I started actively working when I was 12 years old. I sweatily worked bicycle delivery in the morning and afternoon as the neighborhood local newspaper girl. I moved on to low-paying part-time jobs in high school, and slightly better-paying part-time and full-time jobs throughout college. I accelerated quickly up the professional ranks, all the while diligently and passionately applying myself to the pursuit of work excellence. In one of my first professional jobs, I received a 12 percent annual raise. I asked my manager, “Is this a good raise? What are the normal ranges for an annual raise?” Looking back at this, I am struck by my overwhelming naïveté. Nevertheless, over time I came to strongly correlate my career success and my satisfaction, based on my performance and results.

My career was fast paced—a quick vertical escalation into management and leadership roles, fueled by my interests in problem solving, innovation, and risk strategy. I needed big goals, dynamic workspaces, and lots of active problem solving to keep me interested in my work. I challenged myself by pursuing a graduate education, convincing myself that performance alone was the paragon for achievement. Nothing else mattered. This approach paid off handsomely. I regularly was identified as having “high potential,” and I had success with both male and female managers. I was endorsed and promoted to senior management by the time I was approaching 30. During this time, I simply could not understand the occasional cocktail party, business dinner, or conference speaker reference to a “glass ceiling.” Where was this often-maligned “ceiling”? Perhaps this clear, delicate, amorphous barrier had slowly faded into obsolescence with the rise of my fellow Generation X colleagues? After all, many of us Gen X’ers lived through both John Hughes movies and dual-working families. Many of us were also the first in our families to attend college. So, frankly, over time I came to the conclusion that this ceiling simply must be rare or nonexistent. There was no ceiling in my work environment, ever—until the exact moment there was.

There is a fundamental truth in business—one that arguably applies to many professions and both sexes. When we are young, we are naïve. Young working professionals often do not tactically understand the professional roads they are driving on, including how to anticipate roadblocks and then change course. The flip side of youthful naïveté is dream making. Youthfulness brings energy and ideas, and youthful new views change and mold the future of our world. Youth inspires the current regime to do more and to do it effectively and more nimbly, while also bringing forward innovation and know-how. The challenge is that while they are quickly racing down the road focused on a dream-enhanced target, they are not necessarily taking the time to anticipate the exact type of road that may face them. For instance, the journey may have an incline and require more effort, or it may decline and require braking; perhaps the path becomes curvy and requires some tight maneuvering, an object emerges and creates damage, or you need to pick up passengers and achieve consensus among participants and stakeholders. In the worst case, the journey is severely affected by weather, with fog, snow, rain, or mud slowing down forward momentum and creating driver frustration. Over time, navigation challenges begin to take on new personal shapes and sizes. Young professionals, particularly women, begin to develop a burgeoning level of self-awareness of being a “woman in business.” As such, women begin to experience and respond to items that are competing with their careers. These competing twists, turns, and roadblocks are commonly rooted in solving for career versus work-life balance; remaining a technically proficient performer versus taking risks and embracing becoming a leading resource for strategic planning; and staying silent versus solving for obscure and often politicized decisions. One of the common roadblocks encountered by both men and women involves political maneuvering versus living in your truth.

For women, work-life balance is a frequently discussed challenge, especially as female professionals traverse through their childbearing years. During this childbearing/family development period, which can last decades (20s, 30s, and now even into the 40s), women encounter tough decisions about family, career, and bandwidth available to manage family time and competing working priorities. This seems to be more of an issue for women than for men. Why? There are many more men today who are “stay-at-home dads” while their female spouse continues to work. Many households are also dual-working households. Again, why are childrearing years such a challenge for working women, and do we manufacture glass during this time period?

