The back, and we would send you information. We will have a panel of 50 minutes. Well try to do 40 minutes of q a, or questions up here, and then followed by a short q a where you guys can ask questions. We are going to be recording this i guess, for cnn and so i guess we can still find out where we can see that on cnn when that will run. We do have a hashtag, wmgbea15 or, of course bea15. And we are thrilled to have our wonderful speakers. Ill start with Bethlam Forsa president of pearson learning services. She was managing director of learning services globally. Before joining pearson, she was executive Vice President of Global Product Development and operations at Houghton Mifflin. Bethlam is an active member in the new york city Startup Community and sits on the board of directors of librafy. We have madeline mcintosh, now president of Penguin Publishing group, Penguin Random house, where she oversees penguins adult publishing businesses in the u. S. Previously, maaed line served as the first president and coo of Penguin Random house u. S. , and prior to the merger of random house. We have lisa sharkey senior Vice President and director of Creative Development at hard per collins. Hard per collins. Harpercollins. She is a twotime emmy winner and former president of al roker entertainment as well as being a senior producer at Good Morning America and inside edition. Thank you all for participating today. I know youre all very busy. Lets get started with some questions about your leadership style. Bethlam could you start us off by talking about how would you describe your leadership style . Thank you lisa, and good morning, everyone. I would describe my leadership style as being very authentic, decisive, passionate about what i do and very much a change agent. Great. And, madeline . Well, i think i should start by saying we were noticing the way we prepared is scrambling things on paper. [laughter] probably over breakfast this morning. But when i was reading the questions aloud in my apartment morning my, one of my 11yearold sons said, oh, mommy, thats ease a city, youre a tyrant easy youre a tyrant. [laughter] thank you. But happily i am, hopefully, the colleagues here who have worked with me would not think that that rings true for me. [laughter] i think my style is, essentially, you know, i grew up as a very shy bookish girl who learned to compensate for the fact that i never really wanted to talk by being a really good listener. So i tend to really use my strength in listening, asking questions. My ideal is if i have really strong people working for me, and what i help do is get decisions made and help them kind of flourish. Great. And, lisa. Well, i would say my management style at home would be part tyrant [laughter] and part completely neurotic mother. But at work i would say that im, my management style would be Something Like a den mother. I consider myself someone whose job it is every day to help bring younger people to the forefront and to help teach them and train them in creativity and in knowing that their ideas are important and that they need to come up with no ones new ones on a regular basis. Great. The descriptions are very different than if we had some men up here. Do you feel you manage differently than men . Bethlam . Absolutely. I think there are inherent differences between men and women, and i think those are going to be absolutely apparent. I, before the Publishing Industry i worked in an industry where it was primarily dominated by men. When i was at accenture, i forgot the percentage very low percentage of women who make it to partnership and, you know this is normal not just for accenture but for other Investment Banking type of jobs, when they start the recruiting process where all of us come out of colleges or Business School and so forth, its about 50 50. And throughout the process you will see some kind of a weeding out if you want to use that word. And i think throughout that process because as i was coming up the ladder, so to speak i worked most of the time for men who were the partners a very small percentage of women were partners. Wiz lucky enough i was lucky enough, i worked also with a woman partner who was phenomenal but our style of management our overall approach on how we deal with clients or otherwise is very different. I think we sometimes tend to think men are much more decisive, and they make the big decision and so forth. Im willing to say like i think ill go head to to head with a man around being very decisive. So i think there are a lot of things that we do that are very different and sometimes i think women, we try to be like men and in my old age ive come to realize i dont have to do that. Im very comfortable with who i am with all my defects, but i think we do manage very differently. Great. Anyone else want to comment on that . Well, i came from a different industry, so i came from news where male bosses when i was coming up in news were known to throw typewriters across the room. It was, you know, and even as a woman growing up in the news business, it was a macho situation. As a mother with Young Children i sneaked down a back stairs so i could leave around 8 00 at night with the hope that maybe i would see one of my children off to bed. I will say that i think men and women are just as capable as being nurturing or too domineering and i dont necessarily see it divided down the lines of sex and more just personality types. I currently work at harpercollins which is my boss, michael morrison, whos a man and brian murray, a man theyre both wonderful leaders that dont throw typewriters or computers across the room. [laughter] and i previously worked for Jane Friedman in Book Publishing who i would say was more demonstrative in the terms of affectionate, you know, more somebody who would hug you when she sees you but still very strong leadership. And i think you can be a bad leader as a man or a