Episode 48: Professional women, no kids

September 21, 2014

"We can’t change as much as we’d like to how society looks at us, but we can certainly change how we look at ourselves...we are not second to mother." - Melanie Notkin

"The reason I didn’t have kids is not because I wanted a career instead of children. It’s because I just didn’t want to have children of my own. And I think that’s a valid choice too." - Jennifer Rapach

More and more women are reaching their mid-forties without having children. Sometimes this is by choice, and sometimes it's not. But here's what both sets of women have in common: they're operating in a world where being a mother is still considered the default setting for women. Discussions of women in leadership usually assume every woman has to juggle her work with children. But where does that leave the rest of us? 

In this show we meet three successful women, childless and child-free: Melanie Notkin, founder of Savvy Auntie and author of the book Otherhood, Sara Hinkle, who works in academia and is tired of feeling left out of conversations about work/life balance, and Jennifer Rapach, who has been married for 20 years and has never wanted children. Try explaining that to the rest of the universe. 25 minutes. 

 

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Episode 47: Authenticity vs. conformity

September 8, 2014

"There’s this tension that we all deal with between authenticity and conformity. How much are you willing to change your identity in order to climb the next rung of the ladder?” - Sylvia Hewlett

"I remember saying this to my boss a while ago, I said, 'My personality is what it is. I started two data-driven divisions in the face of people who didn’t get what we did. That’s the kind of personality it takes to do that is somebody like me.'" - Lauren Tucker

'Authenticity' is a buzzword that crops up a lot these days in posts and articles about the workplace. We're all meant to be in an era where we can be ourselves at work. But how realisitic a goal is that for women, really?

In this show I talk to author and speaker Sylvia Ann Hewlett (right), whose most recent book is Executive Presence. Sylvia says women have to find the right balance of being themselves and having the perfect combination of gravitas, communication skills and appearance to be considered for leadership positions. She talks about how to pull that off.  

Lauren Tucker (left) leads her own division at an ad agency, but she says meshing her forthright personality with the workplace is not straightforward, even at her level. And why should she even have to try?

25 minutes.

 

Further reading: Sylvia Ann Hewlett founded the Center for Talent Innovation. She is the author most recently of Executive Presence

Lauren Tucker is SVP at The Martin Agency. Her blog post for the 3 Percent Conference site is Beyond the Cracked Ceiling - into the Hall of Mirrors.

SHOW TRANSCRIPT:

Welcome to The Broad Experience, the show about women, the workplace, and success. I’m Ashley Milne-Tyte.

This time on the show: how authentic can you be at work?

 

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