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Answer: Women in technical business.

I’ve been asking some of my Section Leads to answer this question for each person in their group. So, I thought I’d also do the exercise myself.

Yes, it may seem obvious. But it still puts me in a happy tizzy to talk with another woman about leading technology development, mentoring other women, collaborating together, having a major impact on our company’s direction, or even just owning and running our little corner of the business. I enjoy reading about it. I love living in it.

It feels like finding a hidden treasure – you mean you’re like *me*? You want to go build business and talk to customers and created really cool advanced technologies too? You create a vision out of hand-wavy off-the-cuff ideas and then get people to pay you to implement it? You sometimes feel like you have no idea what you’re doing, but you’ll figure it out before other people catch on? How fast can I talk? When can we have coffee/lunch/just skip my morning of meetings to chat?

Many career guides will say to find what you love and then do it. The tricky thing about finding that I like this is that I have to be in it to do it. I can’t just be a coach or mentor or full time trainer – I have to actively keep doing what I’m doing to be relevant, to make the contacts, to have something to offer. I have to be successful in the business to show others they can be successful. (You might argue about consulting, but I’m not sold. The best consultants do it, then consult, then go back to doing it, or even better they offer advice while they are doing it).

Almost across the board, I hear (and experience) it’s hard to have a healthy balance to the demands of work and to find others who reinforce that choice. It seems even harder when I’m trying to advise and coach and pave the way for others at the same time I’m doing it for myself. But, it sure makes it a lot more fun along the way to work with other women and talk about really changing the culture, not just fighting the culture we inherited.