Echoing Cutler’s observations about Sandberg’s controversial ‘you can have it all’ message, Lee said that personal empowerment both inspires and results from decisions regarding the balance of work and home life.
“If having a family is important to you, then I truly believe that you will still have your career and you can navigate it,” Lee noted. “If you feel that the firm you are working for at that time isn’t supportive, then maybe that’s a true reflector for you to make a judgment call at that point to make a change. But I think you really have to believe that you can do both things.”
Early in her career Kjelsey Fortun, a senior finance manager at Microsoft, never thought that moving overseas would figure into her professional life. But a year into the two-year rotation in finance she started in 2006 at Microsoft, she knew she wanted to work internationally. Fortun began planting seeds in her network to reach that end.
Upon her completion of the rotational program, a role in Germany emerged. Fortun spoke no German — “I’m still terrible at it, by the way,” she said — but was willing to risk being “completely out of my depth”. She also had to convince via telephone interview the hiring managers in Germany, who had not met her, to take a risk by relocating and hiring her.
“I had basically no reputation in Germany, but I had a really strong network of people who did have a reputation in Germany,” Fortun pointed out. “And because I had done a really good job for them, they were willing to go to bat for me, and that spoke volumes to the German team.”
Her decision to move across the Atlantic Ocean wasn’t easy – it meant inserting thousands of miles between herself and her boyfriend. “Ultimately, it’s your life, and you’ve got one shot at it,” Fortun noted. “You need to figure out what you want to do with that – meeting your career goals, meeting the things outside of your career, whether it’s family, volunteering, mentorship – and you have to define, here’s how much time I’m going to spend at that, and be open and honest with all of the other stakeholders in your life.”
Three months after Fortun moved to Munich, her boyfriend, whom she met at work and with whom she once competed for a job, joined her.
Relationships, the panelists said, often face challenges when one or both partners are ambitiously pursuing careers in the field of finance. But just as often, they suggested, a strain of perfectionism can incite a struggle within.
“There seems to be this pattern of women and this concept of perfection,” Cutler said. “My advice to women is, the sooner you get rid of the idea of being perfect, the happier and better off you’ll be. It’s probably true for men, too, but it seems particularly true for women who seem like perfectionists. I see it in my daughter and my wife. I see it in women in all aspects of life. I don’t quite understand it because I’m not a perfectionist, but it seems to be a particular issue for women.”
Nemser, however, shared a slightly different personal experience. “I’m not the perfectionist; I’m married to the perfectionist,” Nemser said. “And I could not agree more. I [say], ‘OK, but you’re giving up your midnight to 4 a.m. for something that does not matter, for something that you could have delivered B-plus [level work]. OK, you’re willing to burn the next day for it? That’s a serious trade-off.’
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