Innholdsfortegnelse for October - November 2016 i Working Mother

THE MOM Cydni Tetro CEO of 3DPlusMe, and president of retail for parent company WhiteClouds THE SPOUSE Erin Tetro THE KIDS Ryan, 15, Ethan, 11, Hailey, 9 LIVES IN Cedar Hills, UT My Job I founded and head up 3DPlusMe, a personalized 3D-experience company offering a technology platform that does 3D face scanning and turns it into 3D-printed personalized merchandise with major brands. Want to become Iron Man or a Denver Bronco? We take a high-res 3D face scan of you and turn you into a 6- to 8-inch threedimensional version (or a personalized ornament) of your favorite cartoon character or team player. We’ve had 3D printers at the Super Bowl, the World Series, San Diego Comic-Con, Target and Walmart, and work with brands like Lucasfilm/Disney (Star Wars), Dream-Works, Hasbro…

“Without a work culture that supports new parents, a paid-leave policy is simply words on paper.” —AMY BEACOM, FOUNDER AND CEO OF THE CENTER FOR PARENTAL LEAVE LEADERSHIP A day after Christmas three years ago, Floren Robinson Pressman was back at work. Her baby girl was three months old, and Floren, a managing director at Accenture, had just finished her maternity leave—eight weeks covered by her employer, plus a four-week paid extension. Floren had timed her transition so she could ease back in during a slow period; hence her arrival the day after Christmas, when not much was stirring at her New York City office. Even so, the first-time mom was overwhelmed: “I was not mentally prepared for how hard it would be. By the end of the day, I…

It was a typical workingmother’s dilemma: Amy Rojik was set to present on Sunday and Thursday at a five-day conference in Florida for 1,200 leaders and directors of her employer, accounting firm BDO USA. But then her 15-year-old daughter Skylar’s knee surgery in their hometown of Boston was delayed from the previous week to Tuesday, smack in the middle of the work event. What should Amy do? Although she could have found a substitute speaker, she’d already risen to the challenge of preparing a talk about mindfulness, personal energy and exuding positivity— not at all her wheelhouse—and was loath to give up the chance to connect with BDO’s future leaders. “I opted to fly back and forth during that conference so I could be with my daughter and also present,”…

All of the 100 Best start with at least one week of fully paid maternity leave (it’s a requirement to even register for the application), and almost all offer paid leave to new dads and adoptive parents as well. Although other companies are starting to wise up to the competitive advantage a solid leave benefit confers on them (see “Lead on Leave,” page 30), data from the Society for Human Resource Management’s 2016 survey of its employer members show that only a quarter of companies nationwide offer new-mom employees time off with pay. Once parent employees return to the office, the ability to adjust work schedules is essential in allowing us to attend school events, medical appointments and soccer games while maintaining an engaging and productive career. That’s why flextime…

Share your flex style. How do you flex? Where do you flex? Share your story or a picture of your favorite place to flex on the Working Mother Facebook page or on Twitter @_workingmother_. Be sure to include #natlflexday in your post! Visit workingmother.com/flex to download your National Flex Day badge. Post, tweet, gram and pin the badge on your own social feeds to spread the word! (You can also find the information you need to promote the cause of flex at your workplace.) Encourage your company to join with the Working Mother 100 Best Companies and demonstrate its support for National Flex Day by tweeting and posting our badge, and sharing how it supports flex for employees.…

You and your business partner get along swimmingly—until you don’t, and your disagreements turn into heated conflict. The bright side of work battles: You can use them as occasions for growth, insight and creative ideas, suggest Andrea S. Kramer and Alton B. Harris, authors of Breaking Through Bias: Communication Techniques for Women to Succeed at Work. Here’s how. View them as negotiations. Make room to air your perspectives and listen to each other. Then work together to identify spat causes, and move away from the conflict and toward finding strategies for resolution. The goal should never be to win. “Disagreements are the same as negotiations, which go poorly when it’s assumed only one side can win,” say Kramer and Harris. Think about gender. “Although it shouldn’t, it does make a…

