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Dot-Mom
For a time, iVillage.com and its CEO, Candice Carpenter Olson (MBA '83), were on top of the world. The Web site was wildly popular with both women and Wall Street; by 1999, the company was worth more than $2 billion. Then came the dot-com implosion, and although iVillage survived and remains in operation today, Olson decided to step down as chief executive.
With two young children at home, "I personally came to the conclusion that being a CEO is hell," Olson told the New York Times (February 7, 2002). "It wasn't what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. I started realizing that all my instincts were about wanting to take care of a family in a traditional way." And that is what she is now doing. Long a single mother with two daughters, last year she married Random House CEO Peter Olson (MBA/JD '76); the new family of four now lives in Manhattan, with Olson delighted to play the role of Mrs. Mom. She has written a self-help book based on her own transitional experience called Chapters: Create a Life of Exhilaration and Accomplishment in the Face of Change.
Olson is well aware that her embrace of home and hearth
may seem controversial for a woman of her talents and achievement.
"I was raised to avoid the dependency thing at all costs,"
she acknowledged. "And what I learned was that the only thing
worse is independence." Whether opting for domesticity or
anything else in life, what's important, she noted, is to
be able "to choose for yourself" because "then
you feel free."
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