A stop on the way back to the office

Heads down, 33 women are focusing on their futures. What kind of job do they envision doing in three years? Is the work environment formal or casual, frenetic or low-key? Are they crunching numbers or harnessing their creativity? What obstacles may hinder landing that dream job -- a lack of skills, a dearth of confidence?

It's opening day of Harvard Business School's new "boot camp" for professional women returning to the workforce, and program head Tim Butler is wasting no time. Gently but firmly, he coaxes the participants into jotting thoughts on where they expect to be . The exercise is the starting point for an intense week of career strategizing, refresher business studies, and confidence-building.

"We're talking about career vision, what it means to have a vision," says Butler, the school's director of career development programs and author of "Getting Unstuck: How Dead Ends Become New Paths." "A vision is a sense of the types of environment, the types of people, the types of roles, the types of activities that are consistently going to make you feel most engaged."

Returning to work after years at home isn't easy, even for a group of MBAs who can afford a program costing $3,500 for graduates of Harvard Business School or Harvard University and $5,000 for others. But the good news is, the time is right.

Following years of debate about a female corporate brain drain, "on-ramps" are springing up to help women return to the workforce. Business schools from Dartmouth's Tuck to Wharton and Babson are instituting sometimes-coed, return-to-work programs. And particularly in accounting and finance, companies are recruiting returning moms.

After a 2006 pilot, Harvard's program, "A New Path: Setting New Professional Directions," debuted earlier this month.

Lydia Everett , a charismatic Cohasset mother and Harvard MBA who's been at home for seven years, signed up because she knew that returning to work would be a tough undertaking on her own.

When she left her job as a vice president of a media company, Everett was tired of long hours and constant travel. "I was commuting to Chicago the way people drive into work in the morning," recalls Everett, who also took time out to accommodate the shifting schedule of her husband, news anchor Anthony Everett.

Now Everett is ready to restart her career, but has a classic case of "returnitis." After a hiatus, self-doubt creeps in. As well, leave-takers often know they want a completely different type of work, but aren't sure what they want. A 2005 Wharton study found that 60 percent of such women wind up working for smaller companies; moreover, 60 percent change industries when they return.

"There is this sense of insecurity," says Everett, who partly wants to return to help fund college for her children, ages 5 and 13. "Am I still relevant?"

After Butler's opening talk, New Path participants broke into small groups and shared their rough career visions with one another. A combination support group and therapy session, these groups -- called "boards of advisers" -- met with a career coach for two hours daily during the program.

"I saw myself running a company that's very involved in creative marketing or promotions for start-up businesses," Everett tells her group. "What's going to get in my way? I sense it's a skills issue, kind of, coming up to speed on technology, and then really kind of finding my path."

Susan Clancy, a former financial executive for an Internet publishing company, offers reassurance. "You are not afraid to do what it takes to start your own business," says Clancy, a Newton resident who stopped working in 2004 to take care of her elderly mother. "I see a classic entrepreneurial profile."

By week's end, however, both feel on a surer footing. The program helped Clancy get "unblocked," she said afterwards, and realize that her core interests are managing people and doing creative work. She's now in the early stages of developing a start-up with her husband, while Everett is networking to learn about jobs related to new business promotion.

"I found validation of what my interests are, and I found clarification on how to go about going after them," said Everett, a few days after the program. "A lot of oysters were pried open."

When investment fund executive Tom Barry visited the New Path program, he said companies need people who can take responsibility and exercise sound judgement, qualities that come with life experience. As mothers, volunteers, and career veterans, re-entering women have accrued the skills that newly minted MBAs often lack, Barry recalls telling participants.

These women "don't have a hole in their resume, they've had lots of responsibility in lots of situations, and opportunities where they've used their judgement and their experience," says Barry, president and chief executive of Zephyr Management in New York. "This is a key selling point when they re-enter the workforce."

Balancing Acts appears every other week. Maggie Jackson can be reached at maggie.jackson@att.net.