Mojo Mom on the CBS Early Show and The Today Show

From my Mother's Day 2008 appearance on the CBS Early Show:

Employers are tapping into the pool of talented "SWAT Moms" -- Smart Women with Available Time -- to get professional results for short term projects. Mojo Mom author Amy Tiemann tells moms how to stay competitive in the workforce as they move their careers in a new direction.



And for good measure, here is my 2007 Mother's Day appearance on The Today Show. I still feel good that I held my own during a contentious panel discussion with Leslie Bennetts, Lisa Belkin, and Gail Saltz:



I wonder where I'll be next Mother's Day!

CBS Early Show; Flexible employment resources

I felt very fortunate to be on CBS Early Show this morning, and now I am back home in time for Mother's Day.

You can read about the segment and I'll post video as soon as I get it.

I loved the taped piece that led off the discussion of SWAT Moms, which is the concept of hiring mothers for highly-skilled, short-term projects. I knew everyone in the piece and I was so proud of my friends!

When it came time for my studio appearance, the segment was shortened at the last minute to fit the live TV schedule. I did my best to get my points across in the brief time we had to work with.

The web sites I referred to on-air were some of those recommended by Sue Shellenbarger in her Wall Street Journal article:

On-Ramps.com

FlexibleExecutives.com

FlexibleResources.com

MomCorps is another well-known staffing firm

And I want to give an additional shout-out to two partnerships that I know and admire:

In the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill Triangle, we have staffing firm Balancing Professionals, led by the dynamic duo of Kella Hatcher and Maryanne Perrin. They are fantastic colleagues who have taught me a great deal about these issues.

Nationally, CultureRx provides the expertise and framework to help companies develop ROWE, the "results-only work environment." The idea is that it doesn't matter when or were you get your work done. You can set your own schedule and work process. Goodbye to worrying about putting in "face time" in the office. Your completed work speaks for itself.

CultureRx has created a ROWE Launch Kit for managers, and CultreRx founders Cali Ressler and Jody Thompson have a new book coming out at the end of May: Why Work Sucks and How to Fix It. The title is irreverent but we can count on Cali and Jody to deliver the serious goods as well. I am eager to get my hands on an advance copy and I'll tell you more about the book by the publishing date. I am crossing my fingers that I'll be able to get Jody and Cali as guests on my podcast.

It is important to support these efforts because let's face it, we're still in the pioneering phase of getting flexible employment to be widely offered. Even though the culture is beginning to shift, many flexible arrangements are still seen as special deals, and bosses may even ask the employee to keep the arrangement quiet. Thus, these individual cases may not make the systemic impact we need.

Here's my prediction: as the Baby Boomers retire, their demand for phased retirement will push flexible employment over the tipping point, in a big way. When the bosses decide they want it for themselves, then we'll all get it.

For those of us who are juggling work and family NOW, we can't wait for a demographic wave to sweep us forward. We need to push, pull, negotiate, and speak up. So I am particularly grateful to those firms who are going out on the leading edge to make it happen for us.

Watch Mojo Mom on the CBS Early Show, Saturday May 10

Mother's Day is a great time to be Mojo Mom. Last year I appeared on The Today Show, and tomorrow I am scheduled to be on the CBS Early Show.

The segment was inspired by the Moms as Executive SWAT Team members project I participated in. UNC's Kenan-Flagler business school hired local moms to come in as "Managerial role players" to give MBA students a taste of real-world work challenges. Thus the acronym SWAT, for "Smart Women with Available Time" who could jump in on a short-term, highly skilled project.

I had the chance to be one of the role players, AND this project was a total validation of the reinvention strategies I write about in Mojo Mom, so it was a wonderful experience for me.

A question has come up in a few discussion groups, namely, why is it okay that the business school only payed us $21 an hour when we were clearly filling an important, valuable role?

I am glad that the question was asked, because we should be thinking about money. But it is not the only consideration, as this case illustrates very well.

