Work-Life Balance

JUGGLING BUSY LIVES IS NOT EASY, BUT CAN BE MASTERED

LLong before she became a professional engineer, Jennifer Sesay took a courageous leap of faith. She moved from her home country of Sierra Leone to Wisconsin to attend college. She knew that if she stayed in Freetown, she had little hope of an accomplished and fulfilling life. The young woman with dreams of achievement came to the

United States without any family or friends but with more than enough ambition and drive.

A decade later Sesay is an electrical systems engineer with Gulfstream Aerospace Corp. in Savannah, Ga. Her job involves supporting the development and certification of some of the avionics systems on Gulfstream aircraft.

Sesay, 29, said her life now is fairly well balanced with challenging work, a fiancé she plans to marry in upcoming months, regular exercise, commitments to her church and community and adequate rest.

However, that wasn’t always the case.

Sesay recalled a time a couple of years ago she threw too much of herself into work and was not mindful of achieving better balance.

“There were times I would go home and dream about work,” Sesay said. “I was burning the candle at both ends.”

Now she rarely brings her laptop home and has made a conscious effort to focus on work while at the office and focus on everything else when she’s away from the job.

The wake-up call came after she got sick and couldn’t shake it. After repeated doctor visits, her physician suggested that her symptoms might be stress-related.

Sesay said that assessment caused her to question herself.

“I started looking inside. I asked what I am doing,” she said. “Maybe I need some help delegating. Maybe I am carrying too much myself. Maybe I don’t need to go to all these meetings.”

She decided to pump the brakes a bit at work and slow down. Sesay also made a courageous decision to go to management at her company and ask for help in prioritizing projects and delegating some tasks to others. She got the support she needed.

Now she’s more relaxed. Outside of work, Sesay is involved with her church and volunteers in the community in addition to planning her upcoming nuptials and visiting with her fiancé’s family in Virginia. She tries to return to Sierra Leone each year at Christmas.

As for keeping balance in her life, Sesay sees progress.

“I think I have gotten better the older I get,” she said.

For nearly three decades, Agnes Morrow has held two important jobs: one as a chemist with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the other as a mom. However, Morrow said she always viewed the mother role as her most important.

Thanks to the flexibility of her day job, Morrow has been able to volunteer for responsibilities related to her children’s school and extracurricular activities such as swimming, basketball, band, numerous clubs as well as church involvement.

“My kids were always first on my list,” said Morrow, who recalled staying up late at night to finish work at home or go to the office on weekends so that she was able to attend her children’s practices, games, shows and other events.

She said during their formative years most of her volunteer work centered on their activities.

Agnes Morrow, chemist, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

“I worked around it really well,” Morrow said.

Morrow’s approach apparently did not impede her career. She’s held three positions with the U.S. Corps of Engineers—as a bench chemist, instrumentation chemist and research chemist. “It didn’t hinder me at all,” she said. Her current work at the Engineer Research and Development Center near Pittsburgh involves the cleanup of contaminated ground water at Army training ranges.

After attaining her bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Alcorn State University and her master’s in environmental science from Jackson State University, Morrow weighed the pros and cons of pursuing a Ph.D. and decided against it.

“Money is not everything,” she said. “A Ph.D. would take away from my family.”

Morrow’s oldest daughter is now 27 and in the early stages of her career as a chemist and her younger daughter is 19 and majoring in math in college.

According to Morrow, the key to achieving balance in one’s life is identifying what’s most important to you and focusing on it and learning how to say no. Each professional woman needs to determine her priorities and not worry about comparing themselves to others or keeping up with the Joneses.

Part of the reason for Morrow’s approach, she said, has to do with her character. “I gave my all to them (daughters) and my all to my work.”

Asked if being a fully committed mother and chemist was difficult, Morrow said it wasn’t.

“I didn’t look at it as losing sleep,” she said. “I enjoyed doing things with them. Since I have a positive attitude, it wasn’t that bad.”

In fact, Morrow said she once told a co-worker that if she died to make sure to let her daughters know that “I was happy and content with my life.”

Morrow said she has no regrets about the demands on her time and how she juggled responsibilities during their younger years. Now with her husband away from home quite often for his work and her daughters building their lives, Morrow said she’s enjoying the life of an empty nester. She now has time to read and exercise—activities she neglected while her children were growing up.

Morrow said she believes women have a unique inner strength.

“I tell everyone females are survivors. We just do everything,” said Morrow, adding that women tend to make sure that their children and others are taken care of first and worry about themselves last. “We don’t complain. We just do what we have to do. Whether we have a spouse or don’t have a spouse, it still falls on mom.”

Karen M. Potts credits having a flexible work environment and a spouse who is a true partner for her ability to juggle the demands of her private and professional lives.

