Mellody Hobson is much more than just the new wife of billionaire filmmaker George Lucas. The Ariel Investments president serves on several boards, including the Starbucks Corp., and is chairwoman of the board of directors for DreamWorks Animation SKG. She’s also a regular on-air financial contributor for outlets like the Tom Joyner Morning Show and CBS. As if that were not enough, she and Lucas also welcomed their first child, Everest, who was born by surrogate in August. Who says we can’t have it all?
Umm, I do. And I bet Hobson would agree.
Sure, she was the youngest of six children raised by a single mom in inner-city Chicago and went on to Princeton and great professional success. But despite what the magazine quips, I suspect Hobson would contest the outdated notion that she now “has it all.”
She has a lot, certainly. But she could probably name without hesitation several things that she doesn’t have—sleep for one. (Her work ethic and fitness routine are legendary. Pre-baby she swam at 4 a.m. and ran right after.)
I would love to hear her discuss the trade-offs, sacrifices and compromises that underpin her success. After all, one of her signature expressions is “Don’t major in the minor.” Clearly, she sets priorities, focuses energy and executes over the long haul.
She touts patient, value-oriented investments for a living. Her voice soothed viewers of Good Morning America, Nightline and World News Tonight years ago when Lehman Brothers declared bankruptcy and fools spoke of putting money in gold or mattresses. “Don’t just do something, stand there,” she counseled, urging viewers to stay the course.
Hobson has bolstered financial literacy among women and minorities. She’s offered excellent, practical money management advice in media outlets from morning shows to magazines. Her investment firm even sponsors a public school on the south side of Chicago and teaches sound investment principles to its students and community.
She’s an inspiration and worthy of all the positive media coverage she receives. But make no mistake, she’s not a role model because she has it all. Rather, she’s a wise woman because she defined her own specific vision of success and worked it.
Mellody, if you’re out there, let me interview you!
Recommended Reading
The Unsinkable Mellody Hobson (via CNN Money)
Mellody Hobson: Champion of Financial Literacy (via Chicago Tribune)
Mellody Hobson & Jeffrey Katzenberg (Via CNN Money)
“Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, ‘What are you doing for others?’” – Martin Luther King, Jr.
That was it.
I wanted to commemorate the holiday but oddly found myself without much to say. So I posted one photo, one quote, no commentary and called it a day.
At the time, I considered the post to be a quick prompt for readers’ self-reflection. Today it feels more like a cop out, evidence of my own refusal to really grapple with MLK Day and the unfinished work of its namesake. Continue reading “MLK Day Redux”
“Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, ‘What are you doing for others?’” – Martin Luther King, Jr.
That was it.
I wanted to commemorate the holiday but oddly found myself without much to say. So I posted one photo, one quote, no commentary and called it a day.
At the time, I considered the post to be a quick prompt for readers’ self-reflection. Today it feels more like a cop out, evidence of my own refusal to really grapple with MLK Day and the unfinished work of its namesake. Continue reading “MLK Day Redux”
Dear Maya,
I am a first time homeowner and currently having some major renovations done. I need to figure out paint options for all rooms including the bathrooms and kitchen, and I have to pick out fixtures, tiles and flooring!!
I generally love all things about home decor and renovations, but I am feeling overwhelmed because I have to make all these decisions so fast! I am familiar with the website Houzz and I can spend hours searching that website! But I need to start making some decisions ASAP. Any advice on how to get this project under control?
I want to make sure I have considered all options and I feel a bit overwhelmed making these “big” decisions!
Continue reading “Ask Maya: I’m Overwhelmed by Renovation Decisions. Help!”
Dear Maya,
I am a first time homeowner and currently having some major renovations done. I need to figure out paint options for all rooms including the bathrooms and kitchen, and I have to pick out fixtures, tiles and flooring!!
I generally love all things about home decor and renovations, but I am feeling overwhelmed because I have to make all these decisions so fast! I am familiar with the website Houzz and I can spend hours searching that website! But I need to start making some decisions ASAP. Any advice on how to get this project under control?
I want to make sure I have considered all options and I feel a bit overwhelmed making these “big” decisions!
Continue reading “Ask Maya: I’m Overwhelmed by Renovation Decisions. Help!”
Stanford Graduate School of Business marketing professor Jennifer Aaker devised this idea and explains it in a Lean In lecture. Aaker argues that finding such multipliers will help us stay ambitious, feel less rushed and accomplish more.