The Kenan-Flagler project was a win-win-win situation for the MBA Students, the business school, and the managerial assessor SWAT team. We were paid for the hours we spent in training, which was a valuable experience in itself. We had the chance to step in to an executive role that reminded us that we still have our business chops, even if we have stepped off the path of traditional full-time employment. And we had a chance to work with our friends, which was really fun, especially since we were displaying a totally different side of our personalities than we usually do.

I would definitely list this experience on my resume, and could possibly get a recommendation out of it. I could sign up to do it again in the future if I needed a job, and I felt that $21 an hour was a worthwhile rate for a periodic project that developed important skills.

Want to learn more? Watch the SWAT team segment on CBS Early Show tomorrow.

My big week

I opened up my blog and couldn't believe I hadn't written since last Saturday. It's been a huge week.

On Tuesday, the election excitement in North Carolina got so intense that I felt like the kid who gets so worked up that she throws up on Christmas Eve. I had many friends report similar feelings that we were ready for the vote to actually happen.

Then we Obama supporters celebrated his massive victory. When the news reports percentage points, we can lose sight of acutal actual numbers involved: Obama won by more than 236,000 votes in our state. Clinton won Indiana by about 18,500 votes. I was really proud of the Obama volunteers throughout our North Carolina who helped deliver such decisive support as this primary comes down to the wire.

I was at the Tuesday night rally in Raleigh and I may post photos later. I got home late that evening and then up early the next morning to fly to New York to have a several meetings exploring the future of Mojo Mom...it's all good so far.

I used to be intimidated by New York but now that I've finally spent time here over the past several years, I am really starting to enjoy it. I also have a big appearance coming up tomorrow that I'll write about in a separate blog post.

Read Ellen Goodman's column on the Fair Pay Act

The last week was a busy one for me as I had an intense training in California.

The night I landed in San Jose, the Senate blocked the advancement of the Fair Pay Act, aka the Lily Ledbetter Act.

I had emailed and talked to MomsRising friends about it, and I just now realized that I hadn't blogged about it!

I highly recommend that you read Ellen Goodman's new column, "The backward plight of the working woman." As much as I already knew about this bill, Goodman put it into perspective in a way that inflamed true outrage in me.

[Lily Ledbetter] was just 26 when Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed to enforce equality in the workplace. The old stalwart - equal pay for equal work - is so universally accepted that we choose to believe it's not just a law but a fact of life.

Our gal Ledbetter, however, worked for two decades in the not-so-female-friendly ranks of Goodyear. Only when she neared retirement did an anonymous tipster slip her a reality check about her paycheck. It turned out that as a female supervisor, she was earning less than her male counterparts. She was paid on average 79 cents for every male dollar, a figure suspiciously close to the national wage gap.

Ledbetter sued Goodyear and won. But Goodyear appealed the case to the Supreme Court, which decided 5-4 that she had to have sued within six months of her first unequal pay. That basically means that if employers can hide unequal pay for six months, they are scot free.

Goodman continues, An unequal paycheck is a thief that keeps on taking. Even in retirement, Ledbetter is still, in her own words, "a second-class worker" with a pension and Social Security check that carry Goodyear's bite marks.

The House of Representatives passed the Fair Pay Act to rectify this situation, stating that an employee could sue up to 180 days after the latest unequal paycheck.

Then last week the Senate failed to advance the bill. It received a majority of votes, 56 to 42 but needed 60 votes to clear a Republican procedural hurdle and move forward.

Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama both voted for the bill. John McCain did not return to Washington to vote, which meant he effectively voted against it.

Here is a complete roll call that can tell you how your Senators voted. Please let your Senators know how you feel about this important piece of legislation.

MomsRising.org has a petition you can sign in support of the Equal Pay Act.

I've been in a number of interesting discussions with other feminists lately, and the Ledbetter Act is an important example of how many actions we have that we can all work on together. All women risk receiving unequal pay based on gender discrimination, and we need to flex our collective muscle to get this crucial law passed.

Mojo Mom on the Executive SWAT team

I'd be blogging about Sue Shellenbarger's Wall Street Journal article "How Stay-at-Home Moms Are Filling an Executive Niche" even if I wasn't personally involved. But I am proud to say that I am the "Stanford University Ph.D. in neuroscience" in Shellenbarger's piece.

