Stiletto Network

CHAPTER 3

EVEN A LIVE WIRE NEEDS A CONNECTION

The greatest beneficiaries of executive women’s networks may be promising junior colleagues, many of whom are choosing entrepreneurship over corporate life. More and more, young women graduating college are eschewing a traditional path. Even a decade ago, girl go-getters would have tied long hair in tight ponytails, donned black Ann Taylor suits, low pumps, and a safe set of pearls, and lined up at Career Services for speed-round interviews. They would have prayed for temperature-controlled rooms so their palms would stay dry in firm handshakes—or at least to be spared the clammy digits of balding men in Hermes ties from McKinsey, Bain, Merrill Lynch, and Morgan Stanley. These hands, they knew, held ...