Welcome to the Hot Mommas Project Learning Series where we showcase a Hot Mommas Project case selected by a student team member or guest. The series is targeted toward educators and leadership groups seeking authentic role models in addition to business/career lessons. A complementary podcast accompanies each blog post. Episodes feature interviews with Hot Mommas Project founder Kathy Korman Frey and student contributors.
Student contributor: GW student and Hot Mommas Project intern Ximena Iacono.
Featured case: Tyra Hilliard’s “Living with the Professional Itch”
Case themes include: family, confidence, moving, careers, change, and balance.
Click here to listen to the online version of the podcast with Kathy Korman Frey and Ximena Iacono. Or, click here to listen and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes.
Case excerpt and and discussion starter by Ximena Iacono:
“Please don’t ask me what I do for a living, Tyra thought as she was introduced to the woman at the reception. She knew it was a routine small-talk question, but Tyra could never figure out how to answer it and dreaded trying. Invariably, she would sigh and then offer a litany of things she did: “I teach part-time at George Washington University, I do consulting and training for the meetings industry, and I’m an attorney.” The list was sometimes reordered depending on who she was speaking to. People rarely wanted more detail than that, but if they did, she would explain that she did a lot of traveling and public speaking on legal and risk management issues for the meetings industry. That was usually enough to make their eyes glaze over or dart around the room, looking for someone else to talk to.
Tyra wanted to have a simple answer to the question “what do you do?” like “I’m a professor” or “I’m an attorney,” but no one answer was either accurate or truthful. In fact, any given week involved teaching online graduate courses, preparing training presentations, reviewing contracts, and writing articles or working on her book. She wished she could settle on one career or another, but no one thing seemed sufficient.”
Summary:
To use Hot Mommas Project cases in a learning, training, or bookclub environment:
- Read this blog post and Hilliard’s case, “Living with the Professional Itch”
- Listen to the podcast online or on iTunes.
- Discuss!
You can find other cases in this series by clicking “Role Models in the Classroom” under the Categories heading in the right column of this blog.