For more than 15 years, Jennifer Hyman has been the CEO and co-founder of Rent the Runway. For the last eight years, she’s also been a parent.
Doing both requires effort, says Hyman, but not the kind that involves waking up at 4 a.m., working late every night, missing kids’ sporting events or other commitments that some CEOs make. She wakes up at 7:15 a.m., eats breakfast with her three kids — and then works “like a maniac” at Rent the Runway’s office in Brooklyn, New York, so she can get home for family dinner, she says.
If Hyman has to miss family dinner — recently, she had to meet with an investor after work, for example — she reminds her kids that they’ll have to make those choices someday, too, she says.
“I’m certainly a working mom, and I think that’s incredible for my kids to see,” she says. “I’m constantly emphasizing to them … ‘I love my job. This is a big part of who I am, and I want you to love your job [one day], too.’”
Hyman co-founded Rent the Runway in 2009 with Jennifer Fleiss, her classmate at Harvard Business School. She’s been CEO since Day 1, navigating the company through both highs — a diluted $1.7 billion valuation on its stock market debut in 2021 — and lows, including layoffs and store closures in recent years.
You don’t have to ‘cut out happiness’ to be successful
Having time for both work and family — plus time for friends — isn’t a casual accident, Hyman notes: She doesn’t really have any hobbies, and she takes early-morning or late-night flights to avoid spending more nights than necessary away from her kids. But people in “any given job” can struggle with the same tensions, she says.
“There’s this assumption that women feel like they can’t have it all, and like you have to make sacrifices,” says Hyman. “I’ve done the things that are fulfilling for me. I don’t feel like I’ve had to cut anything out of my life that’s cut out happiness.”
How you spend your time can impact your career, relationships and emotional well-being, according to experts. Plus, dwelling on perfect work-life balance can be counterproductive and cause undue anxiety, Harvard Medical School and MIT professor Jeff Karp told CNBC Make It last year.
“We hear these things from others: ’trust in the process [and] ‘we need more balance’ … It ends up being very frustrating and can lead to anxiety, because we’re constantly feeling like we’re not in balance.” said Karp, whose 2024 book “LIT: Life Ignition Tools” focuses on how to tap into a “high-energy brain state.”
No one-size-fits-all strategy exists for parenting and having a busy job at the same time, Hyman says: Everyone has a different approach. Billionaire Raising Canes co-founder and CEO Todd Graves used to host dinner and playtime with his kids and wife at his office so he could go back to work afterward, he told CNBC Make It last year.
Similarly, Graves has been willing to wake up at 4:30 a.m. on vacations to get some work done, before joining the rest of his family at the beach by 11 a.m., he said. That kind of commitment isn’t quite as necessary if you’re happy with your level of success, he added.
“I’m as busy as anybody I know, I travel as much as anybody I know, but I can work my schedule where I can make most of the things I need to be at with kids, family or important friends,” said Graves.
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