2009

Technology, board meetings and babies

“I think women are natural logistical masterminds.” — Amy Cueva

When the volunteer panel of judges were reviewing the backgrounds of candidates for the 2009 Mass High Tech Women to Watch, the level of accomplishments displayed by the finalists was noteworthy. What also was striking was how many candidates led companies and achieved technical breakthroughs around childbirth and raising toddlers. Several judges noted that during their child-raising years their careers took an enforced break. Not so for most of this year’s Women to Watch, who are business leaders and hands-on moms.

Several of them shared their experiences in balancing home and work.

Mother of two and founder and CEO of Cambridge NanoTech Inc., Jill Becker is blunt: “I have put some people on hold because my son had a poopy diaper,” said Becker. “But it doesn’t seem to impede with the business at all. A lot of our customers are in the same boat.”

Becker once got bored reading baby books to her daughter, and so began reading nanotechnology research papers aloud. “Whenever she would get upset, I would show her the periodic table. For some reason, she would start laughing. It must have been the colors or something,” Becker said.

Becker herself grew up naturally curious and was always fixing things around the house, she said. The trait passed down to her 11-month-old son, who recently crawled under the coffee table and soon emerged with the table’s bolts removed. “He’s showing quite the engineering skills. Mommy is quite proud,” Becker said. “We fix things in our household. We don’t wait for daddy to come home.”

Intel Corp.’s Mondira Pant invests a lot of her time doing the work she loves; in fact, when asked how much time, she asked, “How many hours are there in a day? 36?” Yet she also carves out time for hobbies and family.

“I don’t think work-life balance is a skill – at the end of the day, you just do what you enjoy. It means waking up on a Friday and saying ‘TGIF,’ and it also means waking up on a Monday and saying ‘TGIM.’ That is when you know you have a good work-life balance,” Pant said.

Sandra Glucksmann, a senior vice president with Cerulean Pharma Inc. noted, “Being able to juggle a marriage, children, and a profession and coming out of it sane, I think, is an accomplishment. And they feed off each other. Had I been successful professionally, but had nothing to go home to, I wouldn’t feel as valuable.”

Mad*Pow Media Solutions LLC co-founder Amy Cueva runs a company while raising three children. “That’s a challenge. You have to run the family like you run a business,” she said. With that in mind, Cueva and her husband, Arturo, hold Sunday family meetings, where the family reviews a master calender that outlines who has extracurricular activities in the week ahead, who needs permission slips, who has tests coming up, and who’s cooking dinner. “It sounds pretty hard core, but it really helps from an organizational perspective. I think women are natural logistical masterminds. That helps in business in terms of multitasking.”

For business moms, time off for babies is limited. “My first day home from the hospital with my third-born, I had my partner over for a meeting,” Cueva recalled. “I actually brought my third-born to Starwood for many meetings.”

Sangeeta Bhatia, co-founder of Hepregen Corp., agrees that organization is a key.

“I have a mommy day once a week. I do the drop-off and pickup from school and get to talk to the teachers and do the play-dates,” she said, adding that work-life balance “is not trivial.” “You have to work really hard to achieve it. It doesn’t have to be a macho, 100-hour-week profession where you can’t have a life.”

For Heather De Jesus, director of program management at Azima DLI, technology is a way to stay connected with her family. She sends her 4-year-old daughter e-mails with thoughts and an account of the day. She hopes the letters will serve as a digital scrapbook for when her daughter is older and can reread the memories her mother has recorded.

By JAMES M. CONNOLLY, Mass High Tech Staff

View all Women to Watch articles on masshightech.com »

See a list of all past Women to Watch, 2004-2009 ↓

View Past Honorees: 2009 | 2008 | 2007 | 2006 | 2005 | 2004

2009 Honorees
Jill Becker – Cambridge NanoTech Inc.
Sangeeta Bhatia – Hepregen Corp.
Amy Cueva – Mad*Pow Media Solutions LLC
Heather De Jesus – Azima DLI
Anna Mracek Dietrich – Terrafugia Inc.
Sandra Glucksmann – Cerulean Pharma Inc.
Susan Leschine – Qteros Inc.
Ronnie Maffa – IBM Corp.
Mondira Pant – Intel Corp.
Yvonne Spicer – National Center for Technological Literacy at the Museum of Science
2008 Honorees
Afsana Akhter – Medullan Inc.
Wendy Frey Caswell – Zink Imaging Inc.
Sylvie Grégoir – Shire Human Genetic Therapies
Sadiye Guler – intuVision Inc.
Heather Healy – EMC Corp.
Deborah Louis – Authoria Inc.
Beth Marcus – Zeemote Inc.
Christine Miska – BAE Systems Inc.
Amanda Parkes – Bodega Algae LLC
Ellen Piccioli – Massachusetts Microelectronic Design Center, Intel Corp.
2007 Honorees
Deya Corzo – Genzyme Corp.
Mary Lynne Hedley – MGI Pharma Inc.
Asa Kalavade – Tatara Systems Inc.
Christina Lampe-Önnerud – Boston-Power Inc.
Paula Long – EqualLogic Inc.
Rachel Meyers – Alnylam Pharmaceuticals Inc.
Stefania Nappi – PreferredTime Inc.
Mira Sahney – Myomo Inc.
Karen Tegan Padir – Sun Microsystems Inc.
Angela Zapata – The Charles Stark Draper Laboratory
2006 Honorees
Susan Scheer Aoki – Cisco Systems Inc.
Janice Arcari – EMC Corp.
Heather Blease – Broadband Solutions Inc.
Suzette Braun – The Stop & Shop Supermarket Co., Ahold USA
Karen Donoghue – Motorola Inc.
Ellen Ferraro – Raytheon Integrated Defense Systems
Linda Fuhrman – Charles Stark Draper Laboratory Inc.
Susie Kim Riley – Camiant Inc.
Regina Valluzzi – Evolved Nanomaterial Sciences Inc.
Julianne Zimmerman – GreenFuel Technologies Corp.
2005 Honorees
Angela Belcher – MIT
Margrit Betke – Boston University Computer Science department
Anne Marie Biernacki – The Digiticians
Vicki Ann Frawley – Target Software Inc.
Heidi Perry – Charles Stark Draper Laboratory Inc.
Elizabeth Ricci – Authoria Inc.
Hollie Schmidt – Boston Cure Project for MS
Paula Soteropoulos – Genzyme Corp.
Lorraine Wheeler – Botzam Inc.
Lijun Wu – Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research Inc.
2004 Honorees
Susan Adams – Comcast Corp.
Amy Duwel – Charles Stark Draper Laboratory
Jana Eggers – Intuit Inc.
Dawn Fitzgerald – Chipwrights Inc.
Reema Gupta – EMC Corp.
Julie LeMoine – U C How
Fanny Mlinarsky – Azimuth Systems
Suja Ramnath – M/A-Com Inc. a division of Tyco International
Weng Tao – Neurotech USA
Mary Ellen Zurko – IBM Software Group

Advisory Committee

Mass High Tech, along with Trish Fleming, executive director of the MIT Enterprise Forum of Cambridge, and James M. Connolly, associate editor of Mass High Tech – co-chairs of the Women to Watch advisory committee – and Michelle Lang, Mass High Tech associate editor – digital, would like to express their thanks to the committee members who helped in making the difficult decisions when faced with the large number of submissions for this year’s Women to Watch roster.

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