Margaret Hough

Sometimes serendipity is the answer. Sometimes there are decisions you don't have to make, which is how I got where I did. You can't control your future, especially being a woman. You can be the smartest woman, you can be the most talented, but if you're in a company that doesn't value that, you're not going to get anywhere. You need to be prepared to recognize an opportunity when it comes and either change if you don't like it, if you're unhappy, or know where your priorities are. Get as much knowledge as you can about every different subject. Read constantly - I grew up on science fiction and I still absolutely love it. Step out of your field, step out of your comfort zone, do something different. If you had a book that you liked in high school, read it again several years later and see how your perspective of that book has changed. Question why it has changed. Take courses outside your field - I took a course in semiotics analyzing The Great Gatsby according to different philosophers, and it was an incredible experience even though I was in business and engineering. The vision of a future, whether it's destructive or constructive, helps you think about moral decisions we need to make.

I think if you look at standards, where we rank educationally, we're pretty low. I don't think we'd like to admit that to ourselves. We're pretty low in the STEM areas. I noticed while I was in Mexico that women there are not afraid of mathematics. They are not told from the very beginning that women don't do math. We had many women in engineering and in actuarial science at our university. In many of my classes at Michigan State, I was the only woman. I was one of the women who thought I couldn't do math, but I had to do it, and when you did, you realized it wasn't out of your realm of possibility. Our educational system conditions that - if you look, a teacher sees hands up in the air, their first inclination is to call on the boy, especially in a math class, especially in a science class. You still don't see a lot of women in the STEM areas. These are influential areas - we've got AI coming up, we've got moral decisions to make, and to be perfectly honest with you, I don't think the men are the best at this. If this world's going to survive, we need to have more women in positions of influence or power. Here in the States, we've done our women a severe injustice, and we're going backwards.

Integrity is most important to me. The ability to make good decisions that are not only good for the company, but that are also good for the community and the world. We used to teach in business and management courses that a company had responsibility to the community they're in, they had responsibility to their employees, they had responsibility to the world outside the business, and to leave the world in a better place. That was the beginning of Management 101. But when I was teaching in the early 2000s, the book said the first responsibility of the CEO in any corporation is to their shareholders and to make a profit. I'd stand up there and tell my kids, 'This is what the book said, but I don't believe it. I don't think that is the way it should be run. However, you're going to have to learn what the book says because that's what you're going to be tested on.' Being able to stand up when somebody else is wrong, being able to realize that sometimes your job just isn't worth it - there are things that are far more important than just your job. Here in the States, we've so lost sight of that.