Blogging with Dean Lisa Servon

Apologies for the lag in postings—I actually got away last week for a much needed mini-vacation with my family.  It’s so important to remind ourselves that the world doesn’t stop when we exit for a moment or two to gather ourselves back together.

I was back for one hectic day and then… there was Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day.  I had talked about it weeks ago with my 6-year old, C.C., and she was excited about it. The university’s program is for kids 8 and up, so I realized I’d have to keep her occupied all day myself. When I first planned to bring her, I thought it would be good for her to see me at work, to understand better the place that has me leaving the house early so many mornings and has me returning home late so many nights.  My original intention was to keep the day largely clear from meetings, but somehow I allowed one thing and then another to get put on my calendar, and next thing I knew I was pretty scheduled from 8:30 in the morning until 5:30 in the evening.  “Perhaps I shouldn’t bring her,”  I thought the day before as I analyzed the calendar and wondered how she would weather the day. “She’s probably forgotten by now….”  I don’t know if she remembered or not, but I decided to bring her anyway, with an agreement from my husband to take her to lunch while I met with some board members.

It was the right decision.  First off, she was so happy to be with me.  We brought plenty of things for her to do and, for the most part, those I met with welcomed her with warmth and enthusiasm.  As we walked into one meeting that had been scheduled the day before, and I realized that it included several senior university administrators, I wondered how it would go.  It was late afternoon and it had already been a long day.  But she was a trooper—she made a necklace and drew pictures sitting next to me at the large table.  And when she got bored, she just got down on the floor and played with her toy farm animals.  Afterwards, she declared, “I like your work, Mama, but that meeting was pretty boring.”

It seems that we are particularly adept in this country at separating work and family, and that work occupies an increasingly greater amount of parents’ time.  A few weeks ago, I clipped a great photo from the New York Times.  The caption read: “Two Votes for Denmark: Hanne Dahl, with her baby, voted Thursday at a session of the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France.” The photo shows Dahl sitting at a table with other legislators, and with both piles of official papers and her baby on the table in front of her.  I am also thinking about a guest lecture I did at Columbia in the fall shortly after becoming dean of Milano.  It was a course on women and leadership, and several of the women in the class wanted to talk to me about how to balance work and family. It’s difficult, even in a relatively forgiving field like academia.  There is no magic balance—some who study these issues have taken to calling it “work life blend” rather than “work life balance,” in tacit recognition that balance is elusive at best.

I know many of you have children and are also workers and students.  How do you navigate these waters?

I leave you with a link to an audio clip from a radio piece my good friend Anne Stuhldreher wrote for public radio—it was broadcast this past fall.

Did anyone read the April 12 New York Times article in the Week inReview section titled, “With Finance Disgraced, Which Career Will Be King?”Really interesting piece.  It talksabout how smart college students tend to follow labor market cues that signaljobs that will pay well and offer prestige.  How during the Depression civil engineering was popular, andhow people flooded the science and technology fields during the cold war.

In recent years (certainlysince I graduated from college in 1986), Wall Street has beckoned many of thebest and the brightest.   Itoffered status, glamour and power. And oh the bonuses!  UntilSeptember 2008, when suddenly the golden paving of the street began to wearthin.  Job losses in the financialsector have been enormous, and the New York City economy has been hitparticularly hard.

So, the article asks, what willbe the next status sector?  Some are betting on areas that offer deeper gratification than thepromise of wealth.  Many morepeople are giving non profit sector work closer consideration than they mighthave five or ten years ago.  Applicationsto non profit management and public policy programs like ours are up.  We are certainly pleased about that,not just because it’s good for the school but because the shift portends animportant cultural shift.

And there is a greaterrecognition that an understanding of all three of the sectors—public, private,and non profit—is key to succeeding in today’s labor market. The Times article cites a young woman who isgraduating from business school and considering two public sector jobs.  “Am I going to be a federal employeefor the next 30 years? Probably not,” the woman says. “But public-privatepartnerships are going to be increasingly important in almost any field. Andthe timing is right to do this.”

I had the opportunity to chatabout the importance of cross sectoral understanding  yesterday over lunch with Milano alum Mario Marin in SanFrancisco. Marin graduated from Milano in 1995 with a degree in urbanpolicy.  He won a prestigiousPresidential Management Internship and went to DC for two years, after which hereturned to his hometown of Los Angeles and worked in local government.  When the candidate he supported formayor did not win, Marin decided it was time to get out.  He landed a job with Grainger doinggovernment sales and says that his understanding of public sector culture iscritical to his success in the private sector.

 I, for one, feel energized by the changes in Washingtoninitiated with the November elections. And I know I’m not alone. At Milano, weare seeing an increase in the number of people who are changing careers—sometimesby choice and sometimes by necessity. This time around, they tell us, they want to make a difference. 

Wow.  I justfinished a day—spent with many other Milano colleagues and one from Lang—at aworkshop run by Catherine Orenstein who founded the Op-Ed Project.  And let me tell you, it was a day wellspent.  Orenstein started theProject after learning about the dearth of women who publish on the Op-Edpages, and decided to do something game changing.  About 85% of what you read on the Op-Ed pages is written bymen, which means they control some pretty important conversations about what’simportant.  It turns out that atleast one reason women get only 15% of that very valuable real estate is thatthey are responsible for only 15% of the submissions.

I read about Orenstein in a New York Times piece a year or so ago in which her work was profiled.   I had just come off of a yearspent as a Visiting Research Fellow at The New America Foundation in DC; likethe other fellows, part of my charge was to get my ideas out into places thatlots of people read.  However, mostof the other fellows were journalists, not academics like me.  And I had no clue about how to write anOp-Ed piece.  In the end, I wasvery successful in writing academic journal articles and policy briefs, but Idid not get a single Op-Ed published. So I was pretty excited when I read the piece in the Times.  But I wasn’t able to figure out how to tap into whatOrenstein was doing.

Fast forward a year later, when I spent a year as a ResearchFellow at the Center for Work Life Policy.  When I logged on to the computer in my new office for thefirst time, it said “Welcome Catherine Orenstein” and asked me for mypassword.  The name rang abell.  “Does Catherine Orensteinwork here?” I asked.  It turns outshe had done some work for CWLP.  Igot her contact information, and ultimately contacted her soon after I becamedean.  I wanted to bring herexpertise to Milano faculty and staff.

And today more than a dozen of us spent the day withher.  We were women and men (butmore women, which is a requirement of the Project given the stats), faculty andstaff, senior and junior.  Welearned that we are all experts and that we have something to say.  Something important.  All of us left the workshop at the endof the day with a draft of an Op-Ed piece.  And I, for one, left feeling energized to write and to workharder at figuring out how my ideas can become part of the public debate onissues about which I care deeply. Stay tuned—you may be seeing a slew of very public work coming out ofMilano over the next few weeks…