The CATK Interview: Joann Lublin

0:00:01.3 Announcer: We've been about this work. Diversity, equity, inclusion, belonging. Shared through the voices of a white woman and a black man, we bring lived experiences. We have pursued D&I progress for most of our professional lives. We use Crazy and the King to cover news, tips from colleagues and hosts incredible guests. Listeners can count on Julie and I to transparently drive the conversation. We thank you for walking with us. Check it. Julie, kick off the show.

0:00:35.7 Julie: Alright, welcome, welcome, welcome to Crazy and the King. Hello, my friend.

0:00:39.5 Torin: Let me tell you something... I spent the morning with two incredible black women here in Baltimore, Maryland. They opened up a place called The Cube... Dr. Tamara Lucas has opened up the largest black women's co-working space in the country. I know definitely in the state of Maryland, but I think in the country. And I couldn't be more proud of them and the work that they are doing. And the support that they are giving to Black women, provide an example, role modeling. And especially after the year that we've had for women in the workplace and pandemic and everything else. So, when you ask me how I'm doing, my heart is full of joy for Dr. Tamara Lucas and her sister. And I'm absolutely enjoyed, because I'm in conversation with you. How are you?

0:01:36.9 Julie: Absolutely, that is awesome. I definitely would like to get her and her sister on the show to talk about why they decided to do that and really what prompted it. I think we have an idea, but from their perspective would be amazing. I am wonderful and enjoying the holiday season and all of these interviews that we have been able to bring to our listeners through the end of this calendar year 2021. And we've got an exciting one on the books for today.

0:02:06.9 Torin: Yeah, and before we get to that, I'm curious. I don't know if you've ever had these instances, but there have been people in the past, J, that have said, How is it Torin that you can walk into rooms and engage with these executives, and you don't have a college degree? I give them the squirrel face like, When did a college degree indicate or become indicative of your ability to connect, build rapport? Anyway... But nonetheless, I think there are two factors that kind of play into why I do and move the way that I do. One of them is because of travel, world traveled through my military service. The other is through my love of reading. Like there are books all around me. You see them above me, they're over here. I got another bookshelf. One over here, I got books all around me. Maybe your favorite book this year. Have you read one that really rises to the top for you?

0:03:07.3 Julie: Yeah. I think... I really obviously have enjoyed Plantation Theory, as our readers have or will hear about from John Graham. That's probably been one of the most impactful books for me this year, for sure, because it felt so real life and helped me to really understand micro-aggressions. And I think it's because I know John, that's why it impacted me so much. Color of Law, that was another... Yeah, The Color of Law was another really great one this year. But I will tell you, I've done a lot of junk reading this year. Generally speaking, I'm also a big reader like you. But I felt like in a lot of 2020 and... My Audible is full of science fiction and just silly fantasy-type novels to get me out of thinking about serious things and resetting my brain.

0:04:05.1 Torin: Yeah, well, nothing's wrong with that, and every once in a while, we do have to change up the diet of what we take, or the intake process. And quite frankly, I think it's that collaboration of information, it hits us in different sensory points. It stimulates our thinking and creative contribution differently. I don't do sci-fi, but I probably should and could do some sci-fi. I find myself always gravitating towards something around leadership, business, and certainly around relations in the humanity sector. You know, diversity or the inclusion, or how do we achieve equity? I'm always trying to find that frequency, maybe that nugget that says, If we just take this line out and if we share it, then maybe we can make a difference. So, in my signature presentation this year, I open, I always open with something when I'm speaking. So this year it was, what is required is a shift in openness and value given to the narrative by both the storyteller and the listener. Page 219 out of the book over my right shoulder, Race, Work and Leadership. And today, we actually have a guest. And this one's gonna be interested, because of so much that has happened to women, in and during the pandemic, I am really, really looking forward to speaking with Joann Lublin, who has spent a considerable amount of time with The Wall Street Journal and in journalism...