In my third managerial job as a risk management professional, I began to think about scenarios involving one of my key female employees. She was dynamic, young, and hardworking, married, and had no children. My concern was that she would have a child, take time off, and I would be hard-pressed (and stressed) while she was out on maternity leave and may struggle to keep the risk management boat from taking on water. Looking back, my experience tells me that men likely have this same concern, and it regularly applies to high-performing young female employees. The U.S. work culture has led us to believe that having children likely makes employees less effective and that family responsibilities (as a mom, in particular) create a drain on performance. Kids get sick, the school calls and someone in the family has to pick up the child; there are sporting events, parent-teacher conferences, and a myriad of activities and parenting responsibilities that come into play. Women—not men—are perceived as the “responders” to these items. Why? I suggest it is because we women have manufactured this piece of the looking glass, and in doing so we essentially became a direct competitor with our U.S. business environment. This occurs in the face of modern technology and employment laws that often push for and protect options for maternity leave, working at home, flexible work schedules, and providing opportunities to use your grit and work your (butt) off without necessarily having to have that same (butt) in a seat, in an office, all day.

The glass ceiling actively begins to creep into the picture during these family development professional years. Let’s be clear, though—both women and men manufacture the glass ceiling, but these years are where women manufacture it more. It is not intentional, but it is innate and instinctive for a woman to naturally choose family over work. At the same time, while women are finding their way through the difficult converging paths of family and career, men are tightening up their “club membership” rosters.

The “boys club” membership has many unwritten rules. Highlights include an ability to be constantly available, networking during a golf game, early morning starts, able to meet after work for drinks, similar “male” experiences (played sports, fraternity), reliving the childhood dream (money, fast cars, beautiful women), and being married to an attractive woman that other men can envy and admire—as being married to an attractive woman suggests a man has both confidence and sexual prowess.

Women have a club as well. However, it is much more loose and opaque than men’s. Women’s club rules seem to vary by professional level. Lower management levels share common themes around men, climbing the ladder, family activities, faith, community, and planning/participation in employer activities (softball team, clothing drives, young professional groups, work-related professional networks). As women advance in their carrier, club rules begin to change. Examples generally include topics such as gaining visible professional power (senior management titles, public speaking, and board seats), participation in management of professional associations and leadership roles in their professional networks, negotiating with men, firing men, leading substantial teams, building strategic plans, raising successful children, staying physically fit, and being able to stay in the overall professional game.

Along the way, as we move through various membership club conversations and subtly qualifying events, the professional road helps us with self-actualizing and working through competing interests, essentially building our experience repertoire and gaining a real-time, informed awareness about how the business world actually works. This an important point because we gain professional experience and awareness by working through the turns and twists and solving for better solutions, more so than simply barreling through to another job or remaining stagnant. Gaining experience in how to formulate solutions and work well with others is a true enabler of success. Over time, we actively and directly apply this experience to our careers. We learn, adapt, stumble, and learn again. Experience helps us understand what we could not understand in our youth. Experience also begins to help us understand that there are barriers and roadblocks, some of which are fair and surmountable and others that are obscure and difficult to see or solve. Over time, we may identify and understand the particular nuances built into these challenges. Some of these nuances are different and unique to women; others are not. Nevertheless, our experience begins to help us “go around” or, perhaps, wait out the weather. The difficulty is that when you cannot anticipate a specific type of roadblock, solutions are not self-evident and the solution becomes difficult to navigate. The result is that you just hit the roadblock—head-on.

I always wanted to be in control of my career, which meant setting my own speed limit, changing lanes whenever I wanted, and pursuing fast goals. So I took innovative risks (my vanity plate is “BINOV8V”), and I was always open to new jobs presenting me with strategic opportunities and more money. Yes, money, and let’s add on power, which is perhaps the ultimate prize. Power allegedly gives you full control over your professional destiny, or we think it does. Ironically, during my youthfulness I did not understand how a professional journey might actually occur. I believed in the purity of hard work, know-how, innovation, problem solving, and leadership skills, believing these would carry the day and continuously propel me forward. For many years, my beliefs held true. What I did not see or recognize was this—as I gained experience and advanced further in my career, over time I was gradually entering into the glass manufacturing phase. This is a subtle and dynamic shift, not obvious to many of us. It is a time during which men and women both manufacture glass. Then, the men rise above the glass production floor, while women buy the glass products thinking (naïvely) that these products are harmless, iridescent objects—not realizing, in actuality, the glass is a professional kryptonite.

