Theresa Grafenstine was told to quit her first graduate job. Starting as one of a handful of women at the US Department of Defense, one helpful manager advised that if she gave up the “silly job” she’d have more time to find a husband and raise a family.
That was in 1992, not 1952.
“The funny thing was I understood that he wasn’t trying to be malicious,” says Grafenstine. “It was a recipe for success that had worked well for him and his generation. Regardless, I didn’t let any of that slow me down. I worked hard and held my own. I pushed back when I needed to. This is not to say that I did not learn a lot while I was there.”
Grafenstine is now Inspector General of the US House of Reps, the first woman to serve in such a role, and leading the department on the financial and administrative functions it needs to run effectively and efficiently.
Visiting Australia recently to attend board meetings in line with her additional role of Vice President of ISACA, an NFP for IT security, governance, risk and audit professionals, I had the opportunity to put some questions to Grafenstine about her remarkable career.
In Washington, she’s on a similar frontline to the one Anne-Marie Slaughter once served on, who recently exited her high profile position to look after her two teenage sons and famously penned a piece for The Atlantic, Why Women Still Can’t Have it All, on the experience.
Asked her take on the matter of ‘having it all’ Grafenstine believes it comes down to how we define the term – and says that if it’s a matter of being able to do all the things that a stay-at-home mother can do while having a high-powered career then we’re up for some serious disappointment.
“Think about this on a practical level. Short of cloning ourselves, it is humanly impossible to be the mum who is baking cookies every day after school, holding one end of the jump rope in the driveway for the line of kids, as my mum did, and serving as the room mum in our child’s classroom while simultaneously serving as chairman of the board in a large company and sitting in back-to-back meetings all day. Each one of those things is separately a full-time job.”
Grafenstine believes it’s important to celebrate the fact that many women now have options. If economically possible, we can choose to stay home or go back to work to pursue a career – options our parents and grandparents probably didn’t have.
“The trap that women fall into is having someone else define for them what ‘having it all’ means and feeling like we are falling short. For me, ‘having it all’ means having a husband and children who love me, being able to participate in my children’s sports, sitting with them and recounting their day over dinner, and also having a job that I find incredibly rewarding.”
So how has Grafenstine managed to excel her career, and create her own significant ‘first’ for women?
The child of a hardworking mother and grandmother, Grafenstine was always encouraged to pursue the opportunities they didn’t have.
It was a while before she realised just how many options were available or how big her ambitions could be, especially given the fact she didn’t know anyone with a traditional ‘white collar’ job.
“Did I think I would end up becoming the Inspector General of the US House of Representatives? Not in my wildest dreams—but I did believe my family when they said I could be whatever I wanted as long as I worked hard for it.
“So, early in my career, I would set interim goals and map out what I thought it would take to get to the next career level. I would do this by observing people who were successful and figuring out what attributes contributed to their success. I found that networking and obtaining professional certifications were common themes among people who were very successful in my industry.”
She says volunteering for a not-for-profit — as she did with ISACA, originally at the chapter level — gave her the opportunity to cultivate mentoring relationships with senior IT professionals and develop leadership skills. She’s still volunteering with ISACA, but at a global level, which now presents a different opportunity: to give back to the profession.
Meanwhile, Grafenstine says being a woman has neither helped nor hindered her career during her 16 years with the House of Reps.
“In order to make meaningful change at the House, I need the buy-in of key stakeholders. To do that, I place a high priority on building and maintaining relationships. I do this by being consistent, above-board in my interactions, following through on commitments, and maintaining my non-partisan status.”
Grafenstine adds that her adaptability has helped her significantly, particularly as she’s always tried to stay ahead of industry trends. “You need to be strategic when planning out your career. You have to think about where things are going; not where they have been. For example, although I started off as a financial auditor, I quickly saw that IT was the wave of the future. I invested personal time in understanding technology and I joined ISACA to surround myself with senior professionals in the IT industry.
“When the next position opened up at the House in the IT audit area, I was prepared. Each time I was promoted, I would look at whatever was the next position in the career ladder and start working on getting those skills. If you are determined, you can be anything. If you don’t believe that, you can become your own self-imposed glass ceiling.”
Thinking back to her first five years with the Department of Defense, and that useful advice from a male manager all those years ago, Grafenstine believes things have thankfully changed from the ‘locker room feel’ she once worked in.
“There were literally male employees who would change in their cubicles to go jogging at lunch. Keep in mind that cubicles are not offices—they do not have doors. They had grown so accustomed to it being an all-male environment that it just did not occur to them that they should probably find a restroom to change into workout clothes because there were now female employees,” she says.
“They would use salty language and leave ‘reading material’ lying around that by today’s standards would be cause for a hostile workplace lawsuit.
Still, it was a period that represented the first five years of her career and offered some foundational lessons, including meeting a great senior manager who took every opportunity to showcase her talents and work.
“When I left that office to move to Washington DC, the office had a much more professional environment about it. The majority would have viewed that new environment as a drastic improvement — but there were still some who looked back longingly at the days when they could change into work-out clothes in their cubicles.”