Transcripts For CSPAN2 BookExpo Discussion On Women And Lead

invented the microwave oven for example. >> host: euros at a major research institution in these universities, harvard and others have given us the benefit of the intellectual muscle that creates but that implies creation to our everyday experience so as to give us greater enjoyment, greater fulfillment greater transparency. so we have to continue to invest in our research and development. >> guest: thank you. >> host: i am finding this conversation fascinating from a number of vantage points. i was recently reading a "wall street journal" article, but it had a map of the state of california and how about the locations, some of the companies they mention. you mentioned google and others. and then out the location of automotive facilities and they were all along that same track meaning they are moving from the midwest and from the south. their technology apparatus are placing it at the center of a lot about it in the silicon valley area. along route 128 in the boston area as well. a lot of automotive presence in that area. .. they are not in the mobility business. mobility is opportunity and mobility is a big part of our future and mobility is not dependent on wireless networks and other devices by which we control data information. so you want to be where the innovators are in those fields. so it's a big change and people will do differently and work differently in the future. i hope we can get a national will to have a conversation to make this optimistic scenario come true. >> host: well, let's move. and with his book we will. thank you. >> guest: thank you very much, secretary slater. >> that was afterwards, booktv's signature program which offers up the latest nonfiction books are interviewed by journalists public policymakers and others familiar with the material. afterwards airs every week in a booktv at 10 p.m. on saturday, 12 and 9 p.m. on sunday and 12 a.m. on monday. you can also watch afterwards online. out of booktv.org and click on "after words" in the booktv series and topics list on the upper right side of the page. >> and booktv pc in new yorkew york city.ty we are at the javits convention job center on the westside of manhattan. we have been here all j week because this is the time of year when the publishers have their annual convention of known as bookntion known a expo america. we thought we would take advantage of this opportunity take and bring you some of the panels that recover and give you chance to talk with some authors andhance tal publishers in call-in shows. ers. coming up in the next couple of hours you will see panels on women in publishing the impact of digital technology and diversity in publishing. you will also have the chance to talk with two authors gary kasparov of who has written a book about vladimir putin and his native russia, pulitzer prize winner chris hedges has a new book out on revolution and he will join us for call in as well and you have a chance to talk with 3 to publishers susan weinberg end jamie robbed of grand central publishing. up first, is a panel we taped this past week in new york on women in publishing. you are watching booktv on c-span2. [inaudible conversations] .. not-for-profit association of women to support prominent women in achievement in the media world, it would also do have fellowships for underprivilegedinto the deserving women to help them getou c into thean media world and you can find out more about that and become m a member by signing up in the back or taking a sheet of paper and e-mailing us. the it has more detail about theack, and women's media group, or leave s your business card in the backin and we would send youforma information. weave a panel will have a panel of 50 minutes. will try to do 40 minutes of questions up here and then followed by a short q&a we guys ca can askn questions. iguess, we are going to be recording this i guess for cnn comments i on guess we can still find it where we can see that on cnn when that will run. r we don't hashtag if you'd like to share wmgbea15 or a court just bea 15. 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 start-up 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 penguin's 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 two-time 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 you're all very busy. let's 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 11-year-old sons said, oh, mommy, that's ease a city, you're a tyrant -- easy you're 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 i'm, 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, it's 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. i'm willing to say like i think i'll 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 i've come to realize i don't have to do that. i'm 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 don't 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, who's a man and brian murray, a man they're both wonderful leaders that don't 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 -- it's especially if you're trying to manage a family and a business you have to learn that juggle and, you know, give a busy person a task, and they'll get it done really quickly, and i tend to think that women can make decisions extremely quickly. >> great. well madeline let's 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 i've 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 don't think it's just random house and penguin which have been the two places i've experienced. i think it's 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 it's hard for me to even think about well, is my style different because i'm 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 i've had the luxury as probably a lot of people many this room have of working in a very female environment and that's 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 can't 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 ramp-up to that big moment. like he told me six months ahead of time, this is something i want to do and we'll spend this next period of time you shadowing me going into meetings. people aren't going to -- nobody's going to suspect that, you know, you the 20-something, who's doing online sales is going to be promoted to this. it'll just give you a really good chance to see what's 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 you've 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 doesn't mean you make them, you know haphazardly, it doesn't mean you make them when you don't have enough information, but the most important thing you can contribute to them is to whether it's 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 that's 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 i'm like, it's okay, i don't have to know everything. in fact, i don't. 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 we're 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, it's really hard core, and you're 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 it's a more genteel industry, and i would say that it's, it was really helpful for me. and now as the parent of two college graduates, i've been trying to inform them to teach them to do things not the way i did them. and especially one of my sons who's 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, it's 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 who's now head of penguin young readers. it's great we're now both working at penguin. but he absolutely was, was a seminal figure for me very early on and it's 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. it's 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 don't 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 i'm sure a number of people in the audience we all make sacrifices regardless of where we are in our career. i think that's the basic. i'll 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 i'm 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 you're eating more than everything you eat. [laughter] so i'm like okay, thank you. but the first thing i said is, like i'm telling you i'm going to give birth, and i'm 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 didn't 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. didn't, 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 it's 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 -- it's hard. i felt that i was very lucky to have a 5-year-old. 