Vanda is the author of EXPECT GREAT THINGS!, a social history of the famed Katharine Gibbs School and its impact on the American workplace for women. The book tells the lively, unlikely story of Katharine Gibbs herself and celebrates the many pathfinding achievements of her school’s graduates during the early to mid-20th century.

Vanda’s previous book, THE MAN WHO MADE THE MOVIES, is the first in-depth biography of Twentieth Century Fox founder William Fox and reveals Fox’s many pivotal contributions to the American film industry as well as the shocking events that ended his career.

Previously, Vanda wrote about the entertainment industry for leading national magazines and syndicated news services. Her work has appeared in Elle, Redbook, Woman’s Day, Woman’s World and the Los Angeles Times.

She has a B.A. in English and an M.A. in Communication, both from the University of Pennsylvania, and is a member of Phi Beta Kappa.

Books by Vandra Krefft

Expect Great Things!: How the Katharine Gibbs School Revolutionized the American Workplace for Women

by Vandra Krefft - History, Nonfiction

It’s a safe bet that most of the secretaries on the TV series Mad Men would have attended the Katharine Gibbs School in New York City. The iconic institution was in its heyday in the 1950s and '60s synonymous with supplying secretaries to male executives. In EXPECT GREAT THINGS! Vanda Krefft turns the notion of a “Gibbs girl” on its head, showing us that while the school was getting women who could type 90 words per minute into the C-suite, its more subversive mission was to get them out of the secretarial pool to assume positions of power on the other side of the desk. And Gibbs graduates did just that, tackling the sexism of the era and paving the way for 21st-century women to succeed in any profession. With nostalgic period photographs throughout, EXPECT GREAT THINGS! takes us back to Katie Gibbs’s life and tells the stories of the women she influenced.