If you want to be a great athlete and a great partner, go for a run with your partner, she says. If you want to volunteer at a nonprofit and be a good friend, take a friend volunteering with you.
Aaker calls such productivity pairings “doubles.” Extending the baseball analogy, a home run would be a single activity that advances four or more of your goals.
“When we feel overwhelmed, we often feel like we need to sacrifice goals,” she says. “But instead of giving up on certain goals, might we rethink time and use these tools to become more time affluent?”
The spirit of her advice is spot-on, if not the flimsy examples. Women make the best use of their time when they know what they want and then consciously choose high-impact activities that serve those goals. Continue reading “Are You Hitting Enough Home Runs in Your Life?”
Stanford Graduate School of Business marketing professor Jennifer Aaker devised this idea and explains it in a Lean In lecture. Aaker argues that finding such multipliers will help us stay ambitious, feel less rushed and accomplish more.
If you want to be a great athlete and a great partner, go for a run with your partner, she says. If you want to volunteer at a nonprofit and be a good friend, take a friend volunteering with you.
Aaker calls such productivity pairings “doubles.” Extending the baseball analogy, a home run would be a single activity that advances four or more of your goals.
“When we feel overwhelmed, we often feel like we need to sacrifice goals,” she says. “But instead of giving up on certain goals, might we rethink time and use these tools to become more time affluent?”
The spirit of her advice is spot-on, if not the flimsy examples. Women make the best use of their time when they know what they want and then consciously choose high-impact activities that serve those goals. Continue reading “Are You Hitting Enough Home Runs in Your Life?”
I’m a website junky. I launched my first site, MayaPayne.com, in 2002 using a primitive website builder that produced a hideous site with nearly illegible type set against a stock photograph of a sunset. I was thrilled.
Buying that little piece of cyberspace was addictive. Over the next ten years I would go on to develop a dozen websites and buy twice as many domain names. At one point, I co-founded a short-lived local site that trafficked in celebrity gossip and party pics.
But despite my enthusiasm for the web’s publishing power, I was very slow to grasp its community-building potential. It’s hilarious now to recall some of the conversations we had at work. We hotly and repeatedly debated the question, “If we link to other sites, why would anyone come to ours?”
We were content curators and news aggregators, but didn’t know it. We were bloggers without the software and the sharing.
I’m a website junky. I launched my first site, MayaPayne.com, in 2002 using a primitive website builder that produced a hideous site with nearly illegible type set against a stock photograph of a sunset. I was thrilled.
Buying that little piece of cyberspace was addictive. Over the next ten years I would go on to develop a dozen websites and buy twice as many domain names. At one point, I co-founded a short-lived local site that trafficked in celebrity gossip and party pics.
But despite my enthusiasm for the web’s publishing power, I was very slow to grasp its community-building potential. It’s hilarious now to recall some of the conversations we had at work. We hotly and repeatedly debated the question, “If we link to other sites, why would anyone come to ours?”
We were content curators and news aggregators, but didn’t know it. We were bloggers without the software and the sharing.
At 32, Katherine Wintsch hit a maternal wall, a barrier more pronounced and intractable than any glass ceiling. The high-powered marketing executive and mother of two small children was simply too exhausted—mentally and physically—to carry on.
“I just could not continue the life that I had anymore and I could not continue the expectations that I had for myself anymore,” she says. “I looked around me and I saw all the trappings of success that would cause anybody from the outside world to think that I was very happy, and I wasn’t happy.”
She spent two years working through that dilemma with a signature mix of Oprah-inspired introspection, therapy and life coaching, and emerged the CEO of a mom-focused marketing firm with global impact.
Today she makes it her business to turn the challenges of motherhood, which she knows intimately, into growth opportunities for brands, including Walmart, Kellogg, Colgate and Johnson & Johnson. She travels the world researching moms in all walks of life and then works with companies to develop products that better serve them. Talk about work-life alignment.
- Name: Katherine Wintsch
- Age: 37
- Work: Founder and CEO of The Mom Complex
- Family: Husband Richard; Children Layla (6) and Alex (4)
- Education: Bachelor’s degree in marketing from James Madison University; Master’s degree in communication from the Virginia Commonwealth University Brandcenter Continue reading “How Katherine Wintsch (CEO of The Mom Complex) Makes Things Happen”
At 32, Katherine Wintsch hit a maternal wall, a barrier more pronounced and intractable than any glass ceiling. The high-powered marketing executive and mother of two small children was simply too exhausted—mentally and physically—to carry on.
