I attended last week the 14th annual Financial Women's Association (FWA) Woman of the Year luncheon that honored Janet Lamkin President of Bank of America California.
It was held at the Sheraton Palace Hotel in San Francisco which I believe has to be one of the most beautiful city hotels I have ever seen. If you have never been, it is worth having lunch in the Garden Court.
Thanks to Financial Planner Michelle Alberda for hosting a table and inviting me to attend. Michelle was a former President of the FWA, master networker, and founder of Skirts Network: SKIRTS was founded to provide a forum for professional women to share ideas, best practices, trials and tribulations so that we can learn and grow together.
I am always inspired at events like this and love attending. In fact in 2005 I covered the FWA's 50th anniversary luncheon with its original founders. I was only one of two press people invited and fully enjoyed the stories the women provided about what corporate life was like for women in the late 50s. After seeing a few episodes of Mad Men, I have trouble imagining how these women rose to the top amidst such strong stereotypes and such a pull to conform to societies needs for women to stay home and nurture the family.
This years FWA luncheon surprised me on several accounts.
1. The event was sold out! In fact they raised 30% more than their fundraising goals. Every non-profit right now probably wants to know their secret for securing donations.
2. FWA has awarded a whopping $1.5M in scholarships to deserving young women attending schools in the Bay Area that are studying financial careers.
3. Half of the scholarship winners were focused on empowering the impoverished financially. Hmmmm ... sounds familiar (like Ms.Money's mission). I better start calling them and offering them the 1,000 evergreen Ms.Money articles for free for their non-profit use. They don't have the 2009 Scholarship winners up yet, so I am going to link to the 2008 winners.
4. That I cried. (I wasn't the only one). Now that I have a daughter (who is 8 months old), I can just imagine how proud I would feel if her video was being shown at this event showcasing her passion for empowering women financially in the world.
5. How much Janet Lamkin has accomplished in her life. Wow! Does she sleep? It is possible, if I never had to sleep, I could accomplish 50% of what she has.
6. That many business women's organizations tend to honor women with heroic achievements who are single and childless. I remember when FWE honored Pat House and the video didn't contain any immediate family members such as children or a husband. And those attending were people like her tennis pro and her massage therapist. I noticed VC Ann Windblad was also at this FWA luncheon and was honored by the FWA in previous years. She also has never been married nor had children.
Come to think of it, Oprah falls into these ranks too. She is the richest women in the world ... isn't she? And one of the hardest working, which would be impossible to achieve by dividing her attention between work and family.
I see a theme happening here. It appears that most (not all because look at Hillary Clinton, Meg Whitman, Barbara Walters, ) of the very successful women in the world have gone solo. This makes sense to me considering what it took me to create MsMoney.com - $3.5M and nearly 100 people I hired and managed in just 2 years. I lived, breathed and ate MsMoney.com. There certainly were not many attention morsels left for anyone else (such as my adoring husband.) Luckily he is an entrepreneur too and understands how much time and commitment it takes to launch a company. I am sure is thankful now I have trekked down a different life path that contains more inner peace and quiet time with the kids.
I knew early that to "have it all", I couldn't have it all at once. Hence, why I wrote a segment for the book:
Inside the Minds: Leading Women
What it Takes for Women to Succeed and Have it All in the 21st Century I wrote that 10 years ago and it still rings true to me today.
Mint.com $170M sale to Intuit made me think about reviving MsMoney.com and raising more money. Only for a split second before I told myself I was out of my mind. I spent a lot of the original investment dollars in 2000 building out the underlying software for account aggregation that made Mint.com a fledgling success. Mint.com was backed by $32M not $3M like we were. The MsMoney.com business plan required another $20M in investment for marketing dollars to advertise. We obviously never obtained this due to the dotcom implosion, otherwise you would see a very different kind of MsMoney.com now. So, instead, we now focus on education and not financial technology tools because they need much deeper pockets for success.
Recently, a new competitor to MsMoney.com has joined the fray and just raised $1M and wants to enter the financial tools arena too. The company is called LearnVest and is founded by 28 year old Alex Von Tobel. It also focuses on empowering women financially. Alex has just the right combinations of youth, ambition and connections to take LearnVest to market in a Mint.com kind of way. Good luck Alex ... I will be rooting for you. LearnVest is part of the Astia program. MsMoney.com was incubated at Astia 10 years ago and I have been sitting on the Advisory Board for the last 8 years. I spend a considerable amount of time mentoring women entrepreneurs and helping screen hundreds of women owned technology companies that would make good candidates for Venture Capital investment.
Right after I launched MsMoney.com in early 2000 with the First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton in our offices for the official ribbon cutting, 7 other competitors launched that aimed to empower women financially. Every one of them ran out of money within a year. I wonder how many new financially empowering companies (whether aimed at women or everyone) will crop up and which ones will bear fruit or end up withering on the vine.
I decided long time again, after nearly a 10 year battle with infertility, that I was going to refine my vision for success. My life would not be summed up by how many Charitable or Corporate Boards I sat on, how many millions of dollars I raised or made, or my business prowess as a big time corporate leader (aka an FWA honoree). I tried all those things and realized in my 30's that the most important thing in life to me was to feel inner peace and joy and to share that love with my two children and husband.
Now that doesn't mean I have stopped being an entrepreneur, or squelched my dreams of having a creative impact on the world through business and philanthropy, it just means I will never be on the stage with Janet Lamkin, because I couldn't possibly do everything she does and still have time for all that precious cuddling and snuggling I get from my family. And when would I ever have time to get to a dance class or the gym? Or a glass of wine with girl friends?
So, no revival for MsMoney.com. I now tell people, that I consider MsMoney.com my philanthropy and it will continue to serve as a beacon of educational light for women, children and families looking to take those first steps to money management and financial success.
Send your moms, daughters, sisters, aunts, girl friends and neighbors over to http://www.blogger.com/www.msmoney.com.
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Thanks to the FWA for inspiration on the title of this blog. They are sponsoring an event titled:
The Financial Women's Association Of San Francisco -East Bay
and the Center for the Regional Economy at Saint Mary's CollegePresents An Industry Leadership Series Event
"Redefine Your Vision of Success - People, Planet, and Yes, Profit"
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