I really hoped this would be my year.
Unfortunately, the old adage is true: the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.
It’s been a difficult time stepping into a leadership role. Outside the obvious challenges of working in a nonstop news cycle with a gubernatorial and presidential election, I was suddenly dealing with hiring and managing staff, overseeing product management for newsletters, social media, websites and, yes, the print news magazine. And I thought it would be fine – eventually.
It’s been a pretty bumpy road and a large part of that was the series of personal losses in my family, capped off at the end of November with the passing of my grandmother. I often find myself feeling adrift and uncertain if what I’m doing matters in the grand scheme of things here in Delaware.
When I first started in journalism a decade ago, I was always frustrated by the sense that everyone in a newsroom operated in a silo. The first real onboarding I had, probably in any job, was the two weeks of overlap I had with the outgoing city hall reporter at “Ocean City Today.” I had always held out hope that I’d find someone interested in my career and help guide me along the way.
Fast forward to today, I see now that the window for any mentorship has now closed. Part of that is the nature of the news industry, besieged by cutbacks and reduced resources. Honestly, there’s just a few women here that do what I want to do. But reflecting on the past eight years when I seriously considered what I wanted to achieve, I realize that some of it was also the wrong timing for many of the great people I had met along the way.
Women are still less likely to be promoted, even though one of my favorite annual reports, “Women in the Workplace” by Lean In.org, has found that it’s improved over the past decade. In 2024, for every 100 men promoted to manager, 81 women are promoted as well. In practice for me, that means there’s significantly less women that I can turn to for advice.
In my specific world, it’s hard to see that you can indeed lead when there’s not many who are doing this job right now. In Delaware journalism, the pool of female editors has gotten smaller in the past two years with two fantastic editors leaving the post, including my colleague Betsy Price’s retirement.
But I’ve also been fortunate in the fact that I have been able to look around me and forge wonderful new connections, with vice presidents and associate directors lending a hand as I’m navigating new challenges in the conference room. I’ve had great friends who have walked in my shoes, even if it was decades before and they’re willing to be a guiding hand. More importantly, I have friends who are fighting their own battles – and even if it’s different than mine, we’re not alone in this.
Each year, I make it a point to attend the Women of Hospitality conference, which is organized by the Delaware Restaurant Association (and champion of women in the workplace Carrie Leishman and her team). Restaurant employment typically skews more toward women and most of the women-led businesses are in hospitality.
This year, the conference was able to land Jenny Just, a self-made billionaire who runs a business that provides the tech muscle behind popular mobile trading platforms. But before that, she was getting hit over and over again at her first job as a stock options trader. She got so numb to it, she just was able to power through it.
“I didn’t know what I was doing, but I was learning something really exciting – how to take risks with money. Every minute of every day, we’re making a trade. I just got great practice at it, doing it over and over again,” she said. “And that’s a tool in my tool kit now.”
Something she said really stuck with me: “If you keep making risks, between raising your hand at a meeting or something small, they build on top of each other. Every time you do it, if you fail, you understand you can get back to the table.”
So maybe this wasn’t my year. Maybe it was just time to take the hits I needed to learn. Yes, the less time I question how to be when I get to the table, the more I’ll realize that I’m still there.
And somewhere along the way, everything will work out – eventually.