woman but i do think women and i would agree with you its especially if youre trying to manage a family and a business you have to learn that juggle and, you know, give a busy person a task, and theyll get it done really quickly, and i tend to think that women can make decisions extremely quickly. Great. Well madeline lets go to the next question. How did you build your leadership skills . How did i build my well, can i just Say Something on last one . Sure. [laughter] i, you know, i feel this ive a been incredibly lucky to work in trade Book Publishing and, you know you come into publishing and, you know from different, clearly different sectors with very different gender balances. I dont think its just random house and penguin which have been the two places ive experienced. I think its generally true within trade Book Publishing that these are you know, majority female companies. And i think the leadership has been also very significantly populated by women. So in a way its hard for me to even think about well, is my style different because im a woman or would it be different if i were a man . And i absolutely have had extraordinary male bosses and terrible male bosses and extraordinary female bosses and terrible female bosses. So for me, i think i have a hard time kind of identifying the gender patterns just because ive had the luxury as probably a lot of people many this room have of working in a very female environment and thats i think, a strength of the industry for women. Great. And then just building your leadership skills. Do you want to building my leadership skills . How have i built my leadership skills. I think there was one particular seminal experience for me which was in my i guess i was in my late 20s and i was given this really big promotion to be the head of, this was doubleday so maybe at that point it was merger with random house, i cant quite remember. I was given this big promotion to be, essentially head of sales for a very large part of our publishing business. And, you know, i was in my late 20s, i had people reporting the to me who had been reporting to me who had been selling books since before i was born. And it was terrifying certainly to me. And my boss who gave me this opportunity, don weisberg, he really believed that i could do it and that or he at least was willing to take a chance. He probably had nobody else in mind now that i think about it. But he gave me a really long rampup to that big moment. Like he told me six months ahead of time, this is something i want to do and well spend this next period of time you shadowing me going into meetings. People arent going to nobodys going to suspect that, you know, you the 20something, whos doing online sales is going to be promoted to this. Itll just give you a really good chance to see whats going on. And still despite all that preparation the big day came and there were a lot of tears. They were not my tears but, again, some of these senior people who were going to have to report to me were like youve got to be kidding me. So i was definitely scared. And the most important piece of advice don gave me, and it has held true for me throughout, is the most important thing that these people are going to need from you is to make decisions. That doesnt mean you make them, you know haphazardly, it doesnt mean you make them when you dont have enough information, but the most important thing you can contribute to them is to whether its to help them make the decision or just to keep things moving forward. And i think that key element of the fact that really adds as a leader thats really what your responsibility is to do. And that ended up becoming something that i really relied on and i think developed as a strength that helped me through my later parts of my career. Great. And, bethlam would you like to comment on how you developed your skills . Yes. I will say through trial and error. I failed, i learned from it. [laughter] there was no perfect formula. So it is through that process in terms of some of madeline, i grew up in accenture, very much a different approach. And, you know people took risk on me, and i learned to take risk on others. But, i mean kind of similar situation as you is i felt like at the beginning i needed to know everything and make sure i cover everything and so forth. But with time im like, its okay, i dont have to know everything. In fact, i dont. I try to learn from others. I try to leverage my strength and use that as a way to make decisions or enable a discussion so that were all in making the decision together. But i really finish it was a trial and error. Very good. Lisa, any comments . I really had to learn to soften my personality. In news i especially producing local news, its really hard core, and youre sort of on the line. And if something goes wrong, you have millions of people that are just looking at a television with nothing on the screen. And so i was a screamer, and i came up with screamers. And over time i realized that that was pretty offensive to people, and i really when i switched into Book Publishing after more than 20 years in another industry, i asked my bosses to, please, connect me with somebody that would teach me the ropes and teach me what Book Publishing was about. And this woman named christine hunt who was amazing, she sat with me once a month, and we discussed the way in which management in Book Publishing works. And its a more genteel industry, and i would say that its, it was really helpful for me. And now as the parent of two college graduates, ive been trying to inform them to teach them to do things not the way i did them. And especially one of my sons whos in real estate development, i said, you know, you really have to learn the manage up as well as manage down or manage across. And that was something that i never realized. I thought that was sucking up. But, actually, its just as important to get to know the people at one