It happens to men and women

Karen Quintos, who has three school-age kids, is the chief marketing officer at Dell. She says that she and her husband Tony have “both had to make compromises given that we are both career-minded people.” She met her husband when she was at Merck and he had just accepted a big role at Citibank. “He had to commute back and forth between New York and Tampa. After two years of this, we decided someone’s career had to ‘give.’ Our son was 18 months old at the time. I followed Tony to Citibank, where I worked for three years. I then decided to move to Dell, and he followed me here.”

Her husband worked for Dell for several years before they decided that one of them needed to be home more with their children during their teens. “As I moved into the chief marketing officer role at Dell two years ago and the demands for my time grew, this flexibility – Tony being home – became more important. It provides us with more work/life harmony. My kids sometimes travel with me; sometimes Tony does. I also realize that not everyone has this flexibility, but having a spouse that supports me, and I him, is huge.”

Josephson made partner and today is the firm’s global Internet practice head based in Palo Alto

Martha Josephson, mother of two, says that when she first landed a job at Egon Zehnder International, the executive search company, she “staffed up at the office and staffed up at home” because her husband also had a demanding job.