“I just could not continue the life that I had anymore and I could not continue the expectations that I had for myself anymore,” she says. “I looked around me and I saw all the trappings of success that would cause anybody from the outside world to think that I was very happy, and I wasn’t happy.”
She spent two years working through that dilemma with a signature mix of Oprah-inspired introspection, therapy and life coaching, and emerged the CEO of a mom-focused marketing firm with global impact.
Today she makes it her business to turn the challenges of motherhood, which she knows intimately, into growth opportunities for brands, including Walmart, Kellogg, Colgate and Johnson & Johnson. She travels the world researching moms in all walks of life and then works with companies to develop products that better serve them. Talk about work-life alignment.
- Name: Katherine Wintsch
- Age: 37
- Work: Founder and CEO of The Mom Complex
- Family: Husband Richard; Children Layla (6) and Alex (4)
- Education: Bachelor’s degree in marketing from James Madison University; Master’s degree in communication from the Virginia Commonwealth University Brandcenter Continue reading “How Katherine Wintsch (CEO of The Mom Complex) Makes Things Happen”
An article titled “The Legend of Wendy Davis” will appear in the New York Times Sunday Magazine this weekend. Unfortunately, the web version of Robert Draper’s story, which is live now, is called “Can Wendy Davis Have It All?” The silly online headline weakens the power of an otherwise compelling profile of a politician on the rise.
No, Wendy Davis can’t have it all. No woman (or man for that matter) can. And such questions are only directed at women–a point that the article illustrates well. If a Wendell, rather than a Wendy, were running for governor of Texas no reporters or opponents would be asking where his children were while he attended Harvard Law School or just how much of his success he could take credit for given that his spouse helped pay college and law school bills. Continue reading “Supermom for Governor: Why Wendy Davis Puts Her Personal Narrative First in Texas Campaign”
An article titled “The Legend of Wendy Davis” will appear in the New York Times Sunday Magazine this weekend. Unfortunately, the web version of Robert Draper’s story, which is live now, is called “Can Wendy Davis Have It All?” The silly online headline weakens the power of an otherwise compelling profile of a politician on the rise.
No, Wendy Davis can’t have it all. No woman (or man for that matter) can. And such questions are only directed at women–a point that the article illustrates well. If a Wendell, rather than a Wendy, were running for governor of Texas no reporters or opponents would be asking where his children were while he attended Harvard Law School or just how much of his success he could take credit for given that his spouse helped pay college and law school bills. Continue reading “Supermom for Governor: Why Wendy Davis Puts Her Personal Narrative First in Texas Campaign”
Years ago, I volunteered with an understaffed nonprofit that struggled to recruit hands-on board members willing to pitch in beyond scheduled meetings. I vividly recall a colleague relaying the tale of how a longtime donor shot her down when she invited him to join the board. He declined, saying: “I give my time or my money to organizations, but not both.”
His strange pronouncement just killed the conversation. Put in a tough spot, she couldn’t jeopardize his financial contribution by continuing to ask for his time. He’d given her an ultimatum, it seemed. Continue reading “Time or Money: What Do You Give and Why?”
Years ago, I volunteered with an understaffed nonprofit that struggled to recruit hands-on board members willing to pitch in beyond scheduled meetings. I vividly recall a colleague relaying the tale of how a longtime donor shot her down when she invited him to join the board. He declined, saying: “I give my time or my money to organizations, but not both.”
His strange pronouncement just killed the conversation. Put in a tough spot, she couldn’t jeopardize his financial contribution by continuing to ask for his time. He’d given her an ultimatum, it seemed. Continue reading “Time or Money: What Do You Give and Why?”
I was honored to join a group of Richmonders that Marc Cheatham of The Cheats Movement assembled to discuss black history and leadership. He asked some thought-provoking questions that I hope will spark a broader community dialogue and fuel greater collaboration and progress. Check out the teaser below to see some of our non-answers.
Enjoy! Continue reading “Finding Tomorrow: Experiences in Black Leadership Trailer”
I was honored to join a group of Richmonders that Marc Cheatham of The Cheats Movement assembled to discuss black history and leadership. He asked some thought-provoking questions that I hope will spark a broader community dialogue and fuel greater collaboration and progress. Check out the teaser below to see some of our non-answers.
Enjoy! Continue reading “Finding Tomorrow: Experiences in Black Leadership Trailer”
