listen first, build what is needed.

“We do not work from a template. We listen first, and we build what’s needed.”

That positioning is deliberate. TIF is not designed to replace an organization’s HR function. It is designed to complement it. The clients that TIF works with already have people capability internally. What they need is strategic capacity at specific, high-stakes moments.

People Requirements Belong in Strategy From the Start

One of the ideas Lana returns to consistently is this: the people dimension of a business decision can be treated as secondary.

A restructure is designed, then HR is asked to manage the fallout. A new strategy is set, then workforce planning happens afterward. A change program launches, then communication planning begins.

She has watched this cost organizations dearly, in execution quality, in employee experience, and in the time it takes to recover from avoidable missteps.

TIF’s work is built on a different premise: people’s requirements need to be considered at the same time as the business strategy, not after it. When that happens, the outcomes are faster, cleaner, and more likely to hold.

The Messy Middle

There is a phrase Lana uses often when she talks about transitions: the messy middle.

It refers to the period between a decision being made and the change being embedded. It is the space where most transformation efforts quietly fall apart, not because the strategy was wrong, but because the human experience of getting there was underestimated.

People in the messy middle are processing. They are recalibrating. They are deciding, often without being asked, whether they are in or out.

TIF’s work in this space is not about keeping people comfortable. It is about keeping them informed, involved, and moving forward with purpose.

That requires leaders who can communicate clearly under pressure, who can hold the line on the direction while acknowledging what people are carrying, and who understand that their own visible steadiness during change is one of the most powerful tools they have.

It is also why Lana is currently developing a dedicated support program for people leaders facing exactly this, a program focused on emotional intelligence, communication, influence, and the practical skills required to sustain transformation outcomes beyond the initial announcement.

Connection with Lana: The Human Dimension

Alongside Taking It Forward, Lana runs a separate initiative called Connection with Lana, a project grounded in a different but deeply related belief: that meaningful connection is something people have to work at, at every stage of life.

Connection with Lana focuses on helping individuals build and maintain genuine relationships with their aging loved ones. Lana has written a book on this topic, not as a professional credential, but as a values statement. A reflection of who she is and what she believes about people, regardless of context.

She noticed that many people who deeply cared for their aging family members had drifted into surface-level contact, visits that felt dutiful rather than meaningful, conversations that stayed safely shallow.

The same skills she brings to organizational work (listening, bridging perspectives, and creating the conditions for honest conversation) apply here too.

It is not a coincidence. For Lana, the through-line between her professional work and Connection with Lana is the same: relationships, done well, require intention.

A Principle That Has Never Left

“People will forget what you said and what you did. But they will never forget how you made them feel.”

Lana returns to this idea across every context, in executive coaching, in restructuring work, in leadership development, and in her connection support when it comes to aging loved ones.

In a corporate environment where metrics, deliverables, and quarterly outcomes dominate the conversation, she holds a steady position: those things matter, and they are not enough on their own.

How people experience leadership, particularly during change, shapes whether they stay, whether they contribute, and whether they carry the organization’s goals as their own.

That is not a soft idea. That is a commercial reality. And it is one that Taking It Forward is built to address.

Moving Forward

Lana Johnston is asking a different question altogether, one that starts not with the structure, but with the people inside it.

Through Taking It Forward and Connection with Lana, she continues to work on the belief that when organizations get serious about the human side of their strategy, the outcomes take care of themselves.

Not because people are the softer priority.

Because they were never the secondary ones.

Connect with Lana: