Hall is packed with big names on the wall. Why do Companies Think of this as an important place to put their money . I think that Companies Really do need to sponsor this. We have a lot about women helping women, but this is going to be an issue that corporations need to put their hallmark on. That Diversity Inclusion is ly underlines our investment and commitment to diversity and inclusion. And whats interesting to me is every year when you look at the list of speakers, theres some blockbuster names there. You know, stephanie, tell me a little bit about who some of the big names are going to be. Yeah. So, anita hill is going to be there this year. And the wide array of speakers really spans entertainment, politics, media, business. So you really can pick and choose what speakers, as well as what topics, so its a vast array of topics spanning personal and professional development. E inspired to better balance in. Is there a particular speaker or breakout session that youre looking forward to . Well, actually, the president of mercers Global Talent business is speaking on the importance of engaging men. Ilya bonic is his name, so yes, i will be. [ laughs ] something you can use across the board. Liz, the day is so full. You can run from thing to thing. I enjoy participating in going to various things, but you end up having two questions. How do i retain this information the best way . And everybody will tell you to network. Well, what does that really mean, so that you walk out of that conference differently than you came in . Yeah. So, thanks, tam. Great question. You know, pecos been sponsoring the conference for 13 years. We have really found it as a Development Opportunity for a number of women in the organization. And every single year they come back and say, sign me up for next year cause i really want to attend, and so what weve tried to do to help them navigate each year is say get online, look at who the speakers are, check out the workshops, find out who you want to see, what really speaks to you. Make sure you spend some time to go into the Convention Hall and see all of the exhibitors that are there, find out when the authors are signing books. Kind of plan ahead. And also take the time to know your other colleagues that are gonna go so that you can find time to network with them, and theyre networking with other folks, as well, which really broadens who youre meeting that day. So planning ahead is a little bit, but once you walk in that Convention Hall, you see thousands of women. The energy starts, and you will just go from workshop to workshop, and a lot will hit you that day, as well. I think on one of these panels, somebody had a great piece of advice that i always kept with me. Your goal is to walk out with one persons number to call the next week to plan for coffee. Yeah. Like, if you keep it small but you do that, it can have dividends. They have a really nice mentoring opportunity thats part of the day, where you can go and meet various people from the region, so they are folks that you can stay in touch with that live here in the southeastern pennsylvania, southern new jersey that you really can be connected with as mentor mentee throughout the year. Lets talk about some of the issues that keynote speakers will be getting into. One that im fascinated by abby wambach. Weve all heard her name for the u. S. WoMens Soccer Team. That team came out and sued the organization saying that the womens soccer Team Literally if you look cumulatively, they make 1 4 of what the Mens Soccer Team is making. And as i dug into the numbers, i actually found that its hardest of all for whitecollar women. A lot of the kind of women who go to a conference like this, motherhood is an issue, specialties. A female doctor is more likely to be a pediatrics doctor than an orthopedic surgeon. Guess which one gets paid more . Listen to this. Doctors, men tend to make about 210,000. Women make 135,000. Advisers, men tend to get paid 100,000, women 62,000. So some examples of the disparity. But they said it came down mainly to this the more you work, the more you get paid. But when youre packing the lunches and taking care of grandma, its hard to say, sure, i will work 80, 90 hours. Whats a woman to do . I think that one of the key things to think about are the things that you talk about tradeoffs, and does that tradeoff make sense for you. If you want to go and put in the 80, 90 hours and making sure that youre getting paid on an equity basis, thats really critical. But i think theres other things you can make tradeoffs. So flex time, daycare assistance, ways in which you can bring in other dimensions to your pay package, which may not always just be dollars, as well. Is there Something Else to think about if you know in your 20s, 30s i want to end up in the csuite, and this is what it takes, whats the best bit of advice on how you should plan for that to make sure that your marriage holds together and your kids know your name . [ laughter ] a tall order that you have there. You know, its interesting that you mention the csuite, and that is an aspiration for some. But increasingly entrepreneurship is another way that people are breaking through barriers and theyre raising their own pay scales because theyre looking and say, okay, heres an economy where i can take my skill set, apply it here, here, and here, and increasingly thats where more young people especially are going because those opportunities to break into traditional fields are not as vast as they used to be. So planning it out definitely means you have to not only have mentors, but you have to have sponsors. You have to have a partner if youre talking about getting married and someone that shares your vision and values, because its great you know, you have to grow together. If youre not growing together, if theres no clarity as far as where you eventually want to end up, thats when you have friction, and thats when things get a little sketchy. But who knows who theyre going to be at 20 . Like, is that something you tell younger women, or women at any age . How do you raise with somebody . Everybody wants to be in the hazy romantic stage. How do you say, listen, i need to know that you can bathe a kid