My oldest child is now 23 years old. I took my GMATs in a special seat because the regular auditorium chairs had fold down arms that turned into desks only I was so pregnant with him that the desk would not fit over my stomach. My son was born in November and my husband and I went to my parent’s house for Christmas and I got help from them for watching my son and polishing my essays for my business school applications. When I started at the Stanford Business School, my son was 9 months old and my husband was in a Masters Degree program in Engineering.

Those two years at Stanford were wild with our son going to one or the other of our study groups each night and us taking turns staying up with him when he had fevers and earaches and chickenpox. We also took turns taking Max on excursions when the other guy had papers due or exams to study for.

Half way through the second year of business school, everyone started getting very serious and competitive about job hunting and interviews. I had a different set of criteria than the others. My highest priority was that the job would give me time with my son and with his future siblings. I had had a miscarriage during my second year at the GSB. I was the only person in my Stanford Business School class of 1987 that had a child and did not have a spouse at home.

I got a good job in marketing at Hewlett Packard and accepted it. It seemed to be as close to a “9 to 5” as I would find and had a good salary. At graduation, Max shot out of the crowd as I was climbing the stairs to accept my diploma and the Dean of the Business School did not miss a beat. He said “Elizabeth Nitze and son Max” as he handed me my degree.

Max and I went to Martha’s Vineyard for much of the summer. I was ecstatic to be able to be with him all day every day and I realized that I could not follow through with my intention to join Hewlett Packard. I distinctly remember riding my single speed bike around Edgartown one day, going to the town office where they let me borrow a typewriter, and typing up a letter to Hewlett Packard saying that I was sorry for the inconvenience I would cause them but I would not be joining their staff in the fall. I still remember the moment I slipped that envelope into the mailbox on the curb and rode off feeling naughty and relieved and liberated and happy.

I realized that I wanted to use my business school skills but I wanted control over when and how. I came up with the idea of bartering my time and skills for something that I would normally have used my salary earnings to buy. I wanted to set up the agreement so that I worked out of my house, would get the job done within a prescribed period of time and then get paid in product. I figured both sides might see this as a good deal and they did. First, I worked for an adventure travel company doing market and competitor analyses for it in return for a great trip for my husband and I, then I worked for the Stanford Alumni Travel Association doing a direct mail marketing database segmentation in return for being able to take Russian language classes at Stanford. In the meantime, I had flexible time with Max and took one summer off to have my second son and the second summer off to drive across the country with both kids and really enjoy all the places we visited.

We moved to Baltimore, MD and, in having dinner with a business associate of my husband’s, I told him of the type of market analysis I had been doing in California. It turned out that he was the Chair of a business committee that was commissioning a study of the biotechnology industry in Maryland in order to make recommendations to the state legislature about how to spend funds effectively to enhance Maryland’s competitive positioning in this important industry. He asked me if I would do the study. I told him I would if I could work out of my home and get a specified job done within a specified period of time but have no requirements for set meetings. The committee agreed and I had my first paying job after business school! I was able to learn the biotechnology industry, meet with the key players and look things up at NIH around my children’s schedules.

The report I wrote was well-received and I came to the attention of the Chair of a state-wide, public private partnership that had just been created and needed to hire someone to set up its structure and manage the national search for its Executive Director. I agreed to the job on the same terms. They included my taking the summers off. The Executive Director, chosen by the Board of the non-profit, hired me on as a consultant. I knew all the players and the relevant issues by then. I agreed to do it if I could set my own schedule and work from home. About 6 months later, I had my third child. About a month after that, the Chairman of the public private partnership fired the Executive Director and called me up to say that he wanted me to take the job. I told him, I had no idea how to be an Executive Director of a state-wide entity, had just had a baby and couldn’t possible help him. He called me back 3 or 4 times over the next few days and told me that it was my duty to the State of Maryland to do this job as there was no one else that could succeed at it.

At that point, I had a 6 year old, a 2 year old and an infant. But, I had an excellent nanny and the opportunity was, I felt, once in a lifetime so I accepted. I told the Chairman, when I accepted, that I would give him and the project one year of total commitment but that after that I needed to get back to my children. The next year was only possible because my husband left his job half way through it and was home with the children conducting a job search. My work was exhilarating and all encompassing and I had the nanny bring my oldest son to work for grown-up lunches out together and took the baby to work with me on the weekends along with diapers, formula and a playpen. The organization took off and did very well once I got it refocused, its contributions to the State of Maryland got a lot of press and the Board of CEOs, University Presidents and Government Cabinet Secretaries were thrilled.

There was a very flattering article in the Baltimore Sun about what we had accomplished. This was printed just as my husband and I decided that he would accept a job offer in New Jersey and move. I read the article, went out and bought a huge bag of my favorite penny candy, went and sat in the park and ate it all, then walked in to my Chairman’s office and reminded him that the year was up.

