We are in Feb 2013, and I meet for the first time my new team in the Milan ‘office. It is my first general manager role. It is my first expatriation. I am even not settled yet in the city. I even didn’t find yet a place to live with my son of 14 years. It is my first introduction speech in Italian that I memorized (I will correctly learn the language but later). I finish my short introduction and run out of my Italian words of the day. I open a Q&A session in English. The question flies: “In case of need, for example a crisis situation, would you choose the company over your son or your son over the company?”.
Silence. Deep silence. The question is set in a way which leaves no room for greatness, I could pick to be a bad CEO or a bad mother. Believe it or not but the first feeling which hits me at that moment was a sense of guilt. Weighting pros and cons, assessing the impact on the family of the professional choice to move abroad: As a divorced mother of a teenager, this was at the heart of my questioning of the last months. Thus, the question was just firing up my latent anxiety that my professional choice would put the happiness of my son at risk. That day, this question asked by a woman hit me so strongly that I stayed almost passive. “My son” did I answer without any additional comment. This anecdote happened in a culture where, even more than in my native one, the archetype of a big boss is (or at least was) an Italian, very experienced man and certainly not a quite young divorced foreign woman. It is obvious that nobody would have asked that question to a “Mr” CEO. I understood later how heavily the question was carrying the doubts and guilt of many Italian women in senior leadership roles, often extremely stretched in between work and family duties, often lacking childcare support but grandparents, and often receiving peremptory judgements from those around them.
From my young age I get models of strong-willed women. Starting from my grandmother who fought to climb the social ladder with her family and grew up 4 daughters who have become teachers. I have led my career together with the rest of my life and refused to sacrifice one aspect to the benefit of the other. I wanted it all, I still want it all. All I can be capable to embrace. Not that I pretend I am doing everything perfectly. Very far from that I would say. It often happened that I have missed being here for my son when he needed me, it happened I was too tired to be effective at home or at work. I had many moments of doubts and it happened sometimes that I was about to renounce.
But these is what I know. I grew, renounced to be perfect -perfect, learnt and progressed a lot, as a woman, as an employee, as a boss and as a human being. All of this enabled by the challenges, the responsibilities, and the international assignments I experienced. I had plenty moments of joy and I am sitting on the happy and lucky side of life. I made my choices by my own and cultivated my freedom as a gift. My son is a fantastic grown-up young adult, open minded, loving, tolerant and caring, open to the world and its different cultures.
To him and his girlfriend, I wish they will dare living their owns dreams and won’t be stopped by outdated stereotypes of any kind.