About the Author

Sylvia Ann Hewlett is an economist and the founding president of the Center for Work-Life Policy (CWLP), a nonprofit think tank, where she chairs the “Hidden Brain Drain,” a task force of fifty global companies and organizations committed to fully realizing female and multicultural talent. In addition, she directs the Gender and Policy Program at the School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University. She is a member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on the Gender Gap.

Hewlett is the author of six Harvard Business Review articles and nine critically acclaimed nonfiction books, including When the Bough Breaks (Basic Books, winner of a Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Book Prize) and Off-Ramps and On-Ramps (Harvard Business School Press, named as one of the best business books of 2007 by Amazon.com). Her writings have appeared in the New York Times, the Financial Times, Foreign Affairs, Veja, and the International Herald Tribune. She is a featured blogger, appearing monthly on Harvard Business Online and ForbesWoman.com.

Hewlett is the founder of Sylvia Ann Hewlett Associates LLC, a boutique consultancy. In 2009 Sylvia Ann Hewlett Associates formed an alliance with Booz & Company, focused on helping organizations leverage top talent across the divides of culture, gender, and generation.

Hewlett is a well-known speaker on the international stage. She has keynoted International Women’s Day at the IMF, given the featured address at Pfizer’s Emerging Markets Leadership Summit in Dubai, and spoken at the White House with coauthor Cornel West. She is a frequent guest on TV and radio, appearing on Oprah, NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, Charlie Rose, ABC World News Tonight, The Today Show, The View, BBC World News, and Talk of the Nation—and she has been lampooned on Saturday Night Live.

A Kennedy Scholar and graduate of Cambridge University, Hewlett earned her PhD in economics at London University.