and get up in the middle of the night and take everybody to school. I think its really important to prioritize and recognize that you have to prioritize, even in those earlier stages. So, i mean, like, if i look back over the course of my professional life, ive had amazingly terrific men mentors, similarly with some women, but actually ive had more men mentors than ive had women mentors. And i think it depends in part on what it is that youre trying to do and where youre trying to go. So modeling if you identify a woman thats doing something that you think you want to be doing, model it. Figure out how to, you know, kind of people who bike, they talk about drafting. You know, you get behind a biker thats moving fast and you draft. Do the same thing. You know, indra nooyi, the head of pepsico, is somebody i would love to model, to raise two fabulous daughters, head up a company. She gave a talk recently as part of a conference, and, you know, we talk so much about worklife balance, and everybody thinks theres some magical dimension. She said, stop talking about it. And rather than hating the lack of worklife balance, accept it, and she told a story of learning she was gonna be the head of pepsico. And she comes home and her mother doesnt want to talk about her day. [ laughter ] and shes like, you can ask my husband, you can ask people. And she gets mad at her mother, and the mother says, leave the crown in the garage. In here, you are a wife, a mother, a daughterinlaw, a daughter. Thats what you do here. And i thought it was interesting that the mother said theres no worklife balance. There is here and there. Is it better just to accept none of it is gonna go the way you want it to . It just is what it is . Yes. [ laughs ] i think part of it, too, is being comfortable that youve built the foundation at work and the foundation at home. And quite honestly, they will both survive without you if youve built the foundation. And, you know, ive found that throughout my career you get into work, youre working overtime, its 9 00 at night, youre thinking that its falling apart at home. You get home and everybodys really okay. [ laughter ] and the reverse happens with work. You get caught in a personal situation where youve got to be home with your family and youre worried about the meeting or the issue or whatever, and you get to work and you find out its resolved or it can wait. So youve built that foundation that i think is critical and you just need to be comfortable with it. The other thing that plays into that i came to a realization in my work life, which is that if i worked 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, every day of the year, i still wouldnt get it all done. And i had to make peace with that. And when you make peace with that, it gets a little easier, and then you recognize and you prioritize. I think thats so true, cause when i counsel women, i get this question all the time from women on my team, and i counsel them that they really need to attempt a paradigm shift, because by trying to do it all in the way theyre defined doing it all, its basically like trying to be deion sanders. You want to play Major League Baseball and in the nfl at the same time. At the same level. Right. And its simply not most peoples reality. Michael jordan couldnt do it. Yeah. And so you really need to think about whats the right blend of work and life that is most fulfilling for you. And also the most important interview you may do is not with the company but whos gonna be your executive assistant. Exactly. Thats one of the things that she said. Its building the team. People dont think about that, but it can make a huge difference. Those are for people fortunate enough to have executive assistants, because lets also remember, particularly a lot of women who come into this conference, they dont. They aspire to. Theyre not there yet. And i just wanted to add one last point. The myth of the super woman, that you have to be perfect at everything, is something that a lot of women are ingrained in ever since being little girls, that you have to be the best. And thats one thing. But then you have to be perfect at everything, and that ends up being to our own detriment. Sometimes we have to accept imperfection and do those tradeoffs and say its okay. Okay, its not the perfect dinner, but youre gonna eat. Youre not gonna starve. Keep it moving. [ laughter ] mac and cheese has saved a lot of people. And i also think youre teaching the people around you to be selfsufficient, which is a great thing that youre teaching your children, that their lives dont need to be perfect. Youre wanting to teach them how to be independent people, how to deal with disappointment, and were all trying to make their lives perfect. And, in fact, what youre teaching them is really, really good skills that theyre going to take with them in a lifetime. Well, it seems like if you are not a woman on an executive track, one of the things you could come out of this with, we hear about women getting together to do casserole clubs or to do investment clubs. Maybe its a work club. You know, you will watch the kids on monday and tuesday. I will watch them on wednesday and thursday. If you dont have that executive system, maybe theres a way to backstock with your friends for you to all get ahead. Your friends, your younger siblings, your younger cousins. I mean, its always been about support, right . I mean, when you think about it, women have not always done everything. There were always grandparents. There were aunts. There were people. Now that village has kind of dispersed. We dont live in the same cities oftentimes that we grew up in, so we have to substitute that and we have to think how else might i be able to do it. It could be an intern. It could be a young person in college. It could be someone that youre mentoring. But you can find other ways. Part of its trust. But if you have to build those relationships to say, okay, how can we make this work so we can all succeed . Adam grant is one of the speakers, prominent as a warden professor. Also hes done a lot of work with Sheryl Sandberg on particularly her writing that shes done about grief. Her husband died out of the blue, leaving her