The Ambition Decisions with Hana Schank and Elizabeth Wallace

#### Do you ever feel like you’re facing impossible choices—tradeoffs between family and work, between money and passion, between pushing for a promotion and just wanting to take a damn nap? Well, our guests today have been there. And not only that, they’ve written about it.

[](https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/567185/the-ambition-decisions-by-hana-schank-and-elizabeth-wallace/9780525558811/)

Those guests are Hana Schank and Elizabeth Wallace. A few years ago, they were both in their early forties and feeling stuck. So they set out to learn whether other women they knew were feeling the same—and what they could do about it.

Hana and Elizabeth interviewed forty-three women they had first met more than two decades ago, when they were members of the same sorority at Northwestern University. The results of those interviews is the new book [_The Ambition Decisions: What Women Know About Work, Family, and the Path to Building a Life_](https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/567185/the-ambition-decisions-by-hana-schank-and-elizabeth-wallace/9780525558811/), which came out in June.

> Ambition is not this entity that is contained in a box labeled “career.” …We wanted to kind of liberate the word ambition from this kind of office-boss-lady idea and let it live outside of those constraints.

>

> — **Elizabeth Wallace** , coauthor, _The Ambition Decisions_

We sat down with Hana and Elizabeth to talk about:

- How they started their project, and what they learned from the women they interviewed

- How ambition often changes over time, and how to embrace that change

- Stuff we often forget about when we’re on “rosé dates”—like figuring out whether your prospective partner supports your ambitions as much as their own

### Links

- [_The Ambition Decisions_](https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/567185/the-ambition-decisions-by-hana-schank-and-elizabeth-wallace/9780525558811/) from Penguin Random House

- Hana on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/hanaschank) and [her website](https://hanaschank.me/)

- Elizabeth on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/lizardwallace) and [her website](https://elizabethannwallace.wordpress.com/)

### Also in this episode

Jenn talks about her upcoming maternity leave, and why it sucks to have to “sell” your employer on taking more than three months off. We chat about:

- The FML of the [FMLA (Family and Medical Leave Act)](https://www.dol.gov/whd/fmla/)

- Using [short-term disability insurance to get paid during maternity leave](https://fairygodboss.com/career-topics/short-term-disability-insurance-pregnancy-and-maternity-leave-questions-and-answers)

- Ivanka Trump and Marco Rubio’s woefully inadequate [proposed paid leave act](https://www.vox.com/2018/8/6/17648462/rubio-ivanka-republican-paid-leave)

- What it’s like for Sara’s family [taking parental leave in Germany](https://www.workingmother.com/this-is-what-happened-when-germany-paid-women-25k-more-during-maternity-leave)

## Sponsors

This episode of NYG is brought to you by:

[](https://www.shopify.com/careers)