Interview with Carol Evans
Carol Evans is CEO and Founder of Working Mother Media. I was first introduced to her work and amazing career through a mutual friend who gave me Carol's book, 
I was pretty nervous to meet Carol. I mean, here is a woman who has an incredibly impressive career, she's successfully navigated "the old boys club," and helped many other women find their way through this maze of working motherhood. What was she going to think of this young mother (my daughter was three-weeks-old at the time) of two taking up her time and asking her questions?
I was delighted to be greeted by a casual woman, very comfortable with herself, her family and her career. And her comfort immediately put me at ease so I felt free to actually talk to her and openly discuss all of my fears and concerns about this path we're all trying to walk.
Carol and I met first at her home in Westchester New York where I met her husband and her son. It was a rainy Sunday afternoon and we had a great time chatting and getting to know each other a little bit. She instantly made me feel at home, as did her family. A few weeks later I got to sit down and interview her over the phone about her remarkable journey through working motherhood.
Sarah: When you started out your career, did you ever imagine that you would become the expert that people see you as today?
Carol: NO! I did not. I didn't start my career to have a career. I started my career as a job in order to raise money for my book publishing company that I was very passionate about. I was publishing books. I was collecting short stories from previously unpublished authors. I had no intention of having a career, I wanted to be a writer and an artist, anything but a businesswoman. I didn't have any idea that I wanted to become a business person. I certainly didn't feel very expert at anything up to that point, except I had expertise in Russian literature, I had expertise in English literature and I had expertise in the short story. Imagining I could become an expert on issues of contemporary womanhood, was not my plan.
Sarah: In your book you talk about not seeing yourself as a businesswoman, but in the process of saving your company, did you find yourself feeling like you were falling into the role of businesswoman? Does it always feel that way to you, that it just sort of happens?
Carol: No, I think what happened is that when I was trying to fund the book publishing company, I started working in ad sales. After a year of working in ad sales, I stopped publishing my books. Because after that first year, I said, "Wow, this is really a lot more fun than I thought it was!" And a lot more creative. I had a really hard time in my mind, equating creativity, something I thought I possessed — perhaps not successfully creative, just potentially — with business. I mean I did every kind of craft I could think of, anything creative I could do, and I wasn't really good at any of it. I thought that business wasn't creative at all. I had a terrible image of business. I thought that it was boring, even evil. It was working for the "man." After a year, I realized that I was not only making a little bit of money, which was very nice, but I was also getting very excited about the work. I really enjoyed the way the work made me feel. So I just started to follow that feeling. Being someone who is competitive with herself, I found myself striving even harder in the workplace, pushing myself to be better.
After that initial introduction to business, I started to really warm up to the idea of myself as a business woman, and from there I got the job at Working Mother during its launch, and I was part of the launch team. I found that I have this passion and yearning to always do more. By the time I moved on to buying Working Mother so I could save the magazine, I was completely in love with my career.
Sarah: I don't hear that often, I really don't. It's either "I have to," "I must," "If I don't, no one else will." But to hear someone say they're in love with their career is pretty great.
Carol: Once at a CEO round table that I was running there was a man who wrote a book, and I can't remember his name, but his book was called "Business as a calling." He had been a minister or a priest, and he had gone into business. In his mind, he was equating religion with business, much the same way that I was equating business with creativity. When he talked about how he was "called" to business, it was really powerful and surprising because I realized that's what I felt too. I don't feel like I was called by a higher being, but all my yearning and desire for creativity, my search for an outlet for my own personality and authenticity, were met in business. It is really surprising and it's a concept that people don't really grasp when they're young.
Sarah: Well, people certainly don't talk about business that way ordinarily; even the not so young. I've never heard that before.
Carol: Exactly, that's why he wrote this book. And his book made me think through my own relationship with business; that it was a choice I was making over and over again. Every time my life came up against choice, I was automatically choosing business. Well, maybe not automatically, but passionately. I continually chose paths that saw me more involved in business.
Sarah: That actually gives me some hope.
Carol: You can, in a way, consciously make that your path. It's certainly much better than feeling like you have to beat yourself up to go to work.
Sarah: Yes, that's definitely much more exciting every morning! So now that we've covered your business role, I want to talk about your motherhood role. If you had the first 15 years of motherhood to do over again, what would you do differently?
Carol:I would have wanted to have a super power. And there is only one super power I want: I don't want to be able to fly, I don't want to see through windows or bend steal, I just (continued...)
