Diana Allan is proud that her resume includes a decade of business experience, years at home raising her children, and now a full return to workforce.
Allan, who earned an MBA before she had kids, previously worked in banking and served as the vice president and deputy manager of the Los Angeles office of Banque Nationale de Paris.
Like many women, she opted to leave the corporate world to focus on her family. But when the time was right—her youngest child started driving—she eagerly wanted to launch a new full-time career.
Having been out of the full-time workforce for sixteen years, she wasn’t sure where to start. Which skills did she need to update before rejoining the business world? What important developments had she missed in corporate America? How should she position herself to employers? And perhaps most importantly, what did she really want out of this phase of her career?
She found all the answers in the “Back in Business” program at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire. Back in Business is designed to reintegrate professionals into the business world by updating their management skills, boosting their leadership abilities, and arming them with the knowledge they need to get hired by world-class employers.
The program is one of a handful being offered by elite b-schools. The business-minded moms are becoming something of a niche market as this generation of women looks to return to the professional world. Experts say they also represent an important talent pool for employers, especially as the Baby Boomers retire.
Tuck professors understand the obstacles that women (and sometimes men) face when returning to corporate world.
“Despite the eagerness and enthusiasm of the participants to re-enter the corporate workforce, and the willingness of employers who wish to hire them, managing the process of returning after a number years of absence can be challenging for both the candidates and the employers,” says Professor Anant K. Sundaram, faculty director of executive education at Tuck.
Back in Business helps candidates refresh their business skills, effectively position themselves for today’s market, and launch their job hunt with career-planning guidance.
The program is offered in three modules over several months for a total of eleven days. The cost of $6,750 covers everything except travel to and from the program.
So far, seventy-three people have completed the program since it was launched in 2006. Most were women who stepped out of the workforce to raise children, but there were also some men. All had very accomplished backgrounds and most already had MBAs. The average age of the students was forty-seven.
Dartmouth is not the only institution seeking to help professional women turned full-time moms reenter the workforce. Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts offers a weeklong program to help high-powered professionals turned moms ease back into the workforce. Harvard’s “A New Path” features refresher classes in accounting, finance, and strategy, as well provides guidance with career planning. It costs $5,000, but Harvard alumna pay only $3,500.
Pepperdine University in Malibu, California offers a morning MBA program aimed at stay-at-home moms who want to return to the workforce. The twenty-eight-month degree is estimated to cost more than $50,000.
It all sounds pretty steep for someone who has been unemployed and juggling the costs of raising children. When Pepperdine launched its morning MBA program in 2006, the b-school’s dean acknowledged the problem that moms have financing educational programs.
“Among the challenges this group of women face is the lack of corporate tuition reimbursement, which is commonly offered by many companies for their outstanding employees,” said Dean Linda Livingstone in a statement.
Other than traditional financial aid and scholarships, there is another way to address the cost—through corporate sponsorships. Tuck’s program has obtained sponsorships from companies such as Citigroup Inc., Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch & Co. Inc., Metlife Investments Ltd., and The Goldman Sachs Group Inc.—effectively reducing the amount of tuition students have to pay by half.
University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School teamed up with financial services giant UBS to offer a program called “UBS Career Comeback” for women re-entering the workforce. The program, which is highly selective, is offered at no charge to selected applicants through funding from UBS.
The programs attract corporate sponsors because they provide an important pipeline for recruiting talent. This could become increasingly important to corporations as the Baby Boomers retire and companies face a shortage of seasoned talent, say business educators.
And the market is wide open. A study of high-achieving women conducted by the Center for Work-Life Policy and the National Parenting Association in 2001 found that two-thirds of women who had left their careers would like to go back to work.
“A lot of women want to come back to work and the path is not very clear,” Karen Sumberg, Assistant VP of Communications and Projects at the Center for Work-Life Policy in New York City.
Tuck’s Sundaram says their program fills an important need.
“It is well known that many talented women (and some men) with MBAs put their careers on hold for family reasons. Often, they leave behind high-potential jobs,” Sundaram said. “Yet, when they seek to get back in the game, avenues for reentry are limited.”
Sumberg says university programs aimed at professional women re-entering the workforce are a step in the right direction.
“We think these programs are really great because they address some of unforeseen things that companies themselves might not address,” Sumberg says. “They also help women rebuild their network.”
And there’s another extremely important benefit.
“It’s not as much learning what the innovations are in your field, but it’s more about the confidence building that ‘you can do this,’” Sumberg says. “Sometimes after being at home you need to reminded of what you used to do and that you can do it again.”
The results look good so far. About two-thirds of the participants from Tuck’s charter class of 2006 have found positions commensurate with their skills and aspirations, Sundaram said. The 2007 class just graduated in December, so they are in the midst of job hunting.
Allan, who attended the first class of Back in Business in 2006, is thrilled with her new job. She is the interim chief financial officer of Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) in Los Angeles. She also had an opportunity to go back into large banking but says she wanted to gain different experience.
She attributes some of her success to Back in Business and some of it to the way she structured her years away from the professional world. Allan worked part-time for a few years and she also engaged in rewarding volunteer activities, including developing the first long-range financial plan adopted by her children’s private school. This helped ease her transition back into the workforce, she says.
With Allan’s youngest child leaving for college in the fall, the timing couldn’t be better for her to immerse herself in a new career.
“I feel like I am just incredibly lucky and I appreciate the path my life has taken so much,” says Allan, who worked ten years before quitting to stay home with her children. “I was able to opt out and spend time with my children when they were young and now I’ve been able to reenter full time.”