two and three levels above you as it is to get to know your peers and that is something, if i had to do it all over again i would have paid much closer attention to. Well, you mentioned sounds like you had a nice mentor when you went into publishing. Madeline or bethlam, would you like to talk about mentors or people influential in your career . I mean, i mentioned don weisberg whos now head of penguin young readers. Its great were now both working at penguin. But he absolutely was, was a seminal figure for me very early on and its absolutely, i mean i think people who know me and don would not necessarily say we have similar styles or personalities or anything like that. Its just that he, for whatever reason saw potential in me and kind of forced me to think bigger about what my future could be in a way that i really dont think i would have taken the leaps that i did if not for him. Yeah. In terms of a mentor, i was lucky enough, as i said, people took a lot of risks on me. And i felt that they were taking a lot of risk. One individual was the president of harcourt, and i was working at accenture. I was a partner at accenture. He recruited me and hired me to be the publisher of the School Acquisition division. Think about how different granted, i had a lot of background in the Publishing Industry and so forth but, still, it is a different approach. My background being in strategy and technology and overall content and transformation of an industry. He basically saw that i could parlay that into joining in a Publishing Organization and being the publisher of the school division. So i took that role. And, you know, it was a huge risk he took. He was a phenomenally, a great mentor, somebody who had a lot of high expectation but gave you complete freedom which helped me to fail but in a much more padded and easier way so that i could succeed and learn from that. And it was, frankly, transformational in terms of what it did for my career and forever will always be thankful for what he did. And as they say the rest is history, but i had that opportunity. Great. Now, we hear a lot about the Glass Ceiling. Lisa, would you like to comment . Did you ever feel like there was a Glass Ceiling in your industry or in your work . I actually never experienced the Glass Ceiling. I felt as though hard work and street smarts and book smarts were going to get whomever was going to get up to the top there and i did not experience that at all. Good. Good to hear. And now what about personal and professional sacrifices that are necessary . Obviously, you all work very hard. I know, i tried to get them on a conference call, it was impossible. [laughter] so shall we start with bethlam . What kind of personal sacrifices might you make to be a president of a giant company . Like these ladies and im sure a number of people in the audience we all make sacrifices regardless of where we are in our career. I think thats the basic. Ill tell you a story. After i started working at after the merger of harcourt and houghton, so i was running basically, the Massive Organization for Houghton Mifflin harcourt, and i was pregnant with my son, and i was just, frankly, terrified to say i just took this new role and to say oh, my god im pregnant. Again, i felt this huge stress that i, it was like something i did. [laughter] wrong [laughter] it was something i did wrong. I was really terrified and i remember for the first three months i was trying my hardest to hide the fact that i was pregnant. I mean, this is, like 2009, people. But i was. And this is the pressure i put on myself, not that anybody else said anything. And i remember i sat down with my boss and i was like, okay, i am pregnant. I can he goes, well, gee i know. You stopped drinking coffee, and youre eating more than everything you eat. [laughter] so im like okay, thank you. But the first thing i said is, like im telling you im going to give birth, and im going to come back right away. I had never given birth, i had no idea what i was committing myself to. But i did do that. I did come back two weeks later. Literally, exactly two weeks later. Probably didnt even know what i was doing at the time but i did feel a commitment that i needed to work and i needed to come back. Nobody else put that pressure on me, but i did. It was a sacrifice that i made for what i felt was the right thing that i must do for my career. Came back two weeks later and, for the record the women here it was a tough delivery i had. And i remember my first meeting was with an author, dr. Bennett as a matter of fact, who was the former secretary of education, our first meeting coming out of that two week if you call it, you know, ma alternative i leave. Maternity leave. I did not see my son because i had a global role. I was traveling all over the world when i had an infant at home. Did not see him. Didnt, you know, all these magic moments, a lot of us as mothers have, did not have those. So sacrifices, absolutely. But it was something that i felt like i needed to do. I think its my personality most likely and how driven can i am that did get me to that. But what i would like to say is while, you know, the entire world tells us we can balance multiple things and so forth,st hard. I its hard. I felt that i was very lucky to have a 5yearold. I was very lucky that i had a very strong support system. And as a result of that, the sacrifice maybe never felt as much as a sacrifice even though they were. But i think that having a very Strong Network of, you know, having a very strong family, my husband and so forth, didnt feel as bad. But it was a sacrifice. Madeline. I would say not so much a sacrifice, but just the, certainly the feeling of juggling which is not in this day and age, i dont think, is a female feeling. I think everybody who works and has children, male or female feels that. And the my, i have twin sons who are now 11, and one of them thinks im a