Welcome to the Forty Over 40 blog. Frequently we spotlight one of our honorees and their thoughts on reinvention, mentorship and momentum…plus a peek into what makes them tick.
This Q & A is with Ellen Galinsky the President and Co-Founder of Families and Work Institute (FWI) helped establish the field of work and family life during the time she was at Bank Street College of Education, where she was on the faculty for 25 years. Her more than 100 books and reports include the best-selling Mind in the Making: The Seven Essential Life Skills Every Child Needs, Ask The Children, and the now classic The Six Stages of Parenthood. She has published over 300 articles in journals, books and magazines.
1) What was a pivotal momentum of reinvention for you?
I have always considered my work a research adventure—whereas others climb mountains or sail the seas, I pursue questions that center on our changing lives at work, at home, and in our communities. Answering one question always leads to a new question, often in uncharted lands. So by its very nature and because we strive to be ahead of the curve, my work has always called for reinvention. The question of “what keeps the fire burning in children’s eyes” led me from child development research into cognitive science and neuroscience. The question of “how people manage their lives on and off the jobs” led me from family studies into research on the work environment, to gender and generational studies.
2) Who has been a valuable mentor or sponsor?
As much as anyone, my mother Leora Osgood May, was my mentor—both because of the way she lived and what she said. As a widow, she took over the family business to support us. In another era and in other circumstances, she would have worked in the art field, but life constrained her. She founds many ways to work in the arts in addition to her job— helping to start a museum, serving as a curator for shows, and writing reviews for the local paper. When she retired at 77, she delved into the arts even more deeply.
From my mother, I learned:
- Live intentionally. Don’t wait until an illness or difficult circumstances force your choices. Have the choices you make everyday matter to you.
- Work on purpose. Find work that you love —both work that is paid for and work that is not. In my case, it is the Families and Work Institute, the organization I co-founded 25 years ago and photography.
- Fear means go. Although running a business in a man’s world was difficult, mother always managed to go on that buying trip, negotiate that work situation.
- Put your family first. Mother always did and I hope I have too.
- Keep asking question, keep learning. My mother lived to learn and learned to live.
3) What is your biggest goal right now?
I am beginning working on a book on adult executive function skills—in order to help adults work on purpose, be more engaged at work, and find and create work environments that support them. I feel like a student, surrounded by articles and books to read, including many researchers whose names I don’t yet know. In addition, finding time to learn all of this new material so I can make sense of it—while I am running an organization and being the grandmother to an incredible 16 month-old—feels extremely daunting and exhilarating.
4) How did you get your first job? How did you jump to your second job?
When I entered the child study field as a student at Vassar College, it was a relatively new field. My professors at Vassar—Joe Stone, Joe Church, and Henrietta Smith—were so busy learning from their own studies and from the other leaders in this emerging field that they involved us, the students, in helping to address their questions and to frame our own inquiries. This ranged from the series of films they created, to the studies they conducted, to the research questions they asked us to pose. In my case, my senior thesis involved teen’s views of their parents. I spent time during my senior year pursuing where I wanted to go next. I knew I wanted to be in a place and surround by people with the same passion for child development as I had. As part of my search, I went to a conference run by Bank Street College of Education. From my first moment at the conference, I knew that was where I wanted to be—that even if I had to take waitress job and volunteer at Bank Street, I would be there. Through Vassar, I secured an interview to be an assistant teacher in their School for Children. I got all dressed up in my one suit, a Chanel knock-off, took the train down from Poughkeepsie to New York City and went to the interview.
Then I heard nothing. Nothing—for days, for weeks. I finally asked Joe Stone from Vassar to try to find out what was going on. He told me that I had the job. The reason they hired me, he said, was because I got down on the floor with the kids in my dress-up clothes. So based on my professor’s word (no letter of hire, no contract), I moved to New York City after college and showed up at Bank Street. I stayed at Bank Street for 25 years—so that was my second, third, and fourth job, so to speak. I moved from being a teacher into creating materials about how children learn and how teacher teach best. From there, I moved into the research division at Bank Street. And from there, I co-founded the Families and Work Institute.
5) What time do you typically wake up? What do you do every morning?
Now that I am working on a new book, I get up early but stay in bed and read, write myself notes, and think. I am moving to a schedule where I will try to safeguard this early time in the morning and start my job work day at 10 or 11 a couple of day a week.
6) How did you feel on your 30th birthday? What were you doing at that time?
When I turned 30, I was the mother of a three year old. In a few weeks, I would find out that I was pregnant with our second child, who died soon after birth. But on my actual birthday, it was a time of hope and we had a great party.
7) How do you unplug? How often do you unplug?
I unplug with photography. It is like my work because it is an adventure, a journey. I am photographing Route 66, creating outside-in images that ask: What is real and what is symbolic? What is inside and what is outside in this depiction of life on this iconic road that is an emblem of American expansion westward? Photography is quite unlike my other work in that it is more instantaneous. I see a photograph and though I may work for some time to capture this vision through my camera, it is hours, not week, months or years. It is also a solo, not a team sport, as the rest of my work is. The photograph is all mine—no meetings to plan it, no teams to review it. So it is a wonderful change of pace for me. I photograph my grandson often but my Route 66 journey is our planned summer vacation.
8) What challenge / achievement are you most proud of?
I am most proud of having the courage to write The Six Stages of Parenthood. Not only was I formulating a theory of adult growth in parenting, I was taking on some of the child and adult research establishment of the time. It can feel very brave to write what you think in the quiet of your office but quite another to imagine some of the people you admire—but disagree with—reading what you have written. I am similarly proud of having the courage to write Mind in the Making. I was using other’s research to construct a theory of life skills. I felt quite anxious that these child development/neuroscience researchers whom I admire (and don’t disagree with) wouldn’t like how I presented their studies in constructing this theory.
9) What was the last business book you read?
I recently read Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi for the third time. His probing of flow—“the state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter, the experience itself is so enjoyable that people will do it even at great cost, for the sheer sake of doing it”— is deeply inspiring to me.
10) What cause do you most want to advance?
Keeping the fire for learning burning brightly in the eyes of all children.
11) What song can’t you get out of your head?
A few weeks ago, Families and Work Institute, the organization I co-founded and where I serve as president, celebrated our 25th Anniversary. As I thought about that milestone, the classic song, Maria, from the Sound of Music, kept coming to mind, especially the verse:
How do you find the word that means …Maria
In my case, I kept thinking of how could I find a word that means Families and Work Institute. How can I describe it? I also kept thinking of the verse:
How do you hold a moonbeam in your hand?
It was a moonbeam 25 years ago—an elusive dream that Dana Friedman, co-founder of the Institute and I—dared to imagine, believing that we could create an organization to address the monumental changes in our workplaces, our communities and our families. I have followed that moonbeam ever since. In Maria, there was another verse that kept coming to mind:
How do you keep a wave upon the sand?
We have spent these years seeking those waves, as they swell, as they begin to crest, before they hit the sand. We want to be ahead of those waves so that we have data as the need for the “facts” emerges.
12) What is your secret indulgence?
Making ice cream.
13) Who on the list of 2013 Honorees would you like to meet?
I just went through the list. I would like to meet all whom I don’t already know. I am imagining a wonderful convening, with enough time to really talk!
Check out Ellen Galinsky’s full 40 Over 40 profile here!
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