Last year worked for an experimental project at UNC's Kenan-Flagler business school. I was one member of a team of about a dozen management role-players and assessors. We were trained to play two roles, a manager and a subordinate, and we'd run scenarios with the MBA students. The scenarios were quite realistic, as if the students were prepping for a meeting and trying to reach a specific goal while interacting with a difficult co-worker. These scenarios gave the students a realistic experience that went beyond book learning.

This project was valuable on several levels. Kenan-Flagler was able to assemble an incredibly talented for a low cost. One of my co-trainers, Donnabeth Leffler, named us the SWAT team, for "smart women with available time." The simulations only take place a few weeks a year, so Kenan-Flagler needed executive-level talent that could assemble at a moment's notice to work on an intense but brief project.

MBA program associate director Meghan Kelley-Gosk (whom you may remember from her profile in Mojo Mom) recruited the team of assessors from her local contacts, which included several women from our neighborhood.

Stepping into the executive role was a revelation for each of us. When we practiced role-playing with each other, I saw a whole new side to my friends. In real life I knew them as patient, kind mothers, yet they convincingly adopted the persona of an assertive and deliberately difficult executive.

This project was not going to provide a steady job for anyone, but it was the kind of opportunity I dreamed of women having when I wrote Mojo Mom. I got such a confidence boost by getting trained for this new job and then doing it well. When you think of "stay-at-home Mom" versus "MBA student," a stereotypical image might be minnows swimming with sharks. It was good to confront that image because when it came right down to it, I actually felt more like the shark. Because the MBA students are very smart, we might forget that most of them have not been in the working world for more than a few years. Compared to a twentysomething, I have come to appreciate the life experience I have accumulated through every work and family challenge I have faced.

So whatever you are doing in life, I hope your path includes opportunities that teach you new skills, and remind you how smart and talented you really are. With all the work-life challenges we face, I really feel that the tide is beginning to turn, and that employers are starting to see parents for as the workplace asset that we really can be.

The project I participated in was so successful that Kenan-Flagler expanded it this year and made it mandatory for their leadership training.

Need help in your office? Think about calling in the SWAT team.

(For more information, check out Balancing Professionals, CultureRx and MomCorps.)

The Motherhood of the Traveling Pants

This week has been way too serious, so I am going to tell you a goofy story today.

Right now I am in California for some important training that I will tell you about when I've completed it. Before training started, I had a rare, precious free day to spend in the Palo Alto area, which had been my stomping ground through the 1990's. My graduate school comrade Aparna still lives there, though she's about to move away, so I was enjoying the opportunity to stay with her family.

Making the most of my free day, I made a pilgrimage to my favorite clothing store in the whole world, Leaf & Petal. Two years I bought a pair of pants there that were so great that they were the only summer pants I really liked to wear. My friends never told me that I wore them too much, but I knew that I did, and I didn't care. They were light khaki cropped pants--almost culottes, a style I usually hate--but these were just right for hot North Carolina summers. As long as I had these pants, I never had to worry about wearing shorts again. The pants were still wearable but were finally starting to get threadbare at the seams, so I carried the pants into the store to ask if they had any more like them.

I stopped in a for a quick visit, saw they didn't have any more pants that fit like these, then went off to a much-anticipated massage appointment. After that I came back to Leaf & Petal again, shopped some more, then drove back to Aparna's house. When I got there I realized I didn't have the pants. Where could they have gone? I had been in the store, my rental car, and the massage spa. I was sure I hadn't taken the pants into the spa and they clearly were not in my empty car. So I called the store to see if I had accidentally put them down while browsing. No luck.

I was stuck with a mystery. Then in a flash I realized what had happened. I remembered one wrinkle in this story that solved the mystery.

When I had gone back to my car after the first trip to Leaf & Petal, I had clicked the remote control to unlock it, heard the beep, and gotten into the car. I was settling in when I looked down and saw an open bag of potato chips--not mine. I looked around more and realized I was not in my rental car. I had gotten into the car next to it by mistake, which just happened to be unlocked.