0:05:41.2 Torin: And I wanna just stop there for a moment, because in my experience this morning with Dr. Tamara Lucas, at the grand opening of The Cube, I ran into a friend that I hadn't seen in six years, seven years. And Neil... Mid-60s... And he was telling me the story of what he's been doing over the last six or seven years, and I just stopped him, and I said, "I'm happy for you. Like I'm very, very happy that you get to enjoy semi-retirement. That you have the option of choosing what it is that you want to do. That you've been able to save, put away enough money that you can enjoy your life." I said, "You know, there are millions of people that can't say that. There are millions of people that can't reflect back on an incredible career." Joann has had an incredible career, and I'm looking forward to our digging into that. So, let's get to this commercial break and come back, so we can have a rap session with... You think she understands the phrase, rap session? Probably not.

0:06:45.5 Julie: She does now. [chuckle]

0:06:47.3 Torin: Let's have a rap session with Joann Lublin, who wrote the book titled Power Moms. Quick break.

0:06:52.8 Julie: Alright. Welcome back. So today we have Joann Lublin, who was the management news editor for The Wall Street Journal, working with reporters in the US and abroad until she retired in 2018. She remains a regular journal contributor, she speaks about issues such as leadership and executive women, and she created the journal's career advice column in 1993 and kept writing It's Your Executive Career column until May of 2020. She shared its Pulitzer Prize in 2003 for stories about corporate scandals. She is the author of the popular 2016 book, Earning It: Hard Won Lessons from Trailblazing Women at the Top of the Business World. And in 2018, she won the Lifetime Achievement from the Loeb Awards, the highest accolade in business journalism. She joins us today to discuss her newest book, Power Moms: How Executive Mothers Navigate Work and Life. Welcome, Joann, to Crazy and the King.

0:07:56.4 Joann Lublin: Thanks for having me.

0:07:57.9 Torin: Yes, indeed, and we had all of that good music and fanfare and some confetti like some radio, some digital and radio confetti, if we could do that, we'd do all of that right now. And I said it in the beginning during our conversation, and I really do want you to pick up on it. Naturally, you can add a bit of color and context to the introduction that Julie just gave, but what I really want you to start with is... How did you feel moving through journalism for that period of time?

0:08:29.7 Joann: Well, as you can imagine, journalism has changed quite a bit in nearly half century since I joined the workforce, it's actually exactly a half century this year, because I was hired and began at the Wall Street Journal on July 1st, 1971, and I joined the San Francisco Bureau after having been a summer intern for the Wall Street Journal in the Washington Bureau. And when I joined the Wall Street Journal there were about a dozen women in the news department, they were all reporters, there was one woman who was a copy editor, which was like about the lowest rank on the management ladder, and in the San Francisco Bureau, there had never been a woman hired as a reporter in that bureau. What I later found out was that during World War II, when the bureaus and many workplaces were decimated by men going off to defend our freedoms, that the secretary or the news assistant in many bureaus who always was a woman, was enlisted to do some reporting work because they were so short staffed.

0:09:36.7 Joann: And then when the war ended, the guys came back and then the women were relegated back to their underpaid and overworked clerical roles. The other thing that was very strange is when I joined the Wall Street Journal as a female reporter in the San Francisco Bureau, this was still a fairly unknown phenomenon in the business world, although there have been women, newspaper women in the United States as far as I can tell since at least the civil war, but I would go and take sources out to lunch who were almost uniformly men, and they would balk when I try to put it on my American Express corporate credit card. And so I would stop them in mid-sentence, these men, of course, and say, "It's okay, it's not me paying for it, it's Dow Jones," and their hunched shoulders would go down. And I'd say, and by the way, the two biggest shareholders in Dow Jones are women, they're the grand nieces of the founder of the company. That's the kind of world that I stepped into when I joined the Journal.

0:10:45.0 Torin: Wait a minute, so in today's language, we would call that a bit of shade, so were you trying to throw a little shade on them when you let them know that the two biggest shareholders... She says, "Of course." Of course, you were... You know, J, I wonder what it was called in the 70s... Was it called shade? I don't know. Sarcasm, I guess. But how did you feel like literally, you are pioneering something new, you are traversing through a journey that few before you had done... I think about...

