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We're generating an enormous amount of content geared at this young professional woman, which has been resonating strongly. We also have been creating solution-oriented products for that same person that will help her transition in life through her many roles, whether they may be mother, girlfriend, professional, and really everything in between.
Like in Africa, if somebody doesn't have fuel, they're still going and collecting firewood. If they get an oven, that's a huge difference. You can do things to reduce the inequities by making sure that they can get clean energy, safe energy. To make sure they're not having to collect water every day. That's huge for women in the developing world.
We need to come up with use cases for this technology that drive clear benefits for individuals and institutions - these are our customers. Too often we see bitcoin and blockchain technologies as solutions in search of a problem. We don't just need these systems to be technically better than the alternatives - we need them to be more user-friendly.
Inspiration is really all around us. I pay attention to a lot of different fields. I stay up on current events. I go to community meetings to see what concerns the people in my neighborhood. Paying attention to social interactions offline really inform interactions online. The real world is a bottomless source of inspiration for what you can build.
If we're going to make progress on this issue [of contraception], we have to be really clear about what our agenda is. We're not talking about abortion. We're not talking about population control. What I'm talking about is giving women the power to save their lives, to save their children's lives and to give their families the best possible future.
The company was quite hierarchical. I often think it was like a pyramid with Robert at the top and lots of us paying homage to him. I try to turn the pyramid upside down so that I'm at the bottom and bubbling away and encouraging people and energizing them so that they are all empowered so that they can do what they need to do, now that's the dream.
In those same 10 years, women are getting more and more of the graduate degrees, more and more of the undergraduate degrees, and it's translating into more women in entry-level jobs, even more women in lower-level management. But there's absolutely been no progress at the top. You can't explain away 10 years. Ten years of no progress is no progress.
Resolving to influence and persuade others will require a degree of personal passion and a depth of caring that you are willing to express and act on. I can tell you this: it will make you feel very vulnerable. The only antidote is to believe you are after a worthwhile change and that you are likely to be the right one to lead this particular charge.
I do believe that it is extremely important that each one of us is a participant in life and what's going on around us rather than being a spectator to it and if you do that, if you participate in the world, in your community, your school, your company, or your country, whatever.. they you will be useful and hopefully leave the planet a little better.
I rely on some words that actually my husband said to me. He jokes about saying, "You know it's only darkest before it's totally black!" Even in my darkest hour - and my darkest hour was probably when I lost both my parents - I look to him and I see what he has endured, what he has overcome, what he is doing with his life, and just how he's lived his life.
I hope you find true meaning, contentment, and passion in your life. I hope you navigate the difficult times and come out with greater strength and resolve. I hope you find whatever balance you seek with your eyes wide open. And I hope that you - yes, you - have the ambition to lean in to your career and run the world. Because the world needs you to change it.
When I bought the [WNBA] team, I saw that no one really cared about them. Like the locker facilities that these young women have to work in-they weren't right. I want to give them the best locker room facilities and show them they're valued-because if you show them value, they're going to perform better. And this goes for all women, not just basketball players.
I studied and worked in a Chinese restaurant to support myself. People would say to me 'Oh you must be missing home', but I had grown up hard. I was so happy to be there. I had never even been in a supermarket before coming to America. At home, my parents wouldn't let me open the refrigerator, because they worried I'd damage the door by opening it too many times.
Don't you dare underestimate the power of your own instinct. Instinct is a lifesaver for sharks and entrepreneurs alike. Most people can recall times they ignored their gut only to regret it later. Learning to actually listen to your instinct is a great form of self-preservation. It's both incredibly easy and tough at the same time, but worth the effort to master.
So there's no typical day, but I transition through the course of my business day by doing everything from construction meetings on the development project under construction to design meetings for an upcoming apparel delivery to acquisition meetings about projects we're looking to acquire. It's very diverse in terms of content, substance, and what I address on a typical day.