with two young children, and shes talked about something she calls option b. This wasnt what i wanted, but this is what it is. Lets make the best of option b. There will be a lot of women in that room making the best of option b a divorce, a business failed, death, you name it. What is your best advice for them . You know, i want to just Say Something about Sheryl Sandberg. I think this writing that shes done recently is much more important than the writing that she did before on lean in. Lean in i think and i think this is really important for women who are aspirational she occupies a unique place in the social strata. Shes a woman born to privilege. And when youre a woman born to a unique kind of privilege and youre asking women who are blue collar, who are lowermiddle to middle class to take risks, you dont really understand what youre asking those women to do. And i think so the work that shes doing now in option b i think is much more significant and increases the probability that shell be able to speak to those women in ways that are meaningful. I think the first book, lean in, spoke to a very small segment of aspirational women who were already way ahead. Theyre on third base already. Theyre probably gonna hit a home run. So, whats the best advice for women whos sitting there saying, i was about to start a business, and he walked out. I was about to start a business, and somebody died. I was about to do whatever, and now im trying to put myself back together . I actually live option b. So, im a single mother by choice. And so i dont have that partner sponsor at home, but the thing that i think i take every day is that its possible and that it might not be possible in the way that you had expected it to be possible, but you find family. You find a different team. And then if you take every day as an individual day, what you wind up doing is stringing along years. And you just have to look back and say, okay, im not gonna be able to plan one year, two years out. How am i gonna be a single mother and be an executive . But each day i do it, and then you look back and youre at the top of the mountain, and you say, i did it. Yeah. Good advice. The other thing i would say is that you will find people that are going through the same situation, and sometimes those plan b are very personal issues that you dont want to share at work. But if youre listening, you will hear that other people have struggles, and sometimes sharing that helps you to get through it. And so kind of keeping your ears open for other folks that may be going through something similar is always very helpful. Very quickly, were down to the last minute, for our corporate women, people always often talk about money and negotiating money, but there are other things that women often forget to ask for and think about. What is your best advice beyond money that women in that room should start thinking about as part of negotiations . I think you need to think about what it is that you want. And so is it that you want more time off, better worklife balance . So getting a day a week working from home is important. Or do you want Career Advancement . So finding some sort of Mentorship Program or job rotation at work. Think about what it is that you want as an outcome besides the pay raise, and then start to ask for those things. Mine is i would agree completely with that. Mine is less about what to ask for and more practice what youre asking for. Its a negotiation. Its just like making a presentation on an issue. Know your subject matter. Be passionate about it and practice. Imagine what the comebacks are and be ready for them. Absolutely. Right. Well, were gonna take a short break, and well come back to more of this special edition of inside story. Inside story is presented by temple university. Remarkable change isnt easy. But for thoswho take charge, it comes naturally. Explore temples impact. Visit temple. Edu impact. When it comes to risking Social Security on the stock market. Pat toomey wrote the book. Im. Ive got a whole chapter in my book where i. Specifically lay out how i think we should. Reform Social Security. Toomeys plan requires wall street and bankers to manage. The accounts. Collecting fees out of your Social Security that could. Total billions. Fees they collect, even if the market crashes and. Seniors lose everything. Pat toomeys looking out for wall street, not pennsylvania. Dscc is responsible for the content of this advertising. Welcome back to this special edition of inside story focused on the pennsylvania conference for women coming up on october 6. If you want more information and to get tickets, you can go to 6abc. Com. But coming back out to the panel, were in an interesting moment here. On one hand, we saw a woman running for president. 20 women in the senate. But we keep hearing about the lack of women in boardrooms, in the csuite. Whats the truth . Where will we be in 5 or 10 years . Hopefully closer to equity. I mean, okay, 20 women in the senate. Great. Population of the united states, 51 women. Were still not there in politics. I mean, when you look at pennsylvania, we are still trying to get to 20 in the legislature and new jersey is 30 . So clearly on the political front, were still not representing all the people. So what happens in the political scene you can also see in the business scene. Hopefully when we do have more Women Leaders that they will also recognize what happens for women and say, okay, i understand that you need a worklife balance. Maybe your schedules a little different. I still want to bring you on as opposed to just rejecting you outright. And also on the subject of corporate boards, thats a really big deal, and it plays into what nia what just saying. I think that ive heard that there is a new approach to including women on corporate boards called the rule of three. Im still not seeing it. Im watching. Im waiting. But if hillary is the next president , im gonna say it. Itll be huge [ laughter ] lets talk a little bit about another speaker that will be there this week, mindy kaling, the actress who has not been shy about talking about social and political issues. And for my corporate ladies here, that is something as women ascend the ladder