0:11:14.5 Joann: I feel like those women who moved into our... Settled the Great West in the 1800s and followed, almost always their husbands, there weren't very many single women out there behind the plow, but they were having to essentially till the land and have nothing to fall back on either in terms of resources or examples, they sure didn't have the internet. I sure didn't have the internet... And so... On the one hand it was very exciting to feel like I was a pioneer and that I was going where no woman had tread before, but on the other hand, it was very lonely and it was very depressing at times. Remember, in the early 1970s, there were many business clubs that were not open to women, even press clubs all over America were closed to women. And about two years after I joined the Wall Street Journal, I came and got honorable mention in the San Francisco Press Club Annual Journalism Contest, was invited to come to the awards dinner, and all the guys in the office by then knew that I was a feminist, and they were like, "You gotta boycott it. They don't allow women in the San Francisco Press Club." And I said, "Au contraire mon frer, you don't get it, if I don't show up...

0:12:34.6 Joann: And prove that, guess what? Women can be journalists. Hello... Things will never change." And so it was this notion that I was in the vanguard, but also I was blazing trails. And so when I would go to these business clubs where I had to go around to the back door to cover an event for the journal and come in where the kitchen staff came to work because women were not allowed... I remember thinking, this too will pass at some point, and I'm gonna make sure that things change. And frankly, that was the genesis for my first book.

0:13:14.0 Joann: I wrote a first person essay for a blog. The journal had some years ago called "Journal Women" in which I talked to my daughter, who was then entering the workplace, about what it had been like when I entered the workforce many years before, so that she would understand that not only had I come into the workforce and had to stand on the shoulders of the women who came before me, but that by her second day on the job as a 22 or 23-year-old, she would already have that moral responsibility to be a trailblazer and to be an example setter and to be a mentor for women who are still gonna be battling various forms of sexism and gender bias. And so that became the genesis for learning it.

0:14:01.8 Torin: Okay, I'm not trying to monopolize the conversation, but Julie, I gotta tell you, when she said hunch, she being Joann, when she said hunched over shoulders, when she talked about entering through the back door with the wait staff, she's already dropped, and I'm talking about you, Joann, as if you're not even here, because literally for Julie and I, we have these conversations every single week. And there was a period, Joann, where Julie and I would... We would actually record and then within hours of our recording, one of us would see something on the internet, in our email, and we just send one another a text, like, "If only we had waited just a moment, we would have probably thrown that or those two stories in this week's episode."

0:15:04.3 Torin: And I say that there's always something happening around oppressing other people, detaching them from equity and equality, minimizing their presence, and we're talking historically. And I swear, when you said going through the back door, all I could think about was my grandmother, my grandfather, my great-grandparents who are orderlies, who were janitorial, who had to care for the homes and the children of White people in South Florida. It just makes me freeze for a moment, like here we are in 2021, and these stories roll off of your tongue as fresh as if they had happened this year. Julie?

0:15:53.3 Julie: And I think that, as with all progress, women of my generation and certainly of my daughter's, don't appreciate and recognize the historical oppression that the generation before you and your generation have endured to help us get to this point. We have to make sure we don't take that step back, but...

0:16:12.6 Joann: Or take it for granted.

0:16:14.3 Torin: Or take it for granted. Yeah.

0:16:15.3 Julie: Take it for granted, I think is the really, really easy thing to do that gives up so much progress that's been worked for. So tell us about an idea based on the conversation we just had about what inspired you to write it. Give us an intro to the book.

0:16:32.4 Joann: Well, so this first book, which was called "Earning It", reflected interviews with 52 high-ranking corporate executive women. Most of them go on to become public company CEOs, people like Mary Barra of General Motors. A lot of really big names in that book. One chapter in that book looked at how they dealt with the issues of motherhood, and the chapter title came from a quote from one of those women, which is "Manager moms are not acrobats", and it was addressing this whole issue of work-life balance being impossible. 51 of those 52 women in the first book were boomers like me, which therefore thus becomes the basis for deciding to do a second book, and look at compare and contrast the boomer generation, these women who were the trailblazers that I wrote about, who not only most of whom were moms for that first book, but among the ones who become public company CEOs, it's like over 80% have children.