Pages were always supposed to be off-camera - we were supposed to be invisible. But I had a moment where I saw a kid who was ready to flip himself out of the balcony, so I ran down and grabbed him and put him back in his seat. I remember the stage manager taking me aside and saying, "Can you please never do that again? I know you were saving his life, but we have you in the shot."
I've travelled extensively in the last 16 years - to slums in Bangladesh, to townships in South Africa, to all kinds of places in India, etc. When I would go and talk to villagers about something like vaccines, if I stayed long enough, the women would bring the conversation around and say: "What about this family planning tool? We can't keep having the number of children we're having."
We're the only developed country in the world that doesn't have paid maternity leave. Paternity leave is just as important. Paid family medical leave so that you can take care of a parent, a child, a grandparent, whatever you need to do. I think we're shortsighted when we don't invest in our employees as companies, and as an economy, because we invest in them and they invest back in us.
I gave a talk on gender stuff at Facebook one morning and a man didn't come. It was optional; he didn't have to come. But he sent a note saying, "I missed your meeting because I drove my kids to school so my wife could do something else. Thank you for making that possible." I think that employee is a loyal employee for Facebook and I think more companies should want that kind of loyalty.
I would say where I feel like I'm struggling the most in learning and giving myself permission to fail is in finding the balance in life. There are different aspects to women: there's the mother, there's the working woman, there's the wife, the friend, the sister, the daughter and so just figuring that all out. I continue to want to try new things and give myself permission to not be great at it.
My goal is very clear, and I wrote about it in Lean In, which is that women run half our companies and countries and men run half our homes. As much as I wish that could happen in four years, I don't think that's a likely time period. But I think it can happen sooner than we think. Part of it is having that aspiration and that goal. I think we too often suffer from the tyranny of low expectations.
I learned something then. And I believe it still. There is a value in taking a stand, whether or not anybody may be noticing it, and whether or not it is a risky thing to do. And if even those who are in danger can raise their lonely voices, isn't it more that is required of all of us, in this land where liberty had her birth? In America the true patriots are those who dare speak truth through power.
I always work out first thing in the morning, because if I don't, it won't get done. To me, it really comes down to my priorities. Because those are the things that are important to me: my spirituality, centering with the universe and God, and then getting my workout in and putting my health first. That makes everything else feel easy. Anything that comes up, I feel like I can conquer it throughout the day.
In terms of my profession, I'm passionate about financial literacy. I want to live in a financially literate society. I want kids to understand the importance of savings and investing. I want to try to replicate the great savers who came out of the Depression, the best savers the country has ever seen. It's crucial that people understand the importance of financial literacy, because it's actually life saving.
I've seldom met somebody who is merely satisfied working alongside siblings. You typically have a binary outcome. They either are miserable and everyone starts to hate each other, which is an unfortunate outcome that we see too often, or it is really incredible, and there's tremendous energy and mutual respect, and the parties work really well together. I've found that the middle road typically doesn't happen.
I am Catholic, I was raised Catholic, I am a practicing Catholic. But I say we need to agree to disagree. We have a shared mission around poverty, and I focus on that, because we do a lot with the Catholic Church around poverty alleviation. I'm always looking for: what is the common thread? What do we care about? What do we believe in? We believe in women around the world. We believe in all lives have equal value.
After my husband, Dave, died, I called my friend Adam, a psychologist who studies how people find meaning in our lives, and I asked him what, if anything, I could do to help myself and my kids get through this. We started talking about resilience, then reading about it, then talking to other people who had gotten through grief and other huge challenges. In time, those conversations and that research helped me heal.
From a productivity perspective, prioritization is key. And it's very easy to focus on clearing the decks of minutia, especially when one's very busy. It's almost easy to want to sit down at your desk when you have a free five minutes and try to clear out some of the incoming emails rather than strip things strategically and foundationally and ask about what the most important objectives for you and the company are.