A last-minute work trip means grabbing and packing heels, flats and sneakers. Instead of just shoving naked (grungy-soled) shoes into your carry-on, stow them in Shoes on the Fly bags to keep your footwear as organized as your business—and your clothes clean (from $19 each, shoesonthefly.com). Add Flint to your list of desk-drawer essentials: The lint roller retracts into its brightly colored body, so it won’t pick up every crumb or piece of fuzz in your drawer. Plus, it stays sticky, so it’ll work whenever you need to brush breakfast crumbs off your sweater before a morning meeting ($8, meetflint.com). Candles on your desk? You bet, especially when they’re as motivationally inclined as these from the 125 Collection. The natural soy, lead-free-wick candles offer give-it-to-you-straight quotes that remind you to…

Of the 15 industries represented by the 2016 Working Mother 100 Best Companies, the hospitals and healthcare sector employs the most women overall (71 percent), as well as in manager positions and higher (57 percent). But professionalservices firms offer, on average, more weeks of fully paid leave to new moms (11 weeks). Here are highlights of what the Best Companies offer, industry by industry. (Not listed below are the chemical, education, legal, manufacturing, nonprofit, retail and telecommunications industries, which are each represented by fewer than five companies on this year’s Best Companies list.)…

I’m writing this as I fly back from a whirlwind trip to Mumbai and Chennai in India. Having spent the past six days meeting with potential customers, D&I leaders and members of the press, I return with a renewed sense of optimism about where the world—or at least India—is heading in the area of gender equality. In partnership with recruitment and diversity consulting firm Avtar Group and its founder and leader, Saundarya Rajesh, Ph.D., we are launching the Best Companies for Women in India survey—modeled after our own 31-year-old Working Mother 100 Best Companies initiative. We are excited that more than 350 companies expressed interest and more than 140 are now completing their applications. When we honor the 2016 Working Mother 100 Best Companies at our October gala in New…

Diapers? Check. Cute baby clothes? Check. Prepared for your maternity leave? Check that off too. When it comes to maternity leave, how you leave can set the tone for how you come back to work. Here are some top things to consider when it’s time to go. Know your rights. Don’t just count on your company’s human resources department to know everything. Do your own research. You might have access to more benefits depending on where you live. Check out advocacy groups such as the National Partnership for Women & Families (nationalpartnership.org) for information on pregnancy and maternity-leave laws and how they apply to you. Set expectations. Speak with your manager as your leave approaches, and be prepared with a plan for what accommodations you might need upon your return…

Do you sit at your desk with your knees together or legs crossed? These ladylike habits could mean pain down the line (and leg), says Barbara Bergin, M.D., a surgeon at Texas Orthopedics, Sports & Rehabilitation Associates in Austin. “There are about six different conditions (including hip bursitis, sciatic-nerve pain, tendinitis and knee malalignment) where, if I see 100 people with them, 80 to 99 will be women,” she says. These usually affect women due to physically repetitive stress. Her prescription? Manspread, or sit like a man (SLAM), which she says cured her own hip bursitis. Here’s how: Do a modified manspread. Knees should be pointed to 11:00 and 1:00. “It should feel natural to let your legs drift out into that position,” she says. Fix your feet. Position them…

Even in the 21st century—with its hefty number of working-mom breadwinners— many women have deeply felt fears about managing money. Let’s call it financial phobia. It’s that secret worry that no matter how much you sock away for retirement, you’ll still end up poor. Or the idea that money management is way too complicated and you’ll make some irrevocable error. Additional fears your inner financial phobe might push around in a mental shopping cart: Money is a too-big and too-elusive concept, it’s something that should only be handled by “math people,” and it’s too late to start understanding it. Beliefs like these can lead many smart women to avoid dealing with their finances altogether, says Mary Gresham, Ph.D., an Atlanta-based clinical and financial psychologist. And even if you have a…