0:17:36.3 Joann: And I wondered whether things have gotten easier for the women in their, anywhere from early 30s to early 40s who, when I started reporting the book in 2019, were now moving into executive roles and have kids, had the fact that a lot of barriers had been knocked down and the most egregious forms of gender bias hopefully have been reduced, had that made things easier for the younger wave. And so what "Power Moms" does, it's a look at how things have changed and not changed between the boomer moms and the Gen Xers and the millennials, 86 executives with kids. And then in addition to that, 25 adult daughters, for the most part in their 20s to early 30s of the boomers. So all together, I interviewed 111 women, essentially looking at two and a half generations to try and get a sense of how far we've come, but more importantly, how far we have to go with the journey ahead.

0:18:44.0 Torin: Again, the title of the book is "Power Moms: How executive mothers navigate work and life. And Joann, there is the conversation that we really don't have a such thing as work-life balance. Like, I know I don't. Julie knows I don't. I know I don't. A whole lot of other people know I don't, but I'm happy, I'm okay, I'm in good health. I struggle with the phrase work-life balance, but even more, I'm struggling with... And admittedly, I haven't read the book, so I'm wondering, of the 100 and so women that have been interviewed, were any of them Black? Or how many of them were from underrepresented or marginalized communities that have risen? And is the story different for them when compared to like a Mary Barra from GM?

0:19:29.0 Joann: Right. So just under 20% of the women interviewed for the new book are women of color, and that was a much higher percentage than the first book, because again, we're seeing things are changing with the younger generation. Most of the women of color were of Asian heritage, some were Black, and some were Hispanic. What was common among the women of color for the newest book was how much they relied on their extended family to help them navigate that difficult coexistence of being successful... Working successful at home. In some cases, her parents lived with them or moved in with them when their children were small, in other cases, the grandmother of this executive mom's kids came along with the executive when she took business trips, and so she could actually be with her kids when she was out of town for a week or two at a time. But they totally recognized the importance of family, and particularly extended family, and they did not take their extended family for granted, and I think in so doing, their extended family also felt greatly appreciate.

0:20:49.8 Torin: I wanna pick up... I know I asked you a question in terms of the difference between them and say like a Mary Barra if you will, I still want you to answer that, but I just wanna put a pin in that for our listeners. This is the narrative that's not often told through the media, we hear of the single mother, we hear of the downtrodden and the crime and that Chicago is this dangerous city, when Chicago, in fact, is not even in the 25, top 25 of dangerous cities. We hear all of the negative narratives, but Joanne is highlighting the power of family, that is a very, very important fact. And I don't want that to be missed on any of our listens. The difference between those generations and maybe like some of the women from... Women of color and like a Mary Barra who is different. Joanne.

0:21:48.2 Joann: But Mary Barra is actually not that different from these women of color. Mary Barra comes from a blue collar background, both her father and grandfather were plant workers. Mary Barra went to college on a work-study program sponsored by General Motors. She had to work while she was going to school, and then when she got out of school, she had to take a full-time job at General Motors, and her first job was one in which she was one of the very few women who is not on a line role in that plant, and when she would walk around the plant in the morning, she would get cat called because she was very attractive and she was 24 years old, and one cat call would feed on the other, so it wasn't like just one guy whistled or said nasty horrible things to her when she walked by. One would sort of spark another. And so did Mary Barra put up with this? No, Mary Barra goes up to one of those guys, and I talk about this in Earning It, and says to him, "What are you doing?" And he's kind of tongue-tied, and she says, "I'm Mary Barra, I'm here to... " and I think she was in some kind of an engineering role, "Let's get to know each other." And she introduced herself, he introduced him to her, and after that, she looked him up every time she came into the plant. And guess what happened to the cat-calling? No more.

0:23:26.5 Julie: Yeah, yeah, some beauty of familiarity. So when we're talking about businesses, how are some US businesses really doing a good job at engaging and supporting employees who are parents, maybe not just women, but employees who are parents.