I just love Wisconsin. I'm a fourth-generation Wisconsinite,and my great grandparents were farmers. My grandfather delivered the mail. My mom was the first in her family to go to college. My dad started this business that becomes an international success. And I just believe very strongly in Wisconsin and who we are and the potential that this state has. And I'm really concerned about the direction that we're headed.
We also look at farming. Are we making sure that we're getting the latest seeds out to women so they can get a bigger yield off of their farms? A new type of seed that gets out to a man, let's say, that's drought resistant - because, of course, the rains are changing in Africa with climate change - if you don't put it in the hands of a woman, she won't necessarily get it. We look at breaking down all those barriers.
Make time less precious. We are way too efficient, making use of every hour, every minute. When you were a kid, didn’t you just spend hours poking sticks in the mud, climbing trees and sitting in them, looking at shells and seaweed that washed up on the shoreline? Time was not precious then, we weren’t trying to stuff an accomplishment into every minute every day, we had time for thoughts and feelings. That was good!
I think when tragedy occurs, it presents a choice. You can give in to the void, the emptiness that fills your heart, your lungs, constricts your ability to think or even breathe. Or you can try to find meaning. These past thirty days, I have spent many of my moments lost in that void. And I know that many future moments will be consumed by the vast emptiness as well. But when I can, I want to choose life and meaning.
Go to a playground: Little girls get called 'bossy' all the time, a word that's almost never used for boys. And that leads directly to the problems women face in the workforce. When a man does a good job, everyone says, 'That's great.' When a woman does that same thing, she'll get feedback that says things like, 'Your results are good, but your peers just don't like you as much' or 'maybe you were a little aggressive.'
When I was a child, my father used to encourage my brother and me to fail. At the dinner table, instead of asking about the best part of our day, he would ask us what we failed at that week. If we didn't have something to tell him, he would be disappointed. When we shared whatever failure we'd endured, he'd high-five us and say, 'Way to go!' The gift my father gave us by doing this was redefining what failure truly meant.
I have the good fortune of working with two brothers who are very accomplished, incredibly smart, and very capable. So thankfully there is not an issue in that regard where somebody isn't pulling their own weight. We collaborate all the time. We tend to take different paths, but we tend to reach very similar conclusions. It's actually great because it allows us to be much more creative in the process of getting things done.
When I was creative director [at Estée Lauder], I was always being asked about my beauty must-haves. From there I had this fun idea to create a line of what was in my makeup bag. But I also love accessories, and people associate me with home, family, and beauty. As a girl, my favorite toy was my dollhouse; if I could still play with it now, I would! I used to love a well-arranged room: the furniture, the fabric, the lighting.
Even in our own agriculture strategy, if we got a great new drought-resistant seed and we managed to get it distributed in the system, we just assumed that it would reach female farmers. That's a false assumption, because women don't interact with agro-dealers. So if you don't develop specific programming to ensure that seed gets in a woman's hands, then the extra income [generated by higher-yielding crops] goes into her husband's hands.
Now my mom designs to resign so she runs for US senate, and now at 67 my mom just launched a new company called Women's Leadership Live, she is the cofounder and CEO, and it's all about empowering women to be successful in business however they define success. When you have a role model like that you really don't ever look at gender as an issue and it's about owning your place and taking charge of your role, regardless of what you look like.
She explained that many people, but especially women, feel fraudulent when they are praised for their accomplishments. Instead of feeling worthy of recognition, they feel undeserving and guilty, as if a mistake has been made. Despite being high achievers, even experts in their fields, women can't seem to shake the sense that it is only a matter of time until they are found out for who they really are- impostors with limited skills or abilities.
n terms of the logistics of that from a title perspective, we have not talked about that nor do we typically care very much. We're not large on bureaucracy. My brothers and I said to each other when we started in this business that as a collective we can do far more than any one of us can do individually. And that's really what guides our relationship - this sense of camaraderie. And it is a family business, and we work together collaboratively as a family.