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, didn't 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 don't 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 i had twin sons who are now 11 and one of them thinks i'm a tyrant. [laughter] but when i gave birth and i talk the full maternity leave but at that point my husband was still working, is 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, that, i can't remember exactly want to say was 5:45 on the dot she had the out the door so she could get home to her family which meant i had to walk out of the office at 5:00. and it was, you know that period was about two years where it was just constantly the feeling of the stress of time, and that i became so impatient with any conversation that was taking too long any meeting that was taking too long. and so aware of how, frankly, a lot of time we spend spent in today's 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 come 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 i was in the senior leadership position and that was not a problem, and i gave her a sense of comfort that this really was okay in the company. it had never occurred to me that it wouldn't be okay but i really appreciated that she told me that it had mattered to her. >> yeah i mean come on to the sacrifices are similar. when my daughter was four weeks old i worked at "inside edition" and they needed me and the broader to work and stuck on a blanket on the floor next to my desk and nurture in the edit room to the complaint of e-mail, videotape editors going to h.r. said this woman is nursing a baby. .. 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 hadn't been working, and i think they think when you wish you hadn't been working. they think i'm a much happier better mother than it might have been had i stayed at home. i think they are proud of some of the things i've been able to do in my career and they've gotten really fun perks come in meaningful people are going to book signings or television shows. but there is a tremendous feeling of guilt on both sides. they are guilty because other people say stay at work later and accomplish more and get a better debt and other mother show up for school drop-off and they are wearing a tennis skirt and carrying a yoga mat and you are definitely not doing that. you sort of get it coming and going. at the end of the day when the kids grow up they are pretty darn happy you've been able to accomplish something in the world and they are proud kids. they've had to do things on their own and it causes you not to be a helicopter parent. the sacrifice has benefits. >> now going back to a corporate life, what qualities do you look for when hiring? shall we sin with matalin. >> particularly few higher junior level people, one thing i love to siena resume is if somebody has been a waiter or reacher is best experience. >> agreed. >> for working in any corporate situation. it's 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 they've clearly really done no homework to understand what you do or what the company does. so that's usually an immediate no. but i look for curiosity, i look for poise for people who are articulate and who feel like they're 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. it's really important to me that they're, like they feel comfortable enough to say what they know, what they don't know, and that's one. and perseverance is important to me. it's 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 you've 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 resumé 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 e-mail thank you. that should come within the first day. and then a few days later i'd like to see a handwritten thank you note. i don't think i've hired anyone who hasn't written a handwritten thank you note. >> note to people. >> my mother taught me that. >> it's 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 that's an interesting question. i will say stretch yourself. go do something different. take the risk. take the road less traveled, frankly. but i think that's, that will be probably the most important thing. and know what's important to you personally and how that fits in your overall in terms of the road map you have for your own career. don't be afraid to manage your career. men do that a lot better than us. don't 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 it's not like you just get an e-mail 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 doesn't 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. there's a subtle difference there, i think particularly for us understanding those of us who have managed some millennials, understanding there's a subtle difference between that and a sense of entitlement. and it's important not to think that the world owes you something. it's not about you. it's that you owe to yourself to go and create the opportunities. >> well, i would say network with the people at your level because you'll 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 you're really interested in. and also write an intention down for how you'd 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 it's 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 didn't have time for that. and, you know, at the end of your life when you look back, it's going to be your family and your close friends that remember you. it's 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 don't 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 don't 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. there's 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 don't ask, don't get. and i think that is essentially saying the same thing that, you know, nobody's going to just present you with the answer if you don't 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 they've achieved them the previous year and what they're 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 that's been really helpful. >> i went a little quickly over the question, i don't 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 we're not ready for you we're not ready for you and one day she said now we're 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 it's 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 i've 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 don't we open it up then for questions from the audience, and i'll repeat the question to make sure everyone can hear. here's one from esther. >> hi, esther. >> madeline, i know that you stepped out of -- [inaudible] >> yes. >> so i'm 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 i'd 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 i'd had this really good experience there. but it felt like nobody in the rest of the company was really taking digital seriously and i'd been there a long time at that point. and i wanted to -- i was certainly interested in stretching my wings. and earlier on i'd 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 he'd been an editor, but was really interested in going freelance and experiencing, starting to experiment with writing, so he was flexible. he'd only ever lived in new york, and he said, sure, let's do this. this seems kind of crazy but all right. so we took our then-4-year-old 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 e-mail. 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 -- that's 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 don't 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 didn't 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. let's see, in the back there in the red. >> [inaudible] publishing industry has -- [inaudible] however, there's 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 aren't women writers also at the top? >> i think maybe you all heard that, why aren't women writers being treated as well as men writers? [laughter] >> well, i don't know how much of that comes down to how they're 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. we're very conscious that the majority of book consumers in this country are women. and, therefore i haven't, i haven't done a set of statistics on this but i think that the majority of novels we publish are probably by women. and i really don't 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 i'd be happy to give examples of if there are there. >> i would say as well development see that at all -- i don't 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 book-buying public is certainly of the female variety. so i'm surprised in a way to hear that, because it's 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] i'm wondering if -- [inaudible] other leaders around you -- [inaudible] whatever it is, particular priorityies more family-oriented 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 work-from-home, 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 doesn't really matter where you are located as long as you're 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 it's more of the skill set, the capability that the individual brings to the table. as long as you're able to get on, you know conference calls it doesn't matter. i don't believe in this day and age there's actually a bias towards that. inherently not being in an office-potential 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 don't see it being an issue. >> i think the part of the way i look at it, and i don't think i'm unique in this, is that we benefit -- and this is true of both penguin and random house separately and together -- employees have a long-term commitment to working at these at our company. and that really means that for me as a manager of an employee i have a long-term investment in that employee. and if there is a particular period that they're going through where they need more flexibility or they're going to be, you know, they need a different kind of creative

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