How She Does It

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Sophie Vandebroek, Xerox's chief technology officer, in the company's offices in Rochester, New York.

"So many things we worry about," she understands now, "are not important."

Since Bart's death, she has also put one nonnegotiable condition on her career: no relocating. She has held jobs based in Rochester, Syracuse, Toronto, and Stamford, Connecticut--and for each she kept the family in the same house that she and Bart bought for $160,000 15 years ago, arranging with her bosses to be in her faraway office as little as possible. In 2000, Vandebroek left Xerox and spent 12 months as chief technology officer at Carrier Corp., based in Hartford, but she spent only one day a week at headquarters. "It's a lot of work to move, especially with kids," says Jonathan Ayers, the former Carrier president who recruited Vandebroek. "It's all the things you don't think of that you develop when you're in a location--the pediatrician, the schools, the activities." Indeed, Vandebroek refers to relationships with neighbors, doctors, and sitters as "infrastructure," an investment that would take too long to rebuild if she moved. "Jobs are fairly easy to change," she says. "Relationships aren't."

"Jobs are fairly easy to change," she says. "Relationships aren't."

She has also rejected the illusion of the so-called life-cycle career, in which a rising executive tries to time moves at work to the ebbs and flows of family life. Vandebroek has always taken new jobs no matter what was going on at home--and to her, that's the smart solution. "The more senior jobs you get, the easier it is," she says. "You get less control over how busy you are, but you get more over decisions about when you're busy and how you're going to do things." While most people equate seniority with stress, she equates it with flexibility.

Vandebroek admits that not every worker could get--nor even deserves--the accommodations she has been granted. "What's important is you deliver results," she says, finishing dinner. "If you're requesting flexibility and you're not performing to the level your manager expects, you're in big trouble--you can't do that."

Tonight, of course, Vandebroek faces different expectations. The clock is ticking past 6:30, and many of the nation's chief technology officers are probably still at their desks. But in a school gymnasium a few miles away, the string section is tuning up. And when the curtain rises, Sophie Vandebroek has every intention of being there.

Daniel McGinn is a Newsweek correspondent based in Boston.

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