How I Got There

Now I feel like I'm always on the job. Sometimes, my daughters have dinner here with me in the office. They leave for school at a quarter of 7 and I'm usually sleeping, because when I get home at night, I work. I design in bed, from about 11 to 2. That's when I have creative time to myself. In the day, I'm juggling clients. My husband's a great, great partner--as a husband and a father. He's also a workaholic. If I didn't have somebody who was really into his own profession, there's no way he'd put up with a wife like me. I don't drink caffeine but I like to have a cocktail at night. I love apple martinis.

Women do lead differently from men. I try to share a tremendous amount with my staffers. I feel everything: the tribulations of business, the responsibility to people who depend on me to feed their families. Those things are always in my decision-making processes. Art and commerce are often conflicting concepts. You have to make compromises because the most cutting-edge things are not necessarily what sells. You have to find a balance; it's a very difficult thing to do.

KAREN HUGHES

Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy, U.S. Department of State

One of the things I say when women ask me for advice is: make the ground rules very clear. It's hard to accept a job that requires you to be at the office 15 hours a day if you intend to really only be there 10. It's one of the things we discussed when I came to work at the White House. I picked up the phone and called the president-elect and said, "You know, I'm always going to work very hard and long hours, but I also need to spend time at home." My most important responsibility is to my family and to the child I chose to have. My job is going to have to allow me to fulfill that responsibility, or I need to look at a different job. But there are two sides to this. You have to be willing to ask and you also have to have the kind of employer who's willing to consider and be flexible. My boss, the governor, and then, the president, believed in that, too. Ever since I first worked for him, he has always said if you're a mom or dad, that's your No. 1 obligation in life. I've been very blessed to have employers who were willing, at different points of my career, to give me a lot of flexibility and a lot of opportunities, like bringing my son along on the presidential campaign. As you can imagine, when you're running for president and one of your key people comes and says, "By the way, can I bring my child along?" it's got to give you some pause. But to his credit, Governor Bush immediately said that's a fabulous idea. It was really one of the most rewarding experiences of my entire career to have my son travel with me.

It would, however, have been easy for me as a senior woman to do what was right for my own family and not to say much about anybody else's. But I felt an obligation to speak up and let others know that it was OK for them to make their family a priority, too. I used to try and take a "midweek moment," where I would try to leave the office a little earlier one afternoon a week. When a reporter heard about it and ended up doing a story, I thought it would send a signal to women who were more junior that they could make the same choices.