In my role as adjunct faculty at the University of Colorado Denver, School of Business (I teach in the risk management and insurance program), I have the pleasure of watching youthful ambition play out every semester. My students regularly inquire about my career, wondering how I achieved my goals, built my professional brand, and obtained my success, and, frankly, curiously inquire if an education is the key to the ultimate ride. In my conversations with them, I see how their delightful and inquisitive personalities correspond with a whirlpool of innocence. They do not yet understand the fuller realities about progressive and modern pathways for managing their success. Their vision is clouded, not unlike mine was many years ago, and they are enthusiastic to race down their professional roads, holding their master’s in business degree and accelerate their professional dreams, while seeking their “best job.” Throughout this experience, I notice an interesting pattern between groups of my students. My female students, who are often some of the brightest and hardest-working students in my classes, are often the least confident. They hold back. They ponder. They question. This is in stark contrast to the male students, who have little to no hesitation in taking risks on their assignments, speaking up in class, immediately connecting with me on LinkedIn, or even asking me for a job.

I encourage all of my students to be their best educational advocate and self-champion, and to use the information I share and teach them to grow and develop their risk management careers. Often, I will spend time playing psychologist or mediator for students or student teams who are struggling with effective and productive team participation, including managing confrontation with their peers. This is an imperative issue because during my class we work through a semester-long group assignment that involves playing a war game. During the game, you have to creatively solve risk management issues, while negotiating with your peers (other teams) and responding to their feedback, which could consist of the answers “no,” “yes,” or “maybe.” I stress the game environment by forcing the game into a zero-sum decision-making framework as we move toward the end of the semester. I note interesting team trends that I can identify based on three factors:

• Blended teams, (B+) either female (F) or male (M) leaders
• Female lead, all-female team (FE)
• Male lead, all-male team (MA)

Blended teams (B+F) demonstrate higher levels of collaboration. They problem solve, often extensively and arguably a fault. These teams are slower to get to their final or even interim decisions than blended teams But aren’t you talking about blended teams here?(B+M).

FE teams tend to hesitate to take dramatic steps, proceeding in a more strategically incremental fashion, and are keenly focused on how their answers impact other competitors within the game environment.

MA teams demonstrate rapid decision making and tend to be overconfident, aloof, and not fully informed. They make obvious mistakes and often lose sight of the specific deliverable.

MA teams regularly draw first blood in the game and most often are the perpetual aggressor in a deal-making transaction, even in dealing with a female-led team. They will, however, ask for forgiveness from F or FE teams, typically after bludgeoning them first with aggressive risk strategies. It is important to note they take on the MA teams with equal gusto. However, they often get strong block responses from the MA teams and will back off.

It is important to remind the reader that I am referring to a war game, which means there is only one winner. Playing the game wisely involves using risk management fundamentals, specific class lessons, and external research, all executed through a risk-based decision- making approach. Putting this all together over the course of 16 weeks earns you a better grade. The variance in team behaviors—including risk taking, aggression, direct/indirect tactics, confrontation, negotiation, and problem solving—I can compare between the team types is interesting to me. It also corroborates with mutual glass manufacturing, including the subtler components involving the decisions F and FE teams allow B+M or ME teams to “get away with” and whether the game begins to feel personal to the team leaders. I keenly observe the game to see how and when women chose to be the aggressors and risk takers and what motivates them to identify and navigate a roadblock, change to a new course, stagnate, or, in some cases, quit (and sometimes drop the course).

Thinking back to my own MBA days, I was often the female lead on a team. Not always, but often. I enjoyed the pressure of going to nose to nose with an opponent and leading my team members, both male and female, to a successful outcome. To me, we were all one team, one set of equals. I had never experienced any inhibitions suggesting I was going to be any less successful in business or school performance than my male peers. My male (and female) counterparts became good friends; many still are today, and there was mutual respect during our educational journey together. I worked hard and graduated at the top of my class. During school, I never hesitated to do what it would take for our team (or myself) to get the A—extra work, extra diligence or research, tutoring, practice tests, asking for assistance, and many hours of dry runs prior to team presentations. I ran for office during my MBA (first year), and when it was all over, I was elected commencement speaker for our MBA class. Afterwards, I was president of our alumni association for few years. My MBA alma mater had provided such a great experience and contributed to my career enhancements that I wanted to give back. I never—and I mean never—saw my sex as a hindrance to my success, while in school or afterwards.

