Make Your Career Your Guilty Pleasure

[Music]

[Applause]

it’s 7

55 a.m on monday morning i

quickly hand my child off to his amazing

caregiver

and run downstairs to spend four minutes

putting on my makeup

and logging into my computer it’s 8 a.m

and the day has started

but my heart has this feeling this

aching

it’s a feeling as a woman i know to be

guilt

it’s a feeling as a mother i’ve learned

a lot about

it’s a feeling as a catholic that i’m an

expert in

but this new guilt from being a working

mother

i know won’t be solved by going to

confession

so i jump online to see what might be

out there

and there’s good resources from the

tactical to the philosophical

don’t look for work life balance make it

work life

integration this is all good

but what i really really need to know is

how do i change this feeling

what do i need what does society need so

i go to the experts

other working mothers who have been

doing this

their whole lives like my mother

and from them i have three really key

takeaways the first and it’s universal

what your child needs most is to feel

your love whether that’s for five

minutes as you tuck them in

a few hours at the end of the day on

saturday

when you can give it they just need to

feel

that love the second is

you can’t do it all you have to have a

village

people that you can rely on to help you

and these people

will actually make your child better

these people will also make you a better

business woman

and third and very importantly

do not step back do not

quit keep climbing

stay on the ladder why is this

important it’s important for several

reasons

one you’ve spent your entire life

working towards your career college

40 60 80 hour weeks

and you love it it builds you up

it’s also important for our larger

society

today one in four women is thinking

about

stepping back one in four

we can’t let this happen because we’re

already

underrepresented at the manager level

for every 100 men there are 85

women and the air gets thinner the

higher up you go

now this is a problem for a lot of

reasons

but let’s focus on what’s good about

having women

at the top what’s good

is that that diversity makes our

companies stronger

not only do they nurture a culture and

help build people up

but they bring real dollars to the

bottom line

when corporations have an equally

represented male

female ratio at the top it is proven

that both their revenue and their share

price

go up by 50 percent 50

come shopping with me for a second no

we’re not

going to shop for shoes we’re going to

go shopping for stocks

which if you haven’t done it is the best

thing out there and you don’t need

more than a price of shoes to get into

the stock market

we’re going to take a hundred dollars

and we’re gonna put it in a really good

company

run by awesome men over time that

hundred dollars

might become two hundred wonderful

let’s take that same hundred dollars and

put it into a company

with equal representation of women at

the top and guess what

we’re gonna get three hundred dollars

back now with that three hundred dollars

we can

reinvest a hundred have it work for us

use a hundred to go shopping and invest

a hundred

in our children and their future

you may be asking how do i know so much

about stocks

for that we have to turn to my mother

and in this story you’ll also hear about

the fact

that love is what we really need and it

takes a village

my mother is a senior vice president of

investments

she has been for as long as i can

remember

she also picked me up from school

the bell would ring everyone would run

out most kids would jump into doors that

were already open

and drive off i’d hang out with a few

other kids

their parents would arrive they’d go

and i would be the last one left

this is where mom guilt tends to come in

but know that

while i was waiting i was having fun

practicing my pirouettes

singing doing all the things kids do

and sure enough every day like clockwork

here she would come in the 1991 hail

damaged buick

pulling up screeching to a stop throwing

the door open

i’d get in she’d smile i’d smile

and she’d turn back to her car phone

dial her next client

and do business for the 20-minute ride

home

now that is where i learned about stocks

which was great and when we got home

it was all about me she was totally

focused on me and that did require

a lot of support from my amazing father

and she also had support who were like

family

but that she brought into our household

to help and i had aunts who picked me up

from school and helped with spelling

my life is similar i am married to a

great husband

we have got a whole village surrounding

us

and that’s how we’re making it all work

but it’s not enough just in our personal

lives

we also need society to help us

we need corporations to recognize that

keeping women

in the workplace growing that 85 to 100

and moving them up to the top

does bring this real value to the bottom

line and so it’s worth investing

in the hardest times becoming a new mom

and trying to go back to work is so

hard your brain is wired differently

your body is still broken

you’re probably not getting much sleep

but yet you want to and you want to

engage

we need to invest in the time we need to

make the transition

i’m lucky enough to work for an amazing

company that did this

and i now live in a state who recently

passed

12 weeks of family leave that’s amazing

it needs to be the norm and we need more

we have to keep leaning in there and

provide the support

now what else can we do

pay equity we know the statistic

81 cents on a dollar for women

the statistic we don’t often know is

that once that woman has a child and you

compare her to a man with a child

it goes down to 70 cents that’s right

having a kid

loses most women 11 cents on the dollar

that doesn’t work in our society because

today

so many women bring home the bacon and

their husbands cook it

so we need to be equal it’s better for

all of us

and let’s return to where we started

that feeling of guilt what do we do with

that

guilt you know there’s another type of

guilt

it’s usually associated with

ice cream maybe a martini binge watching

bad tv

it’s called a guilty pleasure and i want

to leave you with this

idea that career you’ve worked so hard

for

that really does fill you up

it could become a guilty pleasure

and it will be better for your child

to see you thrive to listen to you to

learn from you

to feel your love to get the support

from

other people who can also fill their

world up

if we stop and in those moments

when we’re transitioning we don’t feel

the pain we feel the joy

and we say this is my guilty pleasure

my moment to shine and i’m so proud of

myself

i am so proud of all of you who are

making this happen

out there today and we are so thankful

for everyone that supports

us so take a minute and make your career

your guilty pleasure thank you very much

[Applause]

[Music]

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