tyrant. [laughter] but when i gave birth and i took a, you know, the full Maternity Leave but at that point my husband was still working. Hes now a writer, but at that point he was working in the office and so we had a nanny, and she had to leave, you know, at i cant remember exactly, i want to say it was 5 45 on the dot she had to be out the door so she could get home to her family which meant i had to walk out of that office at 5 00. And it was a, you know, say that period was about two years where it was just constantly the feeling of the stress of time. And i became so impatient with any conversation that was taking so long, any meeting that was taking too long and so aware of how, frankly, a lot of time we spend during the day is not the most efficient use of time. And so was that a sacrifice to leave the office at 5 00 . Not really. I was surprised a couple of years later, one of my colleagues who had she had a child a couple of years after i did, and she said that she had really so valued the fact that i just was very explicit about the fact that i was leaving at 5 00, and that i was in the Senior Leadership position and that that was not a problem and that that gave her a sense of comfort that this really was okay in the company. It hadnt ever occurred to me that it wouldnt be okay, but i really appreciated that she told me that it had mattered to her. Yeah. I mean, a lot of the sacrifices are similar. I mean, when my daughter was four weeks old, i worked at inside edition, and they needed me, and i brought her to work and stuck her on a blanket on the floor next to my desk and nursed her in the edit room to the complaint of a female videotape editor who went to hr and said this woman is nursing baby. And at the time that woman didnt have a baby. She since went on probably, rethinks the way she behaved. But i almost never saw her in the morning when she woke up or went to sleep, and at Good Morning America, she would come with me into the green room as a toddler and hang out and eat froot loops or the news director would feed my sons a giant kit kat bar in his office, and i would be in there producing political debates. I now have since my children are 15, 22 and 24 i can ask them at this point do you feel as though there was a time when you wished that i hadnt been working, and i think they think im a much happier better mother than i might have been had i stayed at home. I think theyre proud of some of the things that ive been able to do in my career, and theyve gotten really fun perks meeting cool people and going to book signings or television shows. But there is that tremendous feeling of guilt on both sides. Youre guilty because other people can stay at work later and perhaps accomplish more and get a bigger get, and then other mothers are showing up at school dropoff and gosh, theyre wearing a tennis skirt and carrying a yoga mat [laughter] and you are definitely not doing that. So, you know, you sort of get it coming and going. But at the end of the day, when the kids grow up, i think theyre pretty darn happy that youve been able to accomplish something in the world, and theyre proud kids. And theyve had a, you know, theyve had to do things on their own and it causes you perhaps not to be a helicopter parent. And, you know, i think that so the sacrifice, i think has benefits. Thats great. And, now looking back at, you know going back to the corporate life, what qualities do you look for when hiring . Shall we start with madeline . Theres a, you know, particularly if youre hiring juniorlevel people, the one thing i always love to see on a resume and it makes me put that resume at the top of the pile is if somebody has been a waiter or a waitress. [laughter] i always think that is the best experience. Agreed. For working in any corporate situation. Its the ability to juggle orders and deal with clients calmly. Beyond that, i look for a sense of curiosity is this somebody who has really questions about the world and really, you know taking the time to really nothing, i think, is worse than you take the time to interview someone, and theyve clearly really done no homework to understand what you do or what the company does. So thats usually an immediate no. But i look for curiosity, i look for poise for people who are articulate and who feel like theyre going to engage well in what is a very collegial setting. Bethlam . The two things i look for in hiring is, one is what i call intellectual honesty. Its really important to me that theyre, like they feel comfortable enough to say what they know, what they dont know, and thats one. And perseverance is important to me. Its really an important component on how i look. You learn a lot. You learn from your success and from your failure, but to be able to openly speak about it, what youve learned from it is important. So those are the two qualities i look for many hiring. Okay. As a former cocktail waitress for many years [laughter] you can work for me i absolutely believe in the waitressing line on the resume for sure or waiter. But i really look for passion and i look for enthusiasm. I look for a high grade point average from a decent university. And i also look for a handwritten thank you note. Interesting in this day and age. Interesting. Which follows an email thank you. That should come within the first day. And then a few days later id like to see a handwritten thank you note. I dont think ive hired anyone who hasnt written a handwritten thank you note. Note to people. My mother taught me that. Its so rare that you get mail it does stand out. I actually have given my staff stationery as christmas presents. [laughter] give more thank you notes. And what kind of advice would you give for young women starting out in their career . Bethlam . I actually thats an interesting question. I will say stretch yourself. Go do something different. Take the risk. Take the road less traveled, frankly. But i think thats, that