This really startled me. It felt really wrong to be in someone else's car, even by honest mistake, and it jolted me to realize that I was so tired and jet lagged that I had chosen the wrong vehicle. So I made sure I had my purse and hustled right out of there.

But I must have dropped the pants without realizing it....

My first reaction was to be bummed that I had lost my pants in a way that guaranteed that I'd never get them back. All I knew is that they were in a possibly green, possibly SUV-like car that had been parked in the Cambridge Avenue parking garage in Palo Alto around 11 am on Friday April 25.

But then my second, stronger reaction was to wonder what the poor car owner would think when she or he found a strange pair of pants in their car. All sorts of awkward scenarios crossed my mind. "Honey, whose pants are these?" is never a good conversation starter.

So I would love to get my size 8 Womyn cropped pants back, but even more than that, I wanted to broadcast this story to the universe in the hopes that if anyone was worried about where the strange pants came from, they would find out that there really was a perfectly innocent, if bizarre, explanation.

Bottom line? Hold onto your pants, and everyone, please lock your car!

More "Stretch Marks on Sisterhood" follow-up and fallout

Phew. There has been a flurry of response to my Women's eNews commentary, Obama v. Clinton Puts Stretch Marks on Sisterhood. I feel that I need to address this topic one more time and then let it go for a while, if that is possible.

I feel fortunate to have talked to Deborah Siegel about the responses, because she and I came up with a consensus that it would be productive for younger women to learn the history of the women's movement, and remember to show appreciation to the women who came before us and fought hard to win our basic rights.

And for Boomer feminists, you really need to start seeing us and taking our points of view seriously.

And both sides need to think, act and write with empathy. Linda Hirshman wrote a response to younger women's commentaries selectively quoting us without really engaging us on the issues. But that paled in comparison to what the Mother Jones blog did by reporting on Hirshman's piece without (apparently) reading our original work.

In Mother Jones, Courtney Martin and I are told that we have a "false consciousness" get characterized as "young women who inherited what we mothers fought for and now want us to disappear so our girls can go wild and pole dance without feeling all guilty. Caricatures work both ways, missy."

Whoa. Seriously. You'd think this was left-wingers calling out right-wingers here. Writers such as Courtney and myself are working to help feminism stay relevant for younger women! In the 1970's I was the idealistic 10-year old sitting in the basement, reading my mother's back issues of Ms. Magazine. We want to work with you but such thoughtless, knee-jerk, stereotyping is the kind of divisive rhetoric that is getting in the way.

The Mother Jones blog post is called Throwing Clinton Under the Bus to Spite Mom and I want to challenge it in two additional ways. First of all, my own mother is voting for Obama and so is my Obamican father. So this is not a personal Mom-Daughter conflict for me, but I do believe that there is a genuine generational dynamic within feminism that needs our attention.

The ridiculous caricature that Mother Jones pulled off the shelf brings up another pet peeve of mine about the Boomers: they have a serious blind spot when it comes to seeing Gen X leaders and activists coming up behind them. We've made our mark in Silicon Valley (think Google) but seem to be struggling for visibility in the political arena.

On New Year's Eve I did stand-up comedy for the first time, addressing this issue for a largely Boomer audience. I ended with a group chant among the few Gen Xers in the room, "We're here, we're 40, get used to it!" For people who said "never trust anyone under 30" to think I am still a kid would be amusing if it wasn't getting in the way of having them take my political discourse seriously.

While Mother Jones wants to pigeonhole me as a girl gone wild, I am actually a 39-year old mother and entrepreneur with a Ph. D. from Stanford and 12 years of work experience. In 2008 I will be voting in my sixth presidential election -- and in all five contests so far, a Bush or Clinton has won every single one of them.

So it's not just idealistic new voters who are attracted to Obama's grassroots engagement and message of hope. There are many of us with more than a little gray around the temples who are ready to move beyond the era when the Bush and Clinton families take turns being President.

I am grateful for the good things that happened during the Clinton years of the 1990's but I truly believe that Washington is frozen by two decades of loyalty demands to one of these families, or the other.

Bill Clinton's campaign theme song was "Don't stop thinking about tomorrow." We should remember the following lines, "Yesterday's gone, yesterday's gone...don't you look back."