Successful Women Credit Mother's Influence

May 10, 2009— -- Paula Pretlow could justifiably credit her mother with her entire career. A senior vice president of client relations at Capital Guardian Trust Company in San Francisco, Pretlow, an African-American with four siblings, grew up poor in Oklahoma City.

When she was in the eighth grade, her secretary mother, a single parent, decided "to single-handedly desegregate the Oklahoma school system" by enrolling her children in the city's wealthiest school district, says Pretlow. The move set the rest of Pretlow's future in motion: She excelled at the demanding school, made friends and eventually won a scholarship to Northwestern University.

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There's a saying that behind every successful woman, there's a supportive man. Moms, though, might deserve even more credit for shaping a successful woman's career and family approach. In fact, if women run businesses with more compassion and collaboration than men, according to the women we spoke to, it might have to do with their mothers.

Some of the mothers were no-nonsense and others were warm and affectionate. But no matter the approach to motherhood, their daughters say they are who they are because of their moms.

Pretlow says her mother told her that she and her "smart" siblings could do anything. "'Can't' wasn't in our vocabulary," she quips. Her mother also took time to explain the family's financial situation to her children. "I knew exactly how much money was coming and what the bills were, so that each of us could understand why we had to take turns getting new shoes and new clothes," she explains.

Real estate mogul Barbara Corcoran's mom didn't have time for such micromanagement. With 10 kids, she ran her home like a boot camp. To speed morning school preparations, socks were kept in two kitchen drawers--one for girls, one for boys. Corcoran, who became one of the most successful real estate entrepreneurs in the country before selling her firm in 2001, credits her harried mother with her success. Corcoran's says her mother managed to find one special trait in each of her children--and nurture it throughout their childhood.

A self-described "terrible student," Corcoran was held back in second grade. Her mother, though, told her daughter that her imagination would help her get through school. "If it was rainy, she would tell me to take five of the kids down to the basement and put on a Broadway show," recalls Corcoran, who wrote a book that paid homage to her mother, Use What You've Got, And Other Business Lessons I Learned From My Mom.

Watching her mother motivate her children (she told one son, Tommy, that he had great legs, and he wound up becoming an Alvin Ailey dancer), Corcoran learned how to motivate her staff. "I did the real estate version of my mother's family," she says. "I loved having a big family, and my staff was like my family."

Sometimes a mom teaches by example rather than instruction. Kate Putnam, who owns Package Machinery Company, a Springfield, Mass., producer of equipment that makes packaging, is one of the few women in the business. Her mom, she says, was an ambitious person who planned to go to Harvard Law School. Her dreams were stifled by an overbearing father who pressed her to marry a man who turned out to be cold and uninvolved with the family. Putnam's mother lived out her drive for intellectual and community engagement by sitting on the boards of several nonprofit organizations in Putnam's hometown.

Putnam says it took her awhile to realize the way her mother, who died 16 years ago, influenced her. "She didn't come across as warm, fuzzy or cuddly," recalls Putnam. Rather than instructive advice, she says, she "would tell a story to illustrate a point."

"She believed in challenging people to be the best they could," she says. "But if you didn't succeed, she didn't criticize you for it."

Although unlike her mother, Putnam has built a challenging, successful career, she finds she takes after her mother in unexpected ways. She is on the board of the same nonprofit health care system that her mother was involved with. The former CEO of the organization recently remarked that Putnam's demeanor is nearly identical to her mother's: She sits quietly at meetings listening to the discussion, then pipes up with challenging questions out of the blue, catching people off guard.

Amy Schulman, now general counsel at Pfizer in New York, lost her mother to cancer less than four years ago, and she still tears up when she recalls her mom's warmth and ability to connect with others. Schulman saw her mother spread her wings in middle age: She went to law school at the age of 45, when Amy was 17 and her sister was 14.

Her mother had Schulman at the age of 28, which was slightly unconventional in 1960. Also out of the norm was her mother's encouragement of creativity and independence: "I didn't have a Halloween costume I didn't make myself," Schulman recalls. "Of course, I wanted the costume that looked like everyone else's."

Like Putnam, it was clear to Schulman, who has three sons, that her mother had dreams that were deferred. Her mother loved being a mom and dutifully cooked and threw great dinner parties, "but she needed a broader field," says Schulman. "She had spillover energy and needed more engagement in the world."

But she wanted her daughters to be engaged, and she told Schulman that being bored was "the worst thing possible," and told her to use her creativity to do something she wanted. Although Schulman followed her mother to law school--her parents were both the first in their families to attend college--she maintains she was never pressured to follow in their footsteps.

"She was not an advice person. She would sit back and listen," says Schulman. She hopes she practices her mother's ability to engage others. She's proud of the fact that her sons turn to her when they need someone to talk to.

Kelley Skoloda's mother was a pioneer in her own way. An operating-room nurse in western Pennsylvania, her mother worked when few other mothers in the neighborhood were employed. Skoloda, a Pittsburgh-based partner at public relations firm Ketchum, took on domestic responsibilities, like feeding her siblings, to "cover the gap" between the time her sister and two brothers came home from school and her mom returned from work.

Rather than resenting this, she says she "learned a healthy degree of loving responsibility for those around me." It extends to how she approaches her colleagues. "I feel a lot of responsibility for those who work with me and around me--it's how things adapted at home."

Like Putnam's mother, Skoloda's eschewed lectures and instruction. "She was busy with four kids, so she didn't give unsolicited advice," laughs Skoloda. "She taught me a lot about independence by making me second in charge when our parents were working," she says.

Her mom also quietly sculpted Skoloda into a pioneer of sorts--the Ketchum executive was the first person on either side of her family to attend a four-year college.