will be probably the most important thing. And know whats important to you personally and how that fits in your overall in terms of the road map you have for your own career. Dont be afraid to manage your career. Men do that a lot better than us. Dont be afraid of doing it. And madeline . I think what i try to encourage is getting young women to think big to think broadly about opportunities that exist, to understand that a successful career path is not something that gets laid down in front of you, and its not like you just get an email that says this job is available and would you like to apply for it. You really need to think about are you at a point where you maybe are getting close to have learned everything you can in your current position instead of just waiting for something to be presented to you, really look for opportunities which doesnt mean look for jobs, jobs that are already posted. Really think about what problems need to be solved in the organization and how might you help solve them. And getting people to really, particularly young women i think, to take responsible for their careers is really important and to think big and bold. Theres a subtle difference there, i think particularly for us understanding those of us who have managed some millennials, understanding theres a subtle difference between that and a sense of entitlement. And its important not to think that the world owes you something. Its not about you. Its that you owe to yourself to go and create the opportunities. Well, i would say network with the people at your level because youll be growing up with them in the industry. So the more people you can meet and really get to know and know them more than just in a business sense but you know, see if you can make friends in the industry that youre really interested in. And also write an intention down for how youd like to see your career take off. And tweak that as time goes, and write it as big as you dream it. And really i do believe in the power of that. And i also think that its important to make sure to not forget to have a personal life. Certainly in the news business, there are many people that i grew up with who failed to connect with another human being as a soul mate or, you know wanted children but didnt have time for that. And, you know, at the end of your life when you look back, its going to be your family and your Close Friends that remember you. Its not necessarily going to be what title you have or what percentage you increased business, you know . So just try to keep that work life balance. Good. Well i must say when i worked at random house, there was a great book probably ten years ago called women dont ask from two women who had done a princeton ph. D. Study, then they came out with a book how to ask. Do you still find that women need to be encouraged to ask, ask for more money for a promotion, for a new role . Do you find that . Are women asking more . Yeah, i dont know. I feel like, you know, you always hear that. I think women do ask in this day and age. Maybe we have a different way of asking, but i think they do ask. Yeah, i think so. Theres a when i read wolf hall not that anybody should take leadership [laughter] there was a great repeated phrase that Thomas Cromwell says to himself throughout which is dont ask, dont get. And i think that is essentially saying the same thing that, you know, nobodys going to just present you with the answer if you dont particularly ask for it. But i agree, i think that more often than not i think women and men seem much more comfortable with asking for what they wallet. What they want. I mean one great thing at least at our company is the annual review process. That sort of forces you as a manager and forces them to have that conversation and outline what their goals are, how they felt theyve achieved them the Previous Year and what theyre looking forward to doing the next year. And that has been very helpful in getting even the most reluctant people to step up to the plate and figure out what it is that they are looking for. So thats been really helpful. I went a little quickly over the question, i dont think everyone had a chance to answer if there was a professional experience that was formative in your career. Did anyone else want to give us some fun example . I think i answered. You answered, i think. I mean, probably switching into Book Publishing from television news. That was extremely informative for me. I, you know, it was i had done about as much as i felt that i could do in television, and i started getting disenchanced with news disenchanted with news about five years before i ended up moving into Book Publishing and i started realizing that the books in the newsroom were far more interesting to me than the news in the newsroom. So i started a series of conversations with Jane Friedman because i started getting behind the scenes and working on books for no money no good reason other than i was passionate about them, and i would watch them become bestsellers and then she summoned me and said, who are you, what are you doing at abc news helping our books . And then i had a series of conversations for five years until eventually and she kept saying were not ready for you were not ready for you and one day she said now were ready for you. And that was, you know, it was scary. And i felt for me, i had to just keep and to this day i still feel like i maintain alien status, you know . I come from another planet, basically. And i sort of i like that feeling but i always have to raise my hand, always have to ask about things that i am still a little bit unclear of because its a completely different world but a beautiful one. And, bethlam did you have any other fun stories . For me it was really in terms of what was professional experience that was most formative is i grew up, you know, i was born in one continent, grew up in many different parts of the country. My