Wantagh native — and MacArthur graduate — Sam DeMase publishes book ‘Power Mood’

After spending a few years in the corporate world, Wantagh native Sam DeMase — using the experiences she had gained — circled back to her childhood love of writing to publish her book “Power Mood.”

DeMase grew up in north Wantagh, and attended Jonas E. Salk Middle School before attending General Douglas MacArthur High School. DeMase had a love of writing in high school, which propelled her to winning the Excellence in English Award in her senior year there.

“I remember in elementary school winning some essay contests,” DeMase recalled. “I was always into writing from elementary school all the way through high school, and then took a little break in college.”

DeMase attended college at New York University, and made her own curriculum through the Gallatin School of Individualized Study. She studied business primarily, with a special emphasis on entrepreneurship, knowing that’s what she wanted to go into.

After graduating, DeMase worked in various corporate capacities.

“I had been working in corporate for 11 plus years,” DeMase said. “Mostly in human resources, recruiting, and leadership development. Mostly people management roles.”

But what led to this book was what originally began as DeMase’s Covid-era passion project. In November 2020, she created the “A Power Mood” brand. As per DeMase’s Instagram handle, “apowermood,” this aims to help people land jobs, make more money, and teach them “gate kept career secrets.” Her social media accounts include videos with work advice that aims to empower women — particularly millennial and Generation Z women.

“Power Mood,” the book, is the written version of these efforts.

“I have read a lot of career inspiration books,” DeMase said. “And I noticed a lot of them were written by men. They’re great, but I saw a lack of books written by and for millennial and Gen Z women in particular.”

DeMase wanted to empower these women with both the tools they need to advocate for themselves in the workplace and the history of why it is harder for women to advance. DeMase points to higher levels of imposter syndrome in women in the workplace as opposed to men, for example, and claims this is due to more men in leadership roles.

“Women don’t see themselves reflected in the board rooms,” DeMase added. “When you don’t see yourself reflected there, it’s harder to imagine yourself there. This happens because men promote men.”

In the book, DeMase points to several statistics to back this up. For example, according to her, women only hold 38 percent of manager-level positions in the corporate world.

“There’s a lot of stats in the book about that,” she said. “It’s adding color and context to why this is, and shining a light on all of it. That’s why I think it’s great for men to read this book as well, people of all genders need to read the book.”

The book was published on April 18, by Quarto Publishing. According to DeMase, the pre-publishing reception was warm — with one reviewer from the Library Journal saying that “DeMase is the career mentor that many corporate women have needed, but never had.”

For DeMase, this is a culmination of all of her interests — she has come through the business world and returned to the kind of nonfiction writing she won awards for at MacArthur High School.

“It feels like a really awesome intersection of my passions,” DeMase said. “I always knew I wanted to write a book or multiple books, nonfiction, for the most part. This is totally like a full circle converging being an entrepreneur and an author.”