Last week, the Huffington Post held their first women’s conference in NY about the third metric in life: well-being. The caliber of speakers was very good, and it looked like an interesting event. Several people sent me links with summaries of the conference, including these 26 Things Every Woman Should Know About Success. A few resonated with me, including “Know the little things that bring you joy and do them”, as well as “The promise of the women’s movement was not that you’d be perfect.”
I also enjoyed reading an article the LA Times had about Gwynne Shotwell, the President of SpaceX. I identify with her love of space, her interests as a child, some of the professional experiences she has had in the aerospace industry, as well as her self-description as a ‘people engineer’ – someone who enjoys technical things and working with others. I also respect her willingness to try something new. Several times in her career she has been willing to make a pretty big change in what she was doing – leaving the car industry in Michigan, as well as taking a risk in joining SpaceX as employee #7.
I met up with some former co-workers this past week, and we had a good time catching up. One of them shared with me a book she had been assigned in a class called ‘Getting to 50/50 – How You Can Have it All by Sharing it All‘. Though she had only been assigned a few chapters, she found herself reading the entire thing even with the busyness of school. So – my copy arrived a few days ago, and I’m starting it tonight. Though the book came out in 2010, a new paperback copy with a forward from Sheryl Sandberg is coming out in a few months – nice work building on the publicity from Lean In!