The traditional metaphor for careers is a ladder, but I no longer think that metaphor holds. It just doesn’t make sense in a less hierarchical world... Build your skills, not your resume. Evaluate what you can do, not the title they’re going to give you. Do real work. Take a sales quota, a line role, an ops job. Don’t plan too much, and don’t expect a direct climb. If I had mapped out my career when I was sitting where you are, I would have missed my career.
I was grateful that Facebook already had generous bereavement policies . Now Facebook employees receive 20 days paid leave to grieve the loss of an immediate family member and 10 days for an extended family member. I'm proud that we're able to do this and I hope more businesses do the same. Only 60 percent of private sector workers get paid time off after the death of a loved one, and then it's usually just a few days. Workers and families deserve better than that.
When I studied computer science at Duke University in the first half of the 1980s, I had professors who treated women differently than men. I kind of got used to it. At Microsoft, I had to use my elbows and make sure I spoke up at the table, but it was an incredibly meritocratic place. Outside, in the industry, I would feel the sexism. I'd walk into a room and until I proved my worth, everyone would assume that the guy presenting with me had credibility and I didn't.
I walk out of this office every day at 5:30 so I'm home for dinner with my kids at 6, and interestingly, I've been doing that since I had kids. I did that when I was at Google, I did that here, and I would say it's not until the last year, two years, that I'm brave enough to talk about it publicly. Now I certainly wouldn't lie, but I wasn't running around giving speeches on it." "...there's no such thing as work-life balance. There's work, and there's life, and there's no balance.
In the developing world, they don't have smartphones yet. They have the older plastic phones, but women are saving money on those, because they don't have access to banks. Having that access to digital money changes everything for her because she actually doesn't have to negotiate with her husband, which she will tell you is very hard in these circumstances, especially when the means are meager. She's expected to have money to pay for the kids' health or to help with the school fees.
The most common mistake you'll make is forgetting to keep your own scorecard. Very little at work reinforces your ability to do this, so you will have to be vigilant. When evaluators give you an assessment, they are just guessing at who you are; they certainly are not the ones who know your potential. They can rate you and influence you, but they don't get to define you. That's your most honorable assignment: to define, every day through the way you deliver your work, the scope and nature of your inherent abilities.
I had the honor to meet Geraldine Ferraro on a few occasions over the years at the DNC and what struck me was how she managed to be both gutsy and graceful at the same time. Without a doubt she was a trailblazer who not only stepped outside the box but who dared to redefine it. I always left her presence with the sense that she truly knew what she was talking about but that she never felt the need to browbeat you with it - instead she inspired people to listen and then act, and to me thats the hallmark of a true leader.
When looking for a life partner, my advice to women is date all of them: the bad boys, the cool boys, the commitment-phobic boys, the crazy boys. But do not marry them. The things that make the bad boys sexy do not make them good husbands. When it comes time to settle down, find someone who wants an equal partner. Someone who thinks women should be smart, opinionated and ambitious. Someone who values fairness and expects or, even better, wants to do his share in the home. These men exist and, trust me, over time, nothing is sexier.
Entrepreneurs need to start building today. The barrier to entry in tech is low, so start designing, start coding it, launch it, build prototypes, build a working version of it. The Internet has amazing powers of distribution. You can test your ideas. You can see if it works, if it doesn't work, whether it's fun, and whether you're sufficiently motivated. People who go into entrepreneurship to get rich aren't going to be happy. It’s the building of things that makes you happy. You have to enjoy the process whether you succeed or fail.
There is no straight path from your seat today to where you are going. Don't try to draw that line. You will not just get it wrong, you'll miss big opportunities. And I mean big-like the Internet. Careers are not ladders, those days are long gone, but jungle gyms. Don't just move up and down, don't just look up, look backwards, sideways around corners. Your career and your life will have starts and stops and zigs and zags. Don't stress out about the white space-the path you can't draw- because there in lies both the surprises and the opportunities.