What I Learned About Owning My Career

And I have in fact heard about countless women who ask for—and get—part-time schedules. Their pay is sliced but they find it impossible to leave at the appointed time. Co-workers make snide comments like, “Oh, must be nice to leave at three every day.” The boss, used to having the person available, still calls mandatory meetings at all hours. Often, the women choose to work late because they feel guilty leaving before everyone else.

I don’t know the particulars of Tina’s situation, but I do know she found a job she expects to truly be part-time. Armed with good experience, she landed on her feet at a well-known firm. Go Tina!

One thing that became clear to me at the conference: there is a real upside to being an older mother (I think the medical term is Advanced Maternal Age). By the time our kids are born, we AMAs have been working long enough to have established success, credibility, and earning power, providing us the clout to negotiate for jobs that are both interesting and compatible with our increasingly complicated lives. The key is figuring out how to cash in that capital for what we really want.

After gulping a little coffee and eating a few bites of a muffin, I joined the crowd of several hundred women moving into the ballroom.

Our pre-event conversation seemed to be echoed during a mid-morning panel called “Own Your Career.” A life coach moderated as five successful women talked about the choices they have made. The moderator asked them to discuss the moments they realized they didn’t own their careers. Laurie Ann Goldman, CEO of Spanx, used to head up worldwide licensing at Coca-Cola. She traveled incessantly and had two young sons. One day, she was at the airport ready to leave for Hong Kong when she realized she had forgotten her passport. Her husband and sons rushed to bring it to her. Stressed that she might miss her flight, her heart raced as she waited for them. She made the flight—then spent the next thirteen hours thinking about her life and remembering the image of her family frantically racing through the airport. She cried. She realized her super-mom-I-can-do-it-no-matter-what mindset was ridiculous.

“I was so busy trying to make it all work, I never saw the big picture,” she told the crowd. Goldman hardly gave up her career; she just gave up a job that was making her crazy.

Carolyn Menzies, a senior manager from KPMG, said she worked insanely hard in her twenties, and then hit a wall.