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Tuesday, May 28, 2013

Work+Life Fit: The Modern Skill Every Young Woman Needs to Succeed

Check out her session "The Secrets to Work+Life "Fit" Success" on Friday Morning of the conference.

By Cali Williams Yost, CEO and Founder Flex+Strategy Group/Work+Life Fit Inc.

I graduated from Columbia Business School in 1995, and have spent the last two decades in the trenches working with hundreds of companies and thousands of individuals to create new ways to manage work, life and business. 

Earlier this year, Columbia invited me back to present to a group of prospective female students.   I began by asking the 200 bright, ambitious young women in the room, “How many of you are sitting here today making career choices based upon future personal responsibilities that you don’t even have yet?”  Almost every hand in the room went up. 

Perhaps, like those young women, you see personal and professional conflict looming in your future.  They needed a ray of hope.   Thankfully, I was able to I provide it.

First, I urged them to “go for it 100%” professionally, get as much experience as they can, and make themselves as valuable as possible.  I shared my personal stories of managing my work and life, as a business owner, wife, and mother, and I shared other examples of women who had creatively and flexibly found success on and off the job. 

But then, I translated the secrets from those stories into a “how to” practice they could apply in their lives throughout their careers.  I explained how to take action and find their own solutions based on their unique circumstances, because knowing how to manage your work+life fit, day-to-day and at major life transitions, is a modern skill we all need to succeed.  But, unfortunately, few have.

Those concrete answers gave them hope.  Their concern about future limits lightened.  After the presentation, a number of the young women approached me and said, “We are always told how impossible and hard managing our work and life will be.  Not only did you tell us that it will all be okay, but you actually told us how to do it!”

Join me on Friday, June 28th at the MBA Women’s Leadership Conference for my presentation, “The Secrets to Work+Life "Fit" Success,” and I will tell you how to do it too.   I will share the commonsense, real-world secrets for success on and off the job that every woman should know at the start of her career.  Secret #1: There is no balance! 

For more, I invite you to check out my Work+Life Fit blog, follow me on Twitter @caliyost, and “like” our Facebook page. 
facebook.com/worklifefit


Cali Williams Yost is an internationally recognized workplace flexibility expert who has pioneered new ways to manage work, life and business in the modern economy for nearly two decades.  She is the author of the new guide for everyday success on and off the job, Tweak It: Make What Matters to You Happen Every Day, (Center Street/Hachette, 2013), and the formal work and life reset "how to", Work+Life: Finding the Fit That’s Right for You (Riverhead/Penguin Group, 2004).   

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