From the outside, it appeared that Katrina Alcorn was “doing it all.” She had three healthy kids, a loving husband and a growing career. Then one day in 2009 while driving to Target to buy diapers, it all came to a crashing halt when she had a breakdown. As she battled her way through crippling depression and tried to heal, she wondered how other women – many others with less supportive bosses, less engaged spouses and lower paychecks – were managing it. As she began talking to other women and listened to their stories of migraines, depression and anxiety, she realized they weren’t. Like her, many were just hanging on by a loose thread.  → Read More

I recall the first phone conversation I had with a potential client. A husband, dad, and CEO of a successful company, he asked me to provide financial advice for his family. During our talk, I shared what we would cover during our face-to-face appointment that would take place the following week. “I look forward to meeting your wife,” I said.
“Oh, she doesn’t have to be there because I take care of all the finances,” he said. Clearly, this is an extreme case of a woman putting her financial well-being in someone else’s hands.  → Read More

The most common shared story in our country today is the financial insecurity of American families. Today, more than one in three Americans—more than 100 million people—live in poverty or on the edge of it. Half of all Americans will spend at least a few months churning into and out of poverty during their lifetimes. This economic immobility and inequality is a systemic and pervasive problem that President Barack Obama recently described as “the defining challenge of our time.”  → Read More

So many of us have spent precious time reaching for the stars, or leaning in to our careers, that we’ve forgotten how to construct a firm ground to stand on. Sadly, we often don’t have that luxury. Working full time, feeding and educating our children, caring for our parents while acting as the primary provider has left us in a vulnerable position of floating too close to the edge. Ascending that ladder to success, and learning how to dress for it once we’re there, has sent us to a satellite far away from our base. So little time, relatively speaking, is spent finding solutions as to how we can solidify ourselves, financially, emotionally and spiritually so that we don’t feel one job, one paycheck, one relationship and one prayer away from a stratospheric disaster. Houston, we have a problem.  → Read More

I’ve got three boys ages 5, 3 and 9 months young. They’re all perfectly spaced by 2 years and 5 months. People say I have a team. Oh yeah, I love my wife. She’s on the team too! She finances our team and she organizes our space.  → Read More

I’m a working mother of two small children, and I’ve breastfed them both. In fact, I’m currently somewhere in the middle of breastfeeding my second child, who has cut two teeth recently and knows how to use them, so we’ll see how much longer this continues. And it’s been interesting, being alive and mothering and breastfeeding during a time of historically high intrusion into women’s nutrition relationships with their babies. I’m not a breastfeeding crusader – quite the contrary, actually. I’ve found the whole situation to be exhausting and crazy and difficult.  → Read More

From discussing the female soldier experience on Veteran’s Day to assessing how to use our power wisely, it’s been a great week for discussions about modern women. These conversations continued around the web, so we selected some of the best for you to enjoy.  → Read More

Many report how joyless they feel. Their calendars brim with activities, juggling product launches, organizational audits and transatlantic flights with much-needed “vacations” or rugged retreats to find the genome of their soul. For all this activity—however important or rewarding or “fulfilling”—the news I often hear back is: I’m overwhelmed. I’m exhausted. Or simply: I don’t know what gives me joy anymore. Here’s how you can change all of that:  → Read More

The intersection of care and career is a pain point for many women – and men – as more households are perpetually managing the juggle of raising children and working outside of the home. Debora Spar, President of Barnard College, and author of Wonder Women: Sex, Power and the Quest for Perfection, has been a leading force in igniting conversations around women and leadership. She shared some of her insights on this topic with us via email.  → Read More