0:23:42.4 Joann: Well, I would highly recommend anyone who's interested in Power Moms that doesn't have time to read an entire book, just go to the very last chapter, and it focuses on a handful of pacesetter companies, the chapter is called, Making Work Workable for Parents, and I profile a handful of companies who not only at the point when I was reporting the book, which was pre-pandemic shut down, were going above and beyond, but several of those companies have continued to be pacesetters since the pandemic. What a shock. One of them is American Express.

0:24:18.2 Joann: And what's important about American Express is they not only made paid parental leave much more generous, five months of paid parental leave irrespective of gender, but they made sure that the men at the top of the company not only took it, but acted as role models in terms of having huge company-sponsored breakfast and programs in which they would talk to guys who were thinking about having a child as to not only how their career had not suffered, but how it had benefited from them taking time off. But equally important, American Express recognizes the fact that when somebody is gone from the workplace for five months, that is gonna put an additional burden on your remaining members of your team, whether they have children or not. And so as part of what American Express does that goes above and beyond, is they told supervisors that they could have additional funding for bringing in temporary staff to fill in some of those gaps. And so in my case, I show up in American Express to interview one of their top executive women who has children, and the woman who greets me from PR is from a PR agency. And I was like, "Well, where is Joe Shmo who I've been dealing with for five months to set this up?" She said, "Oh, his wife had a baby a week ago, he's out for the next five months. I'm his temporary replacement from the such and such PR firm.

0:25:49.5 Torin: Joanne, I'm wondering, we had a couple of weeks back, you bring up the issue of parental leave, and when you say parental, you didn't specify whether you were talking about the mother, the father, and I'm thinking that the women inside of the example of American Express and some others were saying parental as in both parents. Julie and I had a...

0:26:11.1 Joann: And so did American Express when they changed their policy, but not that long ago, only a couple of years ago.

0:26:17.3 Torin: Absolutely. And so a couple of weeks back, Julie and I had a conversation around parental leave for gay parents of children. Did that perhaps come up in any of your interviews? Because it is something that's a bit newer, and I'm wondering if that came up in any of your interviews.

0:26:37.2 Joann: Well, at American Express, the parental leave is available across the board, irrespective of gender affiliation. The other thing is that, and I don't believe they still have it anymore, but they put in a consulting service that was basically a parental concierge, which was available 24/7 before you went out on parental leave, even maybe while you're thinking of having a child, whether it's naturally or adoption or gay or whatever, and then it was open-ended after you returned. I did... One of those 86 executive moms interviewed for Power Moms is a gay executive mom at Nike. What was interesting about learning about her relationship with her wife is that it's a very traditional one in terms of gender roles.

0:27:29.9 Joann: In other words, her wife works from home, works part-time, is the go-to person for staying home with the kids when they're sick. The executive who was the focus of my interview tries to make sure she's at the pediatrician appointment, but her wife makes the pediatrician appointments, and so while I was happy to see her career was taking off, and she's a top lawyer at Nike, I found it somewhat amusing that they're in somewhat stereotypical sex roles in terms of their relationship. But on the other hand, that's what each of them wants to do, and so her wife has moved multiple times as the executive's career has advanced and it's working for them. And again, she took parental leave with the arrival of each of their daughters.

0:28:27.5 Torin: Somebody's gotta make breakfast, somebody's gotta make them appointments, and somebody gotta get their ass out and cut that grass. Somebody's gotta do something in every single relationship. You had us start in that last chapter, where else would you send listeners in the book that they are going to hopefully purchase this holiday season?

0:28:47.4 Joann: Well, there are several chapters that look at what I call the domestic load, which is the thing you were just alluding to, and whether couples have children or not, whether they're same sex or opposite sexes, there is always gonna be the domestic load, and there are always gonna be one more thing that has to be done. The issue we have in our society today is that we continue to have gendered role expectations. It's why relatively few men take advantage of the parental leave, or at least fully take advantage of parental leave. They're worried that their careers will suffer. It's why when Johnny gets sick, it's usually mom that gets called first rather than dad. It's why even in households without children, people sort of fall into expectations as to who does what, and it's why early in my married life with my husband, even though I thought we were both committed to our careers, and both committed to not doing everything the way our moms and dads had done, I rebelled when I realized he was mowing the grass and I was doing the dishes, and I didn't like that.

