That’s when a friend’s father stepped in. He encouraged me to study accounting, making a case for the opportunities it would open for me and instilling in me the confidence to go for it. Of course, I had to take action and do the work, but this advice and continuing support put me on the path I’m on now. Since then, I’ve benefited from many other wonderful mentors throughout my career—and still do.
Secondly, we all need to practice resilience, which is critical to any person’s success. As a previous accountant, I tend to look back at my life experiences and categorize them into two groups, like a “life experience” balance sheet. On the left side of the page are my life experiences—my “assets.” These include all of the experiences that warm my heart and of which I’m most proud. Life would be great if the list ended here, right? Well, there’s also another side of the page.
Like the right side of a financial balance sheet, this part of the list usually lists liabilities. These are the things that you deduct from your assets to arrive at your net worth. This side of my life experiences balance sheet would include things like struggles and challenges I didn’t anticipate. However, I don’t let these “liabilities” define or stop me from my growth. In fact, it was through some of these disappointments that I learned the most.
One of the most important things I’ve learned is that the climb to success is rarely linear. It’s more like a jungle gym with multiple paths to the top—I love that analogy. This was my path before I knew it was a “thing.” Early in my career, I needed a pretty steep learning curve to hold my interest. I knew it was a bad idea to job hop, so I looked for a career path that could accommodate a broad range of underlying experiences and then added specialty training around the core. This enabled me to move through my career by finding what appealed to me and what I was good at. I started my career in public accounting before moving into banking and credit training. At one point, I talked myself into a six-month project in investment banking and ended up running the municipal training desk. Eventually, I moved into portfolio management, trust administration and a family advisor role. I’ve learned how important it is not to be afraid to take lateral moves that provide opportunities to build additional skills.
Reconciling The Demands Of Family And Career
Most people, particularly women, start to feel the pressure of work-life balance when they decide to have children. Until then, women are pretty well matched with men. The pressure can start subtly with coworkers’ or a boss’ concern about a woman’s pending absence for maternity leave. And, the pressure on women escalates from there as responsibilities from both work and an expanding family place more demands on her time. Men experience the same pressures, but usually more subtly because society has tended to assign primary responsibility for childcare to women. This results in the negative connotation that a woman who is successful in her career must not have time to spend with family—but people don’t say the same thing about men. As a matter of fact, in the past, men received “extra credit” for taking on a family-related chore like carpool, taking the kids to the doctor or staying home with them when they are sick. But that is the definition of parenting.
When I became pregnant with my first child, I was a municipal bond trader for a major bank. I was the only woman on the trading desk and the first woman in the department to take advantage of maternity leave. At that time, maternity leave was six weeks long and I was expected to resume a full schedule immediately upon my return. There were no facilities for nursing mothers. There was no childcare. It was exhausting and the guilt, excruciating.
At that point, I learned that I couldn’t do it all—not by myself. I eventually learned to accept that, while I thought I could figure out how to have it all, I couldn’t have it all at the same time. In order to succeed, I had to be strategic in my vision, intentional in its execution and emotionally brave in my personal and professional relationships. What I learned was to:
1. Prioritize—know what matters to you and make it a priority.
2. Set expectations for what you can do and delegate the rest.