The Classic Mistake 

Comments from Sylvia Ann Hewlett

Sponsorship was a well-kept secret for me. I think I made pretty much the classic mistake. My first job in my late 20s was as assistant professor of economics at Barnard College and I thought that I had all of my ducks in a row. I got a teaching prize. I was publishing. I was sitting on committees. I even found myself an amazing mentor. She gave me tons of advice and I really loved her. When the tenure battle rolled along, it turns out she was pretty useless. She quarreled with the dean. So she wasn't on any of the right committees. Although I had very firm support from my department, at the last committee of the university, I was shot down because of the five people on that critical committee, no one knew who the heck I was.

There were three people up from the economics department and I think probably I was as well qualified as any of them. But they were known. They were trusted. They were valued personally by some of the folks on that committee and I just simply had not done that kind of networking. Like a lot of young women, I thought my performance would speak for itself, that everyone out there was just watching and making notes and making sure I got my just deserts. That's not how organizations work. 

I hadn't made it my business to get to know the kind of powerhouses in the department or at the university. I didn't go Friday night to sit at someone's feet at their seminar. I didn't volunteer to be on their panel at some conference. I should have been doing those things. I kind of had a set of blinders on from my late 20s. So by 35, that career just was not available to me because one of the sad things, of course, about academia is that it's up or out. If you don't get tenure, you actually get fired. Women, I think, end up in that situation. They performed, they produced, but no one's noticed. We all need mentors but unless we have a sponsor, too, we will get stuck.