December 2006

Setting boundaries doesn't always come naturally to Mary Pat Cornett, CMP, managing director of meetings, conventions, and travel for the Alexandria, Va.; based American Diabetes Association. When she first went back to work as a meetings director for another association when her first child was 4 months old, she was very aware of how she might be perceived as a parent. “I gave 120 percent — if anything, I gave too much to work because I didn't want anyone to have the perception that I wasn't completely dedicated.” Still, she says she had to learn pretty early on to speak up for her needs. “I would be sitting in a meeting and it would be getting later and later, and I knew I'd need to leave to pick up my children. The later it got, the more nervous and unfocused I'd get,” she says. “I learned I had to speak up right at the beginning and say, for example, that I needed to leave at 4:30. I used to feel a little guilty on both sides — at work and at home — but I am trying very hard to let go of that. If not, it will drive me crazy.”

Her two children are now 12 and 16, and she's a single parent. Along the way, she's learned that careful planning at home, as well as at work, can make all the difference. “For our activities at home, I use the same skills that I do in meeting planning,” she laughs. “The invention of the Palm Pilot was amazing. For the first time, I could put all my notes in one place.”

But she often feels as if she has put in a full day before she even gets to work. “There are all the things you need to do in the morning to get the kids out the door, and then there are the surprises, like discovering that one of the kids is sick and can't go to school.” As a director, Cornett says, “There's no way to slack on the job. I get paid to run a department and to get things done. But sometimes you just have to be out of the office if your kid is sick. So I started bringing work home and often work on weekends or before the kids wake up.”

On the plus side, she's worked for associations that offer a certain amount of flexibility in the workday. “I work about 50 hours a week, but sometimes the exact times can shift. I have a fair amount of leeway if I need to come in late or leave early.” And she's equally willing to give that kind of support to others. “The more I can support people who have dual roles, the more I find they're committed to their job,” she says. Overall, she thinks the “world has gotten more friendly to working parents than [it was] when my children were younger.”

But that doesn't necessarily make balance any easier. “The workload is the main thing,” she says. “We're all busy, busy, busy, and it feels like we're working 24 hours a day.”

More, More, More

Cornett is not alone in her quest to figure out how to do it all. According to Catalyst, a research and advisory organization on women's issues, the average working mother reports only 54 minutes of personal time a day. While personal time has been decreasing, work hours have been increasing, with the average dual-income couple reporting a combined work week of 91 hours. It doesn't take a mathematician to figure out that working mothers are squarely caught in the middle between trying to build a career and do right by their families — and themselves.

While most agree that the workplace has become much more family-friendly, employees are often expected to give 110 percent. Families are also busier than ever, with children participating in group activities at unprecedented rates and a seemingly endless supply of new articles and books on what parents must do if they don't want to raise a generation of dismal failures.

In an industry in which women dominate (76 percent of Meeting Professionals International members are women), the idea of balancing work and personal life becomes critical. “We still have a long way to go to support women, but in this industry, as in many others, we're seeing employers investing money and being creative in finding ways to help women who get to a certain level and decide to have families,” says Christine Duffy. And she knows firsthand what she's talking about, given her roles as president and CEO of Maritz Travel Co., St. Louis, chairwoman of MPI in 2005, and mother of two. “It's a constant juggle,” she says, “and everything needs to be prioritized. Sometimes it's more difficult for women, who are so involved in details, to let go and realize we can't control everything.”

Despite an easier acceptance of working mothers, “As I look back on my career and at working mothers trying to juggle it all today, if anything, it looks like it's harder now,” says Nancy Holder, who at 76 can take stock of a career that has spanned more than 50 years, including the position as the first woman executive at what was then RJR Tobacco (eventually Reynolds America) in the 1970s when her own children were 11 and 15. “It just seems like I see younger people burning out in their efforts to do everything.”

Holder, who traveled more than 200 days a year heading up the meetings department, recognizes that the perception of working women on the whole has changed for the better. “Today I don't think anyone perceives a working mother as anyone but a professional who's doing her job,” she says. “I don't know how I broke through the glass ceiling, except that I never really knew there was one. But when I was first promoted, there was absolutely some jealousy, and it was more from the other women than the men.”

One thing that hasn't changed is the guilt of working mothers. “I was harder on myself than anyone else,” says Holder. “If I had to miss a school play or something, I'd beat myself up.”

Life's Changes

While we can't control everything, many women today are taking an active role in shaping the workplace to allow them to focus on both career and family. Although Cheryl Russell's children are now grown, she made a decision when they were younger that she would work in the Maryland suburb where she lived rather than travel into Washington, D.C., where there were more associations and more opportunities. “Even knowing that I probably could have been paid more if I worked in D.C., it was always important to me to be close to home and to not have a major commute,” says Russell, a CAE who is director of convention and meetings for the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association in Rockville, Md.

The commute was also an issue for Laura Wilkin, CMP, director of marketing and events for the Sacramento-based California Independent Petroleum Association. “I was laid off from a corporate position and worked outside the meetings industry for about a year,” she says, “but I was miserable. When the opportunity came up here, I jumped on it, but I had some concerns about a longer commute than I was used to. I mentioned it during the interview, and the idea of a family-friendly workplace came up. My boss said that if I needed to leave at 4:30 instead of 5 in order to pick up my son on time, that was fine — I just needed to get the job done.” Not only did Wilkin take the job, but she plans to stay. “That kind of response has made me tremendously loyal to this association,” she says. “I could make more elsewhere, but I couldn't have this environment and this flexibility.”

That's especially true in comparison to her former position as a meeting planner for a large corporation. “I think that there was a lot less flexibility in the corporate world — there were certain rules and standards that applied to everyone.”

Ann Easterling, CAE, found flexibility in her workplace, but only after she asked for it. She was working for the Texas Society for Professional Engineers in Austin when her daughter was in first grade, and, “We discovered that the after-school teacher had stopped being as attentive as we would have liked her to be,” says Easterling. “So I went to TSPE and asked if I could telecommute from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m., and they agreed. I went into work early — at 7:30 — so that I could take time to pick the kids up from school, give them a snack, talk for a bit, and then finish up my work from home. It was before the days of the Internet, so I was still carrying disks and zip drives with me, but it was doable. I also had my schedule published so that everyone knew when I was in the office.”