mother worked in the United Nations so i had this experience when i grew up, i was always in a multicultural type of environment. I went to an International School where people were from all over the world. And i felt like the roles ive taken have been very much global, and the ability to work across culture was something that really was critical. Is so that was really something that made a difference and was very much a formative so i will say that the cultural experience and the global perspective. Excellent. Well why dont we open it up then for questions from the audience, and ill repeat the question to make sure everyone can hear. Heres one from esther. Hi, esther. Madeline, i know that you stepped out of [inaudible] yes. So im wondering if you could talk about that kind of decision that you made to do that and how it was good or bad in terms of rebidding a career. Yeah. I was going to the say probably everyone heard that but just in case in the back, madeline did leave random house for a while and worked at amazon and then came back. Esther wanted to hear a little about that experience. Yeah. And that definitely counts as a formative experience. I left random house, i guess, i get the chronology a little mixed up sometimes but i think it was 2008 and it was just, it was a period where things felt stale and what i was doing was the audio publisher which was part of the reason id made the switch to go into audio was because i was really interested in what was happening in digital. And as we know, everything that happened in digital later with textbooks really happened first in audio. And so id had this really good experience there. But it felt like nobody in the rest of the company was really taking digital seriously and id been there a long time at that point. And i wanted to i was certainly interested in stretching my wings. And earlier on id been one of the first people who actually sold books to amazon so i always knew the team there. And started a conversation, and they offered me the opportunity to move to luxembourg to lead out the content acquisition for taking the kindle internationally. And i, you know, went home and proposed this to my husband, and the first thing we both had to do was truly go look at a map to figure out where luxembourg was and what it was, was it a city . Turns out it is a city in the country of the same name. So now you know. [laughter] one of the things i really have benefited from was having a extremely supportive husband who was also had the fortune of hed been an editor, but was really interested in going freelance and experiencing, starting to experiment with writing, so he was flexible. Hed only ever lived in new york, and he said, sure, lets do this. This seems kind of crazy but all right. So we took our then4yearold twin sons and moved to europe, and it was a particular experience because i was, i was there in luxembourg, i was really i was only person in that office who was working on the kindle, and there were only a couple of people in europe at that point who were working on the kindle. So i had this very definitely stressful experience of spending the day in luck em burg luxembourg mainly talking to people in london and the people who reported to me, none of them were in luxembourg. So it was a lot of being on the phone or email. Then would run home occasionally be able to have dinner with my family, and then spend the next five hours or so on Conference Calls with seattle because the time difference thats what it was. And that was a very, i mean, it was a hugely challenging experience. I was there for about 18 months. So really, a brief one. And i learned more in 18 months than i thought was possible. It was i dont have a graduate degree. I was an art history major, and i felt like in that 18 months i got, you know an engineering degree and a business degree. To really learn truly how to the communicate with engineers and how to explain to them, no, this really is how the system of territorial copyright really is this weird patchwork thing and we really do have to Pay Attention to it, and understanding how to take complex business things and simplify it into something that could be coded was hugely valuablement valuable. It was a very male environment. So that was certainly a time when i was not surrounded by women. I didnt particularly mind that at all. But it was also this odd thing of being in, being a satellite of really being almost on my own all the time. And that wore on me after a while. I would have probably happily stayed at amazon for a long time, but there had been a lot of change that had taken place at random house while i was gone. Marcus had come in to be the ceo, and he invited me to come back to the company and take on a role that he and i developed together that would have responsibility for both physical and Digital Change for the company. And i honestly i felt like i came back with a degree of confidence about what i felt we needed to do in digital that i would never have had if i had just stayed in my audio support. Even though we were learning about pricing and royalties in terms of sale changes that are affected by digital. It was really stepping out of that context and then coming back into it that gave me kind of the fortitude to navigate what was then a couple of kind of tough years in the tingal transition. Digital transition. Excellent. Another question. Lets see, in the back there in the red. [inaudible] Publishing Industry has [inaudible] however, theres a feeling among women often that we are not taken as seriously as men are, not necessarily getting the same treatment, the same respect [inaudible] how do you [inaudible] if women are at the top of the Publishing Industry, why arent women writers also at the top . I think maybe you all heard that, why arent women writers being treated as well as men writers . [laughter] well, i dont know how much of that comes down to how