My risk management career rapidly accelerated following my MBA. I graduated from role to role, moved companies a few times, and learned from some of the best in the business. The latter favorably colored my view. When you have a great boss, a great leader, or a great teacher, you flourish. So long as someone is coachable (teachable), and willing to understand their shortcomings, advancement opportunities are usually ripe. This held true for me, and I was very lucky, and honored, to have some fabulous bosses, mostly male but a few females, helping me chart the path of my career. My salary was nearly doubling every five years, on average. I was accelerating my brand in the professional marketplace. I was also making mistakes, making bad hires, recouping from bad management decisions, owning my mistakes, learning, and adapting. This effort was paying off, along with a fair amount of eating humble pie. In particular, my male bosses were very instructive, and when I asked for ideas or help, they told me how to best advance my career. One, in particular, told me to quit and take another job I had been offered or risk his calling me a fool.

I applied for my first risk manager job when I was in my late 20s. I was young and considered myself a long shot for the job. Amazingly to me at the time, I was their candidate of choice. Prior to applying, a friend had called me and let me know that a local, large organization was hiring. When I read the job description I thought to myself, this is my dream job. It was complex, challenging, and involved some topics I knew well and some that I had absolutely no clue about. I knew I wanted that job, though, and more importantly, I knew I could quickly learn and excel at the job, so I applied. The interview process was long and grueling. When I received the call and the job offer, I was a bit panicked. Why? Because I thought that I had perhaps oversold myself and I questioned my ability to fulfill my potential in a fairly visible risk management position. I met with my current boss and let him know about the offer. He had been a tough but effective mentor, and he was thrilled for me. He told me to take the job, immediately, and not look back. Here’s why. My boss informed me that in order to advance and succeed, I had to stretch and become uncomfortable. I needed to leave my day-to-day technical expertise, my hard-earned comfort zone, and move into the realm of senior leadership. I could do this only if I accepted new challenges. I would run a bigger team, much bigger than I ever had before, and learn to navigate through a large, complex company. He said it would be the safe choice to say no, and the leadership choice to say yes. I did not negotiate the salary. I accepted the initial offer and was thrilled to be making substantially more compensation. In hindsight, I have no idea why I did not negotiate the salary. I cannot imagine, today, not negotiating my salary.

As the years rolled by, I refined and eventually built, from scratch, various risk management departments, enjoying the diversity of solving for business solutions across domestic and international companies. After a decade or so, I decided to return to school to pursue a second master’s degree, this time one with a dedicated focus on risk management. This was arguably one of the hardest choices I had to make in my professional career. I had an eight-year-old daughter, and I was already traveling extensively for my job, working with global risk management clientele for a large risk consulting/insurance brokerage firm. I convinced my husband that the year 2008 changed the face and function of risk management. The result was dramatic and immediate, with new regulations, approaches to modeling risk, solutions for underwriting risk, and, certainly, new approaches for risk management altogether. In order to be at the top of my risk management game, I needed to update my skill set and challenge myself to compete on a newly paved road. Between working full time and attending school, I had zero work-life balance. It was one of the most difficult experiences of my professional life, even though I loved every class, the school, my school colleagues, and the results I was seeing in myself professionally. After graduating, I threw myself back into my day job, full of new ideas and, not unlike my MBA students today, anxious to take my career to the next level.

A global consulting firm approached me about joining and leading their enterprise risk management specialty group. By this time, my salary at my current employer reflected my expertise, my accomplishments, my leadership skills, and my entrepreneurial success in driving change and delivering results. As such, the salary negotiations this time around were materially different than what they had been when I accepted my first risk management position. I had equity and cash bonuses that had built up value within my current employer. I also knew that there would be substantial risk in moving from my existing employer and deeply rooted management position into a full-bodied global consulting position where I was accountable for not only project results but a P/l (profitability results). As such, the compensation needed to align with the strategy and the risk. In this instance, I knew my BATNA (best alternative to a negotiated agreement). Simply stated, if I did not receive a salary commensurate with the risk I was assuming and that covered my currently earned cash position, I was not going to take the job. It would create a bad taste in my mouth to leave good money on the table—on top of demonstrating foolishly bad decision making. I provided financial analysis, profitability forecasts, summaries of my current equity and cash holdings (in current employer vested/unvested plans) and requested full compensation for all amounts already earned or owed. The negotiations were extensive and, at one point, I absolutely planned to launch my BATNA and stay in my current job position.

