career women Archives - The Grassy Road

Men to avoid: the ones who tell you to slow down

There is nothing more demotivating than someone above you in your chain of command telling you to slow down, to be less ambitious. Especially if you are a woman and the teller is a man. This behavior is, of course, not new. So many of our mansplaining experiences are captured in the new book Men to Avoid in Art and Life by Nicole Tersigni - I'm using one of her captioned paintings here to illustrate my message. A laugh-out-loud joy of a book and Twitter meme. I was coaching a [...]

By Penny Herscher|2021-01-28T10:02:30-08:00January 19, 2021|Career Advice|Comments Off

Feeling like a failure every day – and overcoming it

I doubt myself every single day. As a CEO it's the dark secret none of us are supposed to talk about, but it's real, and so it was marvelous for me to listen to Maria Klawe yesterday say that she wakes up feeling like a failure every day. Now Maria is one of the most successful people in academia. She's president of Harvey Mudd College, educating the next generation of brilliant computer scientists, mathematicians and physicists, she sits on the board of Microsoft and she's a much admired water color [...]

By Penny Herscher|2017-12-06T09:52:05-08:00October 3, 2013|Career Advice, Equality|0 Comments

Queen Bees or a Stiletto Network?

I was disappointed by the drivel written in the WSJ on Friday The Tyranny of the Queen Bee. It is just not reality, and reinforcing a negative stereotype at the same time. The WSJ should know better. The thesis is that because there are so few women in power they hang on to the power as Queen Bees and bully other women... "Four decades later, the syndrome still thrives, given new life by the mass ascent of women to management positions. This generation of queen bees is no less determined [...]

By Penny Herscher|2017-12-06T16:49:43-08:00March 3, 2013|Equality|2 Comments

Cameron Russell: Image is Powerful

Every young girl should see this talk. Every person who wonders if they would be happier if they were thinner, or their hair was better, should see this talk. Very gutsy.

By Penny Herscher|2017-12-06T16:50:46-08:00January 13, 2013|Equality|0 Comments

Why women need sponsors more than mentors

I was on a panel at GHC 2012 last week "Sponsors or Mentors - which will get you there?" Standing room only in a large room, it was clearly a topic of great interest to the female tech students and geeks at the conference. And the questions were priceless... The panel, lead by Anne Losby of Thomson Reuters, was prompted by a report Catalyst put out last year on Sponsoring Women to Success. In it the research clearly shows sponsorship is a powerful differentiator at the top and key to [...]

By Penny Herscher|2017-12-06T16:53:15-08:00October 11, 2012|Equality|1 Comment

Golf is an old man’s game (in Silicon Valley at least)

It's different here. Yes it's not perfect, but it is so different. We don't care if Mark Zuckerberg wears a hoodie, men don't wear ties here and the last point in Julie Steinberg's recent WSJ article on the Nine Rules Women Must Follow To Get Ahead --- that as a woman you need to "Dress well and play golf" is just out of touch. Successful young people (men and women) in Silicon Valley certainly don't need to play golf here to get ahead. In 25 years of being a high [...]

By Penny Herscher|2017-12-06T16:58:03-08:00May 10, 2012|Equality|1 Comment

Yahoo panel: There’s no such thing as work-life balance

Oh the irony of posting on this right after my post on the Iron Lady! She had no balance too.For a while now I have been outspoken that I think balance is a myth and we are unfair to young women coming up to spin the myth that they can have it all. They can't any more than men can. Business is just too competitive.So it was fun for me last week to be on a panel at Yahoo on Breakthrough Leadership Lessons and to be asked about work-life balance. [...]

By Penny Herscher|2017-12-03T02:44:38-08:00January 24, 2012|Equality|0 Comments

Go ahead and ask the “girl questions”

So often women long to ask the “girl questions” – the ones tied to their roles as mothers and household managers – and yet fear asking them in a male dominated workplace.Every time I talk with groups of women about anything I am swamped with questions about child care, sharing house work and what my husband and/or kids think about me working and being a CEO. It’s as if there is a pent up demand for answers or guideposts along the road and yet, in reality, there are none.Yesterday’s excellent [...]

By Penny Herscher|2017-12-06T17:05:38-08:00July 5, 2011|Career Advice, Equality|0 Comments

Is a broken arm a priority?

I found myself telling this story to a journalist last week as I described some of the weird and funny experiences that come with my choices in life. I've written before that I think balance is a myth - it's impossible to achieve if you are a CEO and a mother - and there are days when you just have to choose.One day when my son Sebastian was 8 years old - it was the last day of the quarter at Simplex. We had the traditional kind of business where [...]

By Penny Herscher|2017-12-06T17:12:06-08:00December 7, 2010|Equality, Leadership|0 Comments