theyre published. I think a lot of the statistics have been really very very importantly pointing out the disparities that take place in terms of reviewing. My personal experience if i look through our list at penguin, it is we have an extraordinary list of very successful female writers and male writers. Were very conscious that the majority of book consumers in this country are women. And, therefore i havent, i havent done a set of statistics on this but i think that the majority of novels we publish are probably by women. And i really dont think that we do anything that would be seen as publishing books by women at a lesser status or with less importance than those by men. There can always be unintentional bias which id be happy to give examples of if there are there. I would say as well development see that at all i dont see that at all at harpercollins, and i really feel like the majority of our authors are women. And we all know that the majority of the bookbuying public is certainly of the female variety. So im surprised in a way to hear that, because its not something that really comes up at harpercollins. Okay. Another question. Over here. Hi. All three of you have children and families. I mean you all made the choice to [inaudible] im wondering if [inaudible] other leaders around you [inaudible] whatever it is, particular priorityies more familyoriented activities and [inaudible] so just to reiterate, are there some prejudices possibly against women who want a more Flexible Work schedule can possibly work at home more often to be with the family, have a more blended family work life, does that hold them back in the business . At pearson we have a very Flexible Workfromhome, basically, plan and we are very accommodating of that type of a model, men women. So i actually would say absolutely not. I think at end of day in this day and age in a very [inaudible] education publishing, much more Technology Driven in this day and age it doesnt really matter where you are located as long as youre able to do the work. My team is all over the country, and when i was running the global part of it, all over the world. And even today north america we have a lot of staff who work from home who are not at all in an office location. I think its more of the skill set, the capability that the individual brings to the table. As long as youre able to get on, you know Conference Calls it doesnt matter. I dont believe in this day and age theres actually a bias towards that. Inherently not being in an officepotential setting, you may miss some of the informal aspects of things that can happen because that does exist, but i would say absolutely not, i dont see it being an issue. I think the part of the way i look at it, and i dont think im unique in this, is that we benefit and this is true of both penguin and random house separately and together employees have a longterm commitment to working at these at our company. And that really means that for me as a manager of an employee i have a longterm investment in that employee. And if there is a particular period that theyre going through where they need more flexibility or theyre going to be, you know, they need a different kind of creative solution again, im not going to penalize that, them for that at all. I think the fact is, as you said with Technology Particularly were in Different Office locations anyway. So often theres really no way i would know if someone was calling me from connecticut or from uptown. But at the same time, i think there is the reality of the fact that we also, the work that we do is very much people work. Its theres a lot of our work that just is not when everybodys on a conference call, the quality of the ideas and interaction that come out are not necessarily as good in my experience as when we are sitting around a table looking each other in the eye. And so i would tend more towards being very flexible in terms of helping somebody get through particular issues that they may have to deal with that might be short term, but in general i really like for the people who are working together on a team to actually be there together physically for the most part. Yeah. I mean, i would agree. I have somebody on my team who just had her second baby, and after her first baby whos now two and a half, she decided to work part of the week at home. And her workload has not changed, and she was promoted through all of that, and shes going to continue to do that, and im thrilled for her because i value her as a human being and i value her as a member of my team. And anything that i can do to support her Creative Process is something that i would do. That said, you know, we live in a world where were losing personal interaction at a fast rate due to our obsession with looking down at small phones. [laughter] therefore i do believe that anytime we can all be together and look each other in the eye we now moved downtown recently, and we have more of an open office plan, and even the people that have offices, the walls are glass and its so exciting to be able to see somebody walk by and remember that you had an idea that you wanted to discuss with them and just, you know, either shout their name out or run over and grab them and walk with them to the elevator. You cant do that from home. So i do think working from home part time if you need to is okay, but if you really want to be a full member of a team, its important to be able to be there actually in person. Very good. We have time for one more question. Kelly. Hi. [inaudible] she thanks them for being so fabulous which well applaud in a few minutes but have they ever had a colleague try to sabotage their work and how did they deal with it. Yeah. I had that happen in news, and i dealt with it by going into Book Publishing. [laughter] if i did have a colleague i was never who did that, i was never abare of it, so
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