“Choosing to be loved is not a career limiting decision.”
That was one piece of advice that Fox News anchor and former White House press secretary Dana Perino offered the young women gathered at a WeWork coworking space in Washington, D.C. on Monday.
With plastic cups of wine and finger food set against the glaringly colorful office space, women shared advice, mingled, and heard from other women who had already navigated some of the twists and turns of their professional lives.
The event, part networking and part panel discussion, was a hosted by Minute Mentoring, a program that Perino co-founded based on the idea of connecting young women to mentors interested in sharing advice but short on time – and addressing a supply and demand problem as more women enter the workforce.
That idea, bipartisan, efficient and forward-looking, could have characterized the whole evening and (almost) all of the advice offered by the panel.
Perched on stools at the front of the room, the panelists included, alongside Perino, Democratic strategist Donna Brazile, Evan Ryan the executive vice president of media start up Axios, Dee Martin of Bracewell LLP, and Ruth Cook, the founder and CEO of HireHer.
Each offered a different perspective, different politics, and different stories. All, however, started by offering three pieces of advice, in line with the Minute Mentoring model, for their speed-networking events.
On its face, most of the advice comprised things that the audience had likely heard before: “invest in your ideas,” “find your passion,” it’s OK to say “I don’t know,” and “showing up” is key. But combined with the real life examples the women shared, what otherwise might have been simply trite words of wisdom, resonated. It of course helped that the women, especially Brazile, kept everyone laughing.
Ryan, for example, talked about knowing when to leave one job for another. Her advice? If your head wasn’t metaphorically just above water it was time to leave and find a new challenge.
That, she said, she had first learned from her own mentor, who asked Ryan, while she was working as the assistant for intergovernmental affairs and public liaison for Vice President Joe Biden, if she was “floating” and had the job figured out or if her “head [was] just barely above water.” When Ryan said she was floating, her mentor responded, “you have to go if you know it all, you need to feel like your head is barely above water because that means you’re growing and you’re stretching and you’re learning.”
Perino had a different take based on advice that she too had learned from a mentor. After working as press secretary for President George W. Bush and landing, unhappily, at a PR firm she was looking for something new. The former president asked her “why don’t you start your own PR firm?” pushing her to consider the idea he asked, “what’s the worst thing that could happen?” On Monday, Perino encouraged the audience of young women to ask themselves that same question when considering new opportunities – something that she admitted might be difficult for anxiety prone first-born daughters like herself. That statement, like so many others, was met with knowing laughter.
As the stories and guidance colorfully illustrate, advice can be passed on and the idea of Minute Mentoring is to do just that — providing a forum for generational transfer of knowledge among women.
That that advice could be shared at a bipartisan event with lessons from two administrations — one Democrat and one Republican, in a city increasingly strained by polarization — is a testament to the broader trajectory of the country that transcends current political headwinds.
Women are helping other women to achieve their goals and, mostly, checking party affiliation at the door. That, as Perino might say, is definitely good news. Keep the stories, advice, and laughter coming. Reminding women that they don’t need to choose between a career and love bears repeating and, after all, has little to do with picking between R’s and D’s.