0:30:06.4 Julie: So let's talk about mom guilt. You hit a nerve, right?

[chuckle]

0:30:10.8 Julie: We were just chatting about how I just became an empty nester, and as a young executive, I lived with years of working mom guilt, and feel like it just sort of...

0:30:20.1 Joann: And how old are your children now, Julie?

0:30:22.8 Julie: Twenty-one, 20 and 18.

0:30:25.0 Joann: Okay.

0:30:25.8 Julie: So we survived it, at least this part of it anyway. And so how do working moms get past the mom guilt? And how do we teach our daughters and our sons to stop putting that mom guilt on us sometimes, when they are the worst offenders of...

0:30:44.7 Joann: Exactly.

0:30:45.0 Julie: That kind of guilt?

0:30:47.6 Joann: So I've done a lot of podcast interviews around Power Moms, and to the extent I'm interviewed by a guy who has kids, I often turn the tables on him and say, "How often have you experienced working dad guilt?" And generally, these are guys who get it. And to a man, not a single one has ever experienced working dad guilt. And to a woman, every woman who's interviewed me for this book who has children has experienced working mom guilt. Well, that mom who was the author of the title of The Working Parent chapter in Earning It, about manager moms are not acrobats, is making a repeat appearance in Power Moms. About a half a dozen of the women interviewed for Earning It make a repeat appearance in this book, and she was the one that suggested that I do an entire chapter called Ditch Working Mom Guilt, because in her opinion, it's such a waste of energy, and we need all the energy we can get. And so again, as an individual parent or prospective parent, if there's only one chapter you're gonna read, I would read the chapter on Ditch Working Mother Guilt, and even if you're a guy, because you'll look at ways as how perhaps you are aiding and abetting that guilt in the woman that you love and live with. And so...

[laughter]

0:32:10.5 Joann: The woman whose idea it was for that chapter, her best suggestion of the 10 hacks that are mentioned in there is this whole idea that we kind of look at our life as the glass half full, not the glass half empty. It's 7:00 PM, and you're finally sitting down to dinner with your children after working hard from home or at the office, don't give yourself this big hard time about, "OMG, it's 7:00 o'clock again before we're eating." Celebrate the fact that you're having dinner with your significant other and your children, and there are many, many other hacks in that chapter that I think are really great. If I could just mention one other, I think it's the importance of self-care. And there are too many women out there who think that taking care of me is selfish. Self-care is selfless, not selfish.

0:33:08.0 Torin: So, this may be just a bit redundant based on your response right there, Joann. But earlier in the year, Julie and I... We've had such a great year together. Julie and I, earlier in the year, we did a panel. We did a series of conversations for Facebook Workplace. Shoutout to Facebook Workplace. And I remember when we opened up one of the conversations, we talked about the fact that some like... I can't remember the number exactly, but it was like 2.4 or 2.8 million women had lost employment over the course of the pandemic, and that it would take another 24 consecutive months for them to regain everything that they had lost. I'm curious, as we end the conversation, what tips might you give in addition to self-care, in addition to enjoying the fact that it's 7:00 PM and you are having dinner. What would you tell women that are struggling in the workplace right now? One foot in, one foot out? Dealing with microaggressions in Zoom environments? Wondering whether or not they should go start a business, so that they don't have to deal with disrespectful leadership and un-appreciative leaders. Like I can go on and on and on, but what would you tell... Because no one can tell it better than you, what would you tell them?

0:34:31.1 Joann: Sure. I would boil it down to three tips all which have to do with choosing wisely. Choose a life partner wisely. Choose an employer or workplace wisely. Just because they've got fancy graphics that tell you what a family-friendly workplace it is, dig deeper. And thirdly, choose your mentors and sponsors wisely. A mentor is somebody who's gonna give you advice, a sponsor is the person who's gonna open the doors. And you're gonna need different mentors and different sponsors, but lots of them at different points in your career. But if you're a woman who's ambitious, a lot of them still have to be guys.

