Students Launch Mothers at Booth

Women alumni with children said they have learned how to delegate responsibility and budget time wisely in order to make the most out of career and family life.

“I will promise you, I never watch TV, ever. I do not read a novel. That does not happen either,” said Susan Templeton,’05 (XP-74), founder and managing partner of Stafford Wells Advisors. When her two daughters, 11 and 13, are doing homework, “I’m in my home office, working for those two hours. I’m up at 5:30 a.m. to get certain things done. But it works, and I’m happy, and I’m loving it. I guess I can’t have it all, but right now I’m feeling like I have a lot.”

Templeton was one of five alumae in a panel discussion March 3 at Harper Center celebrating the launch of the student group Mothers at Booth. Stacey Kole,
deputy dean for the Full-Time MBA Program and clinical professor of economics, moderated the discussion. Kole said she had her first child as a graduate student in the Department of Economics at the University of Chicago. She asked about the “tension between being a parent and advancing in your career.”

Jennifer Dominiquini, ’05 (XP-74), an associate partner at the consulting firm, Prophet,
who has a 2-year-old daughter, said she faced the tension between “wanting to prove myself at my new firm and not run out the door at 6 o’clock to get home” and needing to relieve her stay-at-home husband of childcare duties “so he could go do adult things as well.” She’s had to put in extra work hours at home at night, she said.

“With my husband, in the beginning it was like a permanent negotiation until we got our schedule right,” she said.

She also had to conquer the mental hurdle of feeling guilty leaving her daughter. “I won’t say that it’s been easy, because the hours in consulting continue to be hard,” Dominiquini said, despite taking her current job, which requires less travel than a previous job did. Still, “it’s been feasible,” she said.

Dina Ross, ’87, a single mom of two boys, ages 10 and 7, sets her own hours as founder and partner of Dina B. Ross Law Offices. “I am possibly the happiest attorney on the planet,” she joked. When the hours piled up at a major law firm, she left to start her firm three years ago. Now, “my hours are my own,” she said. “I have found my balance between work, family, and sleep, which is the unspoken third bucket that you never get enough of.”

For Karen Parkhill, ’92, CFO in commercial banking at JPMorgan Chase, finding the right balance has meant cutting down on business trips.

After 16 years in investment banking at JPMorgan, Parkhill took a year’s sabbatical when her twins, now 9, were in first grade. Her job had required traveling four days a week. She returned from her time off to her current CFO position. Now she travels an average of twice a month, she said.

“The finance industry is light years behind where we need to be” in terms of helping women find the balance, Parkhill said. “There are pockets within the industry that will help you do a better job than others.” Those pockets are where there are other women who can help pave the way and serve as a support network. That’s one of the reasons she has stayed at JPMorgan Chase, she said.

Parkhill was six months into her new position at the firm when she adopted her daughter, who will turn 2 on March 21. She said her boss had been “a little taken aback” at news that she’d have a new baby arriving within two weeks. Parkhill said she had to assure him that she could still handle her new work responsibilities.

On the day Cindy Lester Rudman, ’97, told her former employer she was expecting, she got laid off within five or six hours. She used her severance to start her own business, launching Noteworthy, a retailer of personalized stationery, invitations, announcements and gifts, in 2000. She and her husband Jay Rudman, ’97, whom she’d met at the New Product Laboratory class at Chicago Booth, launched Paperly, which she describes as “an Avon or Pampered Chef business for stationery,” in 2007. Her husband is CEO and president.

“My life is constantly about juggling,” Rudman said of running her own business while caring for her children, ages 5 and 8. Happy to be setting an example for her daughter, she said she knew her kids appreciated her work when her daughter played the “I’d like to sell you some stationery game.”

“My kids have always seen me working,” Ross said. “There’s this sense that they know that although they’re the center of my universe, there are other things in my universe. I think that’s really valuable.”