When we moved to New Jersey, my husband and I decided that I would stay home full-time. Our second child was having trouble in school and we decided one of us needed to really devote 100% to figuring out the problem and addressing it. After agonizing sessions in his private school where he could not fit in, we had him tested and learned that he was ADHD. I then threw myself at figuring out what that meant and how to help my child. This quest took me to specialists, to a different school where I assisted in the classroom 3 days a week, to meetings and to tough behavior modification sessions in the car, the grocery store, at bedtime and mealtimes.

I attacked the issue like a business school case and figured if I could just analyze it properly, I could solve the problem. I rapidly learned that life and children aren’t like that. I learned that it takes a great deal of time and patience and wisdom, millions of mistakes and the ability to forgive yourself to really address issues well in a family. I would never have learned this if I had not stepped into this world completely – leaving my business suits behind and trading them for sweats and t-shirts. I went to mother’s play groups with my toddler and worked very hard with my oldest son on managing his homework scheduling with an egg-timer. I lived in my car, driving the kids around from one event to the next and spending hours and hours with them at the playground, in the park, reading books, taking picnics, playing in the streams or walking in the woods. I did this for three years.

Eventually, I felt that all three children were on stable footing and this coincided with the fact that I had the opportunity to explain the merits of my Maryland public private partnership to Governor Whitman. Because the organization I ran in Maryland had been international trade-based, I was then hired as a protocol consultant to the Whitman Administration and put in charge of handling all of the foreign governments that came to the Meadowlands in 1994 for the World Cup Soccer Games. My job was to take advantage of potential trade linkages through matchmaking in the skyboxes, at lunches and dinners at the Governor’s mansion. Given that this meant my family sat in the Governor’s skybox for each of the games, I thought this was way too good an opportunity to turn down. It was also a project that enabled me to control my own schedule and have the summer off once the games were over. We went back to having a full-time nanny and I threw myself into this short-term but high-stress project.

After completing this project, I was asked by the administration to testify to Transition committees about the power and relevance of state-wide public private partnerships for economic development. After doing this a number of times, I was asked by the Whitman Administration to be the Executive Director of a new statewide public private partnership for economic development that needed to be created. Again, my husband and I carefully considered the opportunity and decided it was worth trying and that the kids and our childcare situation seemed stable enough to handle it.

My commute to Trenton was an hour each way, my job was statewide, high visibility and demanded my attendance at many events and speaking engagements for breakfasts, lunches and dinners. I remember very well the feeling of always being late to everything at home or at my children’s schools. I remember apologizing to the kids and having them very lovingly tell me that my absence had been fine. My nanny went to the mother’s day tea party with my 1st grader and stood in for me as the poems to mom were read. I missed my oldest son’s solo at the pageant. There was no flexibility in my job and the demands on my time tremendous. I tried very hard to do my best but was a wreck trying to meet the needs of both my family and my job.

The breaking point came when I left a meeting late to get to my oldest son’s lacrosse game. I rationalized that he wouldn’t notice that I had missed the first half, then the third quarter of the game. I pulled up to the field just as the referee blew his whistle and my son turned around and looked at me and shook his head. He walked across the field and sat down in the car and said “Mom, you have missed every important event in my life this year.” He started to cry and I started to cry and the next day I faxed a letter to the co-chairs of my organization telling them I needed to step down “to spend more time with my family”. Because my job was high profile, this got picked up by the morning talk show DJ on New Jersey’s most popular station – a woman – who spent an entire program asking listeners if they didn’t think this was ridiculous – that most of the world had families and jobs that they didn’t quit and that I was probably quitting for some other and more devious reason. Within the administration, I was treated as though I had not been a team player and as though I must be having some kind of breakdown.

My private sector co-chair, the Chairman of the Beneficial Corporation immediately pursued me to come back and work for him overseeing my replacement as Executive Director of the organization. He paid me generously, let me work from home part-time and gave me all the power to execute that I needed to thoroughly enjoy this new arrangement. I had paid my dues working full-time, had earned his trust and respect, had all the necessary contacts and could leverage all of these things in my new position while still being able to be there for my children as I wanted to be. I became class mother for my older son’s school, enjoyed picking my two other kids up from their schools and played hooky with them a lot to go skiing as it was a particularly great winter for snow. I became a VP at the Beneficial Corporation (part-time) and, when it was sold, was asked by its Chairman to work for him again in a new role.

He had been asked by Governor Whitman to Chair a committee to develop a restoration and reuse plan for Ellis Island after New Jersey won sovereignty over the majority of it in a Supreme Court battle. The project was extremely complicated with its key stakeholders being the States of New York and New Jersey, Jersey City, Manhattan, Congress, the National Park Service, the national historic preservation and history communities and the national ethnic groups – not to mention the 40% of Americans whose ancestors had entered the U.S. through Ellis Island. He turned around and asked me to be the Executive Director of the project. I told him I would be happy to if I could work out of the house, part-time and take the summers off. He agreed.

