Michelle Kiefer

I would say I'm really just blessed by my family. My children are incredible. They're so proud of me, and I really feel supported by them. When I travel for work, my parents have always stepped up to take care of my children at home, and my children are excited for me to go. They always ask how my presentation went and how the conference was. When I got my master's degree, I had my third son in the middle of my master's degree, and my first two sons would sit on the couch next to me, and I would read them my textbooks, and they would be fine with it. We even have a picture of one of them with the textbook upside down, looking through it. They've always just been my purpose.

Honestly, it probably came from my dad when I was young, maybe kindergarten. I wanted to be the President of the United States, and he told me I could. So maybe that was the best career advice - just go for it. He was always sure that whatever I wanted to do, I could do it.

Ask questions. Don't be afraid to ask questions, and find out what other people do. I think as women, we tend to sell ourselves short. So my advice would be not to do that - you are capable. If you want something, figure out what you need to do and go get it.

I think one of the biggest challenges is that in America, we do not value early childhood education, which is really an incredibly poor choice of our society, because we know, research has shown us, how critical those years are for the development of young children and for supporting young families, which supports our workforce. So I think we're really facing a crossroads. We do not support with pay or with respect what caregivers for young children are doing, and we have to change that. In our world, we absolutely have to.

My faith is important to me, and I think that the decisions I make, especially as I've been in leadership longer, I've really reflected on just the path I choose and how it feels to me. If it follows my personal values for my faith, then that's going to be the right decision for me. That first and foremost impacts decisions that I make. I really value the people I work with as humans, so I don't have the expectation that we're all at work every day with 100% focus on the job. Certainly, I would admit I have high expectations for myself and high expectations for my staff, but at the end of the day, we're all human, we're all getting through this together, and so we need to have that personal connection at work. If each of us gives 100% some or most of the time, it evens out, right? So you can have those off days. I try to have that personal approach - that's how I would want people to look at me.