0:35:11.3 Julie: So, Joann Lublin, thank you so much. Tell us, how do our listeners find out more about you and where do they get Power Moms?

0:35:19.9 Joann: Well, you can find out a lot more information about me by checking out my website, which is very simple, www.joannlublin.com. At the very top of that website are six clicks, I am agnostic about where you can order this book. I do not wanna give all the business to online retailers. There are struggling bricks-and-mortars retailers out there we ought to be supporting as well, but they all have websites as well and you can order your copy of Power Moms. If you buy a hardback version and email me your mailing dress, I will send you a personalized autographed book-plate for free.

0:35:58.6 Torin: So love that. So, here on Crazy and the King, we do something titled Her Voice. It's a segment where we highlight women. Women that are making power moves. Women that are just resonating in powerful ways. And so, because this segment has been all about you and all about women, the work that you are doing, the work that you have done, I'd love for you to share perhaps two or so women that made a difference in your life in 2021 that perhaps you may have hit in the last quarter of the year? Who should we be aware of?

0:36:32.7 Joann: Well, one of them would be Jane Fraser. Again, not somebody I've ever met, but she's the first female CEO of Citi Group. And not only has she had a hugely successful career, but her career did not suffer when she decided, after having kids, to go part-time for a period. And there are many, many women that I meet in the course of talking about this book, who worry about whether they can dial back how much they're working when their kids are little, without sacrificing their ambitions. The other woman that I would bring to mind is Ellen Kullman. And Ellen Kullman again, is another one of these women who makes an appearance in both Earning It and in Power Moms. She not only becomes the first female CEO of DuPont, but four years later, two years ago, almost this month, goes on to become CEO again, this time, of a startup called Carbon, a 3D-printing start-up. And it's extremely rare, as we know, for women to become CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, but you can count on one hand the number of Fortune 500 female CEOs who have gone on to be a CEO again. And I think, again, that's an example worth emulating.

0:37:53.1 Torin: I love that, and I guess I'll close it out with a dear friend and one that I think has absolutely crushed it in 2021. And that's Thasunda Duckett from TIAA, who has taken over as CEO of, I want to say the fifth largest company in the Fortune 500.

0:38:11.6 Joann: Definitely would add her to the mix.

0:38:13.1 Torin: Absolutely, absolutely. So, thank you ever so much, Joann Lublin. You have been a jewel of a voice. And it's a wonderful way for us to end our 2021 run. I mean, I'd love it when Julie... Julie, you know... Thank you, Joann. J, I'd love it if you and I got to the point where we could just do a series... Not a series, but... What do you... People call it seasons. And I see some of these podcast folks out there doing seasons, and it's like 12 or 14 episodes, and then they're done. I even forgot what they are doing. But for now, we are having fun. And I absolutely thank you, this was a great conversation.

0:38:58.1 Julie: Good. Yes. Our sponsors may not be happy with us if we try that term, but we'll work on it. We'll work on it. So...

0:39:03.2 Torin: That could be true. That could be true. Do the quick mention, because I think it absolutely resonates this week.

0:39:11.4 Julie: Yeah, so just a good time, as you said, Women in the Workplace out from McKenzie from September of 2021.  Throw the link in the show notes and post it on Crazy and the King on Instagram and Facebook.

0:39:27.9 Torin: So, yet another episode of Crazy and the King. I remind each and every one of you to share the pod with your digital tribe, your social tribe, your friends when you're gathering during this holiday season. I know, who wants to listen to folks talking at a holiday party? You do, so bring up our pod. It may compete with the music that is being played, but when you all are huddled around in the cubbyhole or you're waiting for your coats to be brought back to you or whatever it is that you are doing, at least mention Crazy and the King, because what we care about is how you build high-performing teams, cultures of inclusion, that you spread the word around equity and equality. That you do an incredible job of reinforcing belonging. That's all Julie and I are committed to. And for now, we are both ghost.

0:40:22.7 Julie: See Ya! 

[music]