Potts is senior director of customer planning and analysis for Sam’s Club, a division of Wal-Mart, and is responsible for everything having to do with information technology (IT). She is also a wife and mother of three college-age daughters (two studying pre-med at Xavier University and one a recent graduate of Howard University who is in her first year of law school at Yale).

When her girls were younger, Potts and her husband, who is also a WalMart associate, divided home duties into morning and evening shifts. She had the morning shift and took care of everything involving getting them up and out the house and he was responsible for afternoon duties.

“The most important thing was having s support system,” Potts said. “Being organized helped me to be successful. I try to be very deliberate in what I am doing and how I utilize my time.”

Karen M. Potts, senior director of customer planning and analysis for Sam’s Club, a division of Wal-Mart

Hiring a housekeeper to take care of routine chores helped Potts to free up time to be available and present at her daughters’ soccer games and other activities.

“It allowed me to be better able to spend time with them,” said Potts, adding that she is also fortunate to have a husband who has been actively involved in their children’s lives.

Working at an organization that values its employees and their families, and offers opportunities for training and growth is also important, she said.

Potts, who has bachelor’s and master’s degrees in computer science, has been with Wal-Mart for six years and in her current position for seven months. Through her company, she had had different career opportunities with increasing responsibility. And her employer has been good about having flexible work schedules and allowing staff to work from home when conflicts arise. Potts added that her position in IT allows her to use cutting-edge technology for conference calls and working remotely, which is a plus for her family. One of Potts’ tactics is to block out time on her calendar at the start and end of each day for personal downtime.

“With the girls I was always able to structure their evenings so I could get a good night’s sleep and be ready for the next day,” she said.

She added that regular exercise has long been another crucial element in her day. Potts said she’s more alert and focused, less stressed and has a greater energy level when she’s exercising and is more lethargic when she’s not.

And geographic changes have also made a difference for Potts.

She recalled that while living in California, her commute could take as long as an hour but since moving to the smaller Bentonville, Ark., community it’s much easier to get around. Where she previously would take her clothes with her to change after working out, she now has time to exercise at a gym at 5 a.m.

Potts said listening to spiritual music while on the treadmill is one way she stays connected spiritually and that she often mediates during her workouts—all of which help to keep her grounded.

She offers the following advice to young women struggling to find balance in their lives:

• Make time for activities, events and issues that focus on what’s most interesting to you

• Understand that you are a work in progress

• Define your personal goals and find someone to share those goals with

Chandra V. Curtis, Ph.D. long ago achieved harmony between her work life and personal life.

That’s because early on she determined that her health and mental well-being were just as important as her research and her career.

Curtis is the research and applied science team lead for Space and Naval Warfare System Center Atlantic’s Science and Technology Competency, which means she manages a group of scientists and ensures that the group’s scientific credibility is continually pushed higher.

However, dragon boat races, charity relay competitions, tutoring and mentoring are some of the activities Curtis embraces during her time away from work. Even when she was based overseas (in Singapore in an engineer and scientist exchange program and in Japan as associate director of the Office of Naval Research), she got involved in local cultural programs—taking an art of Japanese drumming class while stationed in Tokyo in 2008.

A single woman with no children, Curtis said sometimes others have expectations of what single women should take on as volunteers because their home life is different than women with spouses and children.

“I have seen some things that imply because I am single and I don’t have the same demands as someone with a family I can take on more,” said Curtis. However, she said it’s never escalated to the point of being a problem and that ultimately each woman must decide for herself.

Curtis has made helping youth find their way one of her priorities.

While she often judges youth science, technology, engineering and math competitions, she said one of her favorite and most rewarding volunteer experiences started as a particularly frustrating one.

Chandra Curtis, research and applied science team lead for Space and Naval Warfare System Center Atlantic’s Science and Technology Competency.

“I didn’t know how to get through…They (the youth) were so used to fighting and ignoring anyone who would come in,” said Curtis. “I believe they felt I was on there to fill a position and wasn’t really there because I cared. It took some time to develop trust.”

At one point she wasn’t sure she wanted to continue volunteering because of her doubts about being effective. However she went on tutoring the young people in math, current events, English and attempting to broaden their horizons and build their self-esteem. She explained that too many of the children she encountered were content to work fast food jobs and live at home. “When I talked to them, they don’t see women and they don’t see people of color that are successful if they are not in entertainment,” said Curtis. “I wanted to convey the message if you put your mind to it you can be as successful as I have been successful.”

A graduate of North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, where she earned three degrees (bachelor, master and doctorate) in electrical engineering, Curtis served the U.S. Navy as a civilian for just over five years, but has been a civil servant for almost 12 years.

by Gale Horton Gay, ghorton@ccgmag.com