Speaker - June 2008

A

360°

Cathie Black could easily be the subject of a women’s magazine profile about someone who’s man- aged to have it all in life: A girl from the Midwest grows up, rises to the top of her field, marries a supportive husband of 26 years, has two kids and a dog, and is a highly sought-after career expert and speaker.

While most of the description is accurate, Black, who is presi- dent of Hearst Magazines and re- peatedly named as one of Fortune magazine’s “50 Most Powerful Women in American Business,” takes exception with one signifi- cant detail. “As someone who is often perceived as ‘having it all,’ let me just say this outright: I hate that phrase,” she recently ex- plained in her blog entry on The Huffington Post. “The implication is that every person wants exact- ly the same thing, which is com- pletely untrue. You don’t have to

Life

Cathie Black,
author of Basic
Black, shows
how to live a
fashionably
balanced life

marry a lawyer or doctor, win the u.S. Open in tennis, and become a CEO all in the same year in order to find success and happiness.”

Black believes she has accom- plished work-life balance that fo- cuses on all aspects of day-to-day living: job, home, relationships and family. “Blindly striving to have it all is not the answer. Hav- ing what I call a ‘360° Life’ isn’t about reaching the top in every- thing you do, it’s about achieving balance. It means creating a fully rounded existence, one that en-

compasses deep satisfaction with your personal life, work and fam- ily,” she adds.

In her bestselling book, Basic Black: The Essential Guide for Getting Ahead at Work (and in Life) published by Crown Business in 2007, she expands on the 360° Life concept, providing readers a blueprint for mapping out a suc- cessful professional and person- al formula for contentment. The pages are sprinkled with personal stories and behind-the-scenes anecdotes of the media world, illustrating Black’s climb up the publishing ladder from ad sales to publisher to president.