What followed was 4 of the most interesting years I have ever had with a project. Together, our committee was able to raise nearly $15 million to stabilize all 30 of the abandoned buildings on the island and restore two of them We developed a reuse plan with public testimony and created a working group of key stakeholders as well as a non profit to do the fundraising necessary to restore all of the buildings. I was able to set my own schedule and work out of the house so I could integrate all of the different parts of my life. I was able to take phone calls, do teleconferences and edit press releases while watching my kid’s sports practices, I could plan errands, water the plants and schedule doctor’s appointments while writing documents, answering emails and planning events. Things were busy and interesting and I felt that I was able to balance the different parts of my life.

I was asked to become the full-time Executive Director of the non profit we formed. My older son was unhappy at boarding school and my plate full. I turned it down and agreed to stay on as a consultant to the Executive Director in order to retain the flexibility I wanted. I continued with this arrangement for another two years then reached another point where I felt that I needed to be home full-time. My oldest son was applying to colleges and having a complicated year at boarding school, my second son was in a different boarding school and my third son had a sports schedule that required massive amounts of driving. I stayed home for a year doing all of these things.

An executive search firm called me to ask about a position doing a master plan for Doris Duke’s estate in New Jersey because they had learned of my work for Ellis Island. After a number of steps, this turned into a full-time job offer. Again, after consulting with my husband, I decided to take the job. I felt it offered me an opportunity to make an important difference (the estate is the largest privately owned piece of property in the most densely populated state in the nation), did not require a long commute and would allow the flexibility I wanted to visit my sons at school and do the driving needed for sports commitments. After about 9 months of this fascinating opportunity, my husband got a job offer he couldn’t refuse in Maryland so we made the difficult decision to move again and for me to quit my job.

I took a year getting our house sold in New Jersey, getting us moved in to a house in Washington, DC and getting us plugged in with new friends and new activities. I offered to help organize a foreign policy salon that I found interesting and was asked to take over most of its strategic and operational tasks. I did this for 6 months and thought about what next step would make the most sense for me. I decided I wanted to work full-time and I wanted what I did to be making a difference and be something I could control the outcome of. On summer vacation in Maine, I met the chief recruiter for a non profit called Ashoka at a dinner party. She persuaded me to interview with the firm and I thought it was a perfect fit with what I wanted to do. I joined the firm 6 months ago.

My oldest son is now a recon marine and in Iraq until October. He left Vanderbilt after a term to join the marines and has been getting exactly what he had hoped to get out of it ever since. He will start at Harvard College in January, has gotten engaged to his soul mate who graduates from Brown this May and the two of them will live together in Boston while he finishes college and she works for a consulting firm. My second son decided he wanted to go to school in Washington at the end of his junior year and left Deerfield Academy to do so. He decided he wanted to do two years in his new school so found one where he has been able to take two years of senior courses. He is rowing competitively, getting straight As, has a job and is a delight to have back in the household. My third son is at Deerfield Academy and thriving there. Thank heavens for Southwest Airlines so we can go and see as many of his games as we do.

The decision to work full-time at this current job was made with a different set of priorities in mind than for other jobs. I have one son fully responsible for himself, one who is 18 and drives and organizes me around the house and one in boarding school. This means that I am now able to travel for work and, having always been interested in international organizations, I joined one. I have been to Johannesburg, South Africa; Bangalore, India; Cairo, Egypt, and am off to Berlin Germany next week. I have a staff around the world that I can do calls with from home or at work. I am doing something that I really believe in – supporting the work of social entrepreneurs around the world and encouraging business entrepreneurs and leaders to pursue joint ventures with them. I am in regular contact with people who ARE changing the world and with those who want to help to change the world with their resources. I am often in meetings where I pinch myself wondering how it is possible for me to be being paid to get to do what I do.

I have made many mistakes along the way but I have tried to do everything I did with integrity and to the best of my abilities. For this, I know that my children forgive me my many faults and, because of this, I have had a series of fascinating jobs that enabled me to feel that I was making a difference in the world. The one thing I have learned is that there isn’t any right answer or right way to go about things. All we can do is bumble along and do our best, recognize and admit mistakes, and be unconditionally loving and humble with our children.

Here are some of the lessons I feel I’ve learned:
1) Whatever the plan is, it changes and you need to be flexible enough to change with it
2) You need to be paying attention to what your family needs and prioritize that first
3) You need to pay your dues by working full-time or pro bono to gain credibility, trust, reputation – then you can set your own terms because people need you
4) The more confident you are about telling employers when you are (not) available the more easily they accept your terms
5) Being at a birthday party or a soccer game can legitimately be described as a “meeting” and should be. Use business terminology when describing your availability
6) Any job that requires most of the work to be done by phone or computer and where the meetings are set up by you is an excellent fit with the life of a mom
7) Every job opportunity I have had started with a conversation during a social situation. Don’t stand in the corner at cocktail parties talking to the other moms about bus schedules.
8) You need to continually reassess the health of your family with your spouse and recalibrate as necessary.
9) When a great opportunity comes along, go for it! If it isn’t working out – quit!
10) Always leave jobs on good terms. Often this results in your being hired for your next project.