Do You Know Businesswomen Who Have Left Corporate Life Behind?

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The NYT had an interesting story a little while ago — Girl Boss to No Boss [gift link], about high-powered women choosing to leave their corporate careers. Let’s discuss — do you know women who have left corporate life to build something new? (Do you know men who have done the same?) Have you ever felt “left behind” when someone you considered a role model left corporate life?

According to The New York Times,

“I’ve seen more and more very high-powered women who have been in careers for a very long time — and very successful careers — taking a step to say: ‘What do I want to do now? Where do I want to go?’” said Cate Luzio, the founder and C.E.O. of Luminary, a professional education and networking company geared toward women. Ms. Luzio said a growing number of Luminary’s members have changed careers or left the work force post-Covid.

To hear these women tell it, leaving their jobs — whether for motherhood, starting their own businesses, or otherwise — isn’t some sign that they fell off a broken ladder; it’s a power move.

“I didn’t fall off anything. I made a conscious decision,” said Maribel Lara, who left her role as senior vice president at the media company VaynerX earlier this year and now runs her own marketing consultancy, Beget Love Consulting, based on Long Island. “I wasn’t looking for growth within corporate America. I was looking to have full control of my time.”

Obviously, both men and women have been leaving to do this kind of consulting for eons now — it’s not so much as “opting out” of their career as it is opting out of corporate life. A related question, I suppose, to all of this — have you seen people try to come back to corporate life after a few years spent away?

Another interesting point — a lot of women and minorities who leave such jobs feel like they’re letting someone down, or ceding ground for a greater cause.

Women making these moves also often grapple with what they owe to the women they leave behind. That’s especially true for women of color, who make up just 7 percent of C-suite positions, according to the McKinsey and Lean In survey. “I recognized that I was a role model,” said Ms. Lara of Beget Love Consulting. “That was actually one of the hardest parts about leaving. There was definitely a sense of guilt, like, I’m leaving them on their own.”

What are your thoughts, readers? Is this something different from “the opt-out” revolution of yore, or a new form of the #girlboss? (Despite the headline, I always associated that hashtag with women having a side hustle or building a business on their own, not women climbing the corporate ladder…) How have you seen this play out in real life with women colleagues?

Stock photo via Stencil.