When all was said and done, the new compensation package was acceptable. My soon-to-be new boss mentioned he hoped he never had to do another compensation negotiation like it. Perhaps this foreshadowed the path I was agreeing to walk on. I resigned my current position and excitedly began my new career in full-time enterprise risk management (ERM) global consulting. As time progressed, I began to realize that I was seeing and experiencing some new discussions. I had gone from merely being in a man’s world to actively trying to live and survive in a man’s world. I participated in meetings that were clouded in club-ish innuendo, unusually offsetting to me in a lack of synergy between transparency and strategic direction and my ability to be in control of my leadership environment. I began to notice I was missing what I had always found so refreshing in many of the business environments where I had worked—a wholesome respect for those sitting around the table, and communication that just felt honest, fair, and collaborative. These changes were inconsistent, coming and going like weather patterns. I asked myself, where has this change come from? Is it new? Is it just me? Have I become more “sensitive” as I have gotten older? (This may seem odd and out of place, but this is where my mind went.) Why haven’t I had this happen before? Of course, it was not new. I had just finally slammed into something that I never realized really existed. My femaleness was an activated, material factor for the first time in my career.

The barrier’s blunt force stopped me cold, creating disorientation and discouragement and reducing my confidence to a former shell of my former self. I found myself second-guessing my reasoning, my logic, my perspective, my leadership approach, and eventually my success. I was losing confidence, and fast. This was completely new territory for me. I realized the reason I had not foreseen this coming was that the ceiling was clouded and dirty—you had to get close enough in your respective career path to hit it, before you could actually see it. There was little room for course correction or avoidance because I had been inexperienced in knowing what to look for and how to manage around or through it.

I began to realize I was going to have to get creative, very creative, in finding solutions that would help me succeed in my new environment. This included where to expend energy pushing back and where to let things simply pass by me. I found myself a male executive mentor and sponsor—someone who did not look at me like he wanted to sleep with me, recognized my professional talents, and understood my weaknesses. Perhaps most importantly, he taught me political savviness, including how to relate to differing (often male) perspectives within my current environment. My mentor reinforced the importance of mastering emotion and being politically astute. Generally speaking, this is not easy for women. Our female communication and group-think style are all pretty well established by the time we survive middle school. However, my mentor gave me ideas and I learned about solutions I could apply. This was similar to finding a bottle of Windex. I could then clean the ceiling and move forward, clearly seeing where to break it wide open.

I learned to not let comments, behaviors, or a lack of fulsome communication get under my skin. It took time, and without good coaching from both my former and current mentors, and my husband, it would have been very difficult to strike the right balance and move forward. From the beginning, the importance of good mentorship has held true. It can never be underestimated and must be sought and practiced constantly during one’s career.

So how do we solve for identifying and “going around” or through this obscure glass ceiling? In the absence of wisdom, will the ceiling naturally break apart as Generation X and the Millennials begin to take command of companies and change the culture for themselves and for others? Or perhaps the sheer volume of women moving into the workforce will create enough pressure upward that the ceiling will crack and begin to give way. If it’s the latter, and therefore more of a numbers game, then we are well on our way to success if we can keep women in the workforce longer term, and not leaving or accepting lower positions during family rearing years. Today, women comprise a substantial component of the workforce, much more so than in the 1970s or even the 1990s. This bodes well for the numbers game. Last, but not least, there is the additional factor of a woman U.S. president possibility. Is it time for this to happen, with the people’s choice for U.S. president finally being a woman?

Time will tell, but all of these factors suggest we may be closer to substantial progress than we think. Perhaps this decade may truly be the decade of change, opening the way for many women to gain experience, quickly move into leadership positions, and perhaps more easily find solutions for work-life balance that will keep them in the workforce longer. In the meantime, fasten your seatbelt and get ready to drive. You’ve got an exciting, challenging road lying ahead of you.