From stay-at-home consultants to breadwinners, the Work-Life Thrive Summit addressed all facets of the working woman.
By: Whitney Hake, 2014 Summit Attendee
I walked away from the Work-Life Thrive Summit with the same feelings that I had after reading Lean In – invigorated and smarter. The tenacity with which Cindy Chang Mahlberg and Nicole Elias Seawell (Founders of Women in the Mix) approached planning the Summit shone throughout the day, and self-honesty was a big takeaway for me. I won’t bore you with my “mix” and its high points and its deficits, but the Summit proved to me that professional women are complex beings, and no career path is paint-by-numbers.
Lauren Mitchell Sveen (President at Mom Corps Denver) hooked me with her engaging presentation style. She began her address by using Martha Stewart as an example of an entrepreneurial billionaire with career detours. Martha did not take a textbook track from business school to Wall Street, to country home to catering company, to global empire. Lauren then likened her story to Martha’s, and caught my attention when she alluded to dressing like a man in the ‘80s (I often get fed up wearing suits every day in 2014).
So, Lauren is in her twenties and working on Wall Street (like Martha), and she is convinced that she has the best job out there, and a Wall Street boyfriend to boot! Then Lauren is assigned to developing new business in the Deep South, where she is not well received by the good ol’ boys club. At this point, I was thinking to myself that she would probably change her approach by wearing overalls and chewing tobacco, but Lauren tried to be more masculine and more rigid in front of these gentlemen. Without success, she retreated to grad school to find both herself and marketing.
I pause here, because I am 27 years old, and I am convinced that I have the best job in Denver. Since Lauren’s story spans decades and many different, successful ventures, she makes me wonder if job satisfaction early in life is wrong. I read an article on LinkedIn once that stuck with me, and its general premise was: ‘Groundhog Day’ was a hit – but no way to conduct a sales career. Although attorneys and bankers are not commissioned salespeople, they represented another point of view at the Summit. Jessica Brown (Partner at Gibson Dunn) and Kathryn Albright (SVP at US Bank) have both reaped the rewards of staying the course at one job and few companies.
Is it luck to find job longevity, or is the lucky lady truly Rachel Schultz (Founder of Manage Motherhood)? Rachel only allows herself to work while her children are in school, and she is genuinely cheerful and well-balanced. It may not be fair to compare these two paths, because take-home pay was not addressed outright, but from the perspective of a young lady trying to choose, neither job longevity nor career detours are perfect. On a side note, I believe it is important for women to talk numbers with each other. It is not impolite to ask our peers and sponsors about what they make.
In honor of Mother’s Day, I recognize that women’s lives are constantly evolving, and perhaps the best career path is custom tailored to our life stages. The networking that I cherish as part of my job would not happen so easily if I had to pick up a child from daycare by five o’clock in the afternoon. Different life stages are synonymous with the “mix” that makes every woman unique, and Rachel LeFort (Personal Fashion Stylist) understands how to capture those eccentricities with trench coats, scarves, blazers and high heels. Fashion is a fun part of being a woman, and when Rachel shared a laundry list of style adjectives with the audience, I knew exactly how I wanted to be perceived as – classy, bold and stylish.
I could not be further from street chic or bohemian if I tried to be, but those styles also describe many successful women. For example, Maranda Pleasant (Founder or ORIGIN Magazine) was the most Zen-like speaker at the Summit, and both her demeanor and appearance were bohemian. Maranda’s career path has been very unconventional, and it is her passion for yoga and publishing that overwhelms her to produce ORIGIN Magazine, which flies off the shelves at every Whole Foods Market across the country – impressive, eh?
No one has the secret sauce or playbook for being a successful woman. When you find a job that caters to your strengths and allows you to be yourself, then success will come. Career paths are not charted for us, and detours may present themselves, but women are inherently creative and resilient. From stay-at-home consultants to breadwinners, the Work-Life Thrive Summit addressed all facets of the working woman. I was inspired by the Summit to write my biography along the way, so that I can share it with other young ladies someday. Keep up the good work, Women in the Mix!
About Our Wixii Blogger: Whitney Hake joined Cassidy Turley in 2010, and she specializes in office project leasing in southeast Denver’s 27 MSF submarket. Whitney delivers high leasing results to tenants and asset managers through her superior market knowledge, keen negotiation skills, and creative marketing tactics.
