Heidi Melin says women need to keep their career options open.

Question: Heidi Melin on Women Business Leaders

Heidi Melin: I would say that, you know, as far as… I don’t think of it as women and men. Necessarily, I think of people with capabilities and I have some, you know, very talented women that I worked with over the years and certainly talented women that I look up to. I think that women actually are more and more taking on senior leadership positions within large enterprises. You see them, you know, [IB] is a great example and there are many many others and I think that women actually have to go that one stop further in helping each other, mentoring each other, because we do face a little bit different challenges. I do think that women are an increasingly powerful part of the workforce and I think that women have a responsibility to help mentor other women that are just getting into an enterprise and that’s one of the things that I have tried to spend more time on and be involved in things like [IB] for women executives and entrepreneurs, to help mentor women leaders, in Silicon Valley, specifically. I would say from a behavior standpoint, I don’t see a lot of difference between women and men and so I think that the social norms that you find within an enterprise or one that are followed by both genders. But I think that women specifically have to keep their options open as far as what their career track looks like and being flexible in looking for opportunities that might not be the one perfect job that they thought was the one that they needed to have out of school but actually look for other opportunities that would allow them to step up to that perfect job and I think being a little bit more flexible than their male counterparts is necessary for women who are entering the work force.