What's it like for a woman at the top? How have the few who have gotten there charted their careers? Have they been helped by mentors along the way, and how do they mentor others? And is work-family balance possible?

To answer these and other questions, The Wall Street Journal invited six women executives to participate in a recent panel discussion. Moderated by Senior Editor Carol Hymowitz, the discussion, which took place before an audience of about 240 invited guests, offers an inside look at the special challenges and choices of women at the top.

Women Leading Business

See videos of the panelists from the Women Leading Business conference, moderated by the Journal's Carol Hymowitz. WellPoint's Angela Braly and other top women executives talk about their careers and give advice about how to get ahead in the corporate world.

In the Lead Forum

What do you think are some of the most difficult challenges facing women in the workplace today? Has the situation improved over the past decade? If so, how? Join the discussion.

Manager's Diary

Here are edited excerpts from their discussion.

The Path to the Top

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL: All of you have worked at more than one company, and some of you in the public sector as well. What has prompted some of your moves?

SHERYL SANDBERG: I wanted to go into technology because I thought that was where the most interesting things were happening. This was 2001, after the dot-com bubble crashed. Google was not the obvious choice then. There were people who said, "You're going to a little technology company? Don't you know that's over?"

I was passionate about what Google does, which is provide free information to the world. But the job offer I had was to be a business manager, and at the time there was no business to manage. I told [CEO] Eric Schmidt, "This job meets none of my criteria." And he gave me what I think was the best career advice I've ever gotten. He said, "Go where there's growth -- because growth provides opportunities." And I came to Google and it was a great decision.

MELANIE HEALEY: I was a marketing manager at Johnson & Johnson in Brazil when I got a call from Procter & Gamble. P&G is a company that only hires at entry-level positions. I ended up going as a brand manager, which was a step back. It was a questionable move, but I thought about something different than the level of my job.

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J&J had been in Brazil at the time for 50 or 60 years. And here was P&G, a big multinational but then a very small start-up in this huge country full of opportunities. And I thought, this is the challenge I want, this is where I'm going to learn the most in the next few years.

WSJ: Angela Braly, you were a lawyer in private practice when you worked out a settlement for a for-profit health company over claims that it was benefiting from its nonprofit parent. Was this a pivotal job?

ANGELA BRALY: Yes, that's right. Reaching an agreement is always about collaboration, which I think is a skill women have. One thing that motivated me [after the case was settled] was a really good friend of mine said, "That was probably the most interesting and exciting thing you'll ever do in your career." And I thought, I'm going to make sure that isn't the case. The value of collaboration was the lesson for me there, and it gave me the confidence to think about what might be the most challenging thing I could do.

MICHELE COLEMAN MAYES: Sometimes I've been called the rebel within companies. So in deciding to move to Allstate, one of my questions for the CEO was, "Are you sure you want me?" Someone said, "Oh, you'll be a breath of fresh air," but I said, "Or a tornado -- and insurance companies don't like tornados." But this job is a new challenge, it isn't more of the same -- and that is what I was looking for."

Women mentors share advice they would give their daughters or the women in their life about the workplace.

BILLIE WILLIAMSON: I had spent almost 20 years with Ernst & Young as an auditor in accounting, and quite frankly, I was bored to death. So I joined a high-tech company as the CFO, and we did a venture-capital recapitalization and then took the company public. I moved from there to Marriott International as the senior vice president of finance. And then I came back to E&Y in a very strategic position. Leaving for a while gave me the credentials to be a business executive, not just an accountant.

MARY SAMMONS: I would encourage everyone to get out of your comfort zone and be willing to take risks. I started out to teach French and then couldn't get a teaching job because none was available, so I answered an ad to work for a retail company [Fred Meyer Stores]. It was the furthest thing from what I thought I would do with my life. And initially they hired me on probation for 30 days. And I learned very quickly that there were so many ways I could fulfill myself in business.

And then 26 years later, in 1999, when the opportunity came to go to Rite Aid, I faced both a professional and personal decision -- to go to a very troubled company when I already had a really good job, and to move from the West Coast, where all my family lives, to Camp Hill, Pa. But going to Rite Aid gave me the chance to do something that could make a difference for the company and a lot of people who worked for it and did business with it.

* * *

The Importance of Mentors

WSJ: How important is finding -- and being -- a mentor?

MS. MAYES: It's plural, it isn't dessert -- you need more than one. I've found that the people who really get to know you well see things in you that you cannot see in yourself. And if you think you're perfect, you probably just haven't met the right person to tell you the truth.

Google's Sheryl Sandberg discusses her career moves that included everything from politics to technology.

You need to think of an image where your hands are stretched both ways. I don't care how old you are, you're always looking for someone when you need help, and there is always somebody that's been there before you. And you'd better pay it forward, meaning you reach back and you help somebody else.

MS. SANDBERG: You need different kinds of mentors for different parts of your life -- professional and personal. I think the best mentor-mentee relationships are based on really knowing the person in some mutual interest. So at work, the best way for me to develop people is to engage with them substantively on an issue. A better question than "Can you help me?" is "I have this problem and I'd love your views on this." Mentors aren't stamps; you can't collect them indiscriminately. You have to really develop those relationships.

MS. WILLIAMSON: At E&Y, we don't have enough women to be mentors to all of the women who are coming into our firm. So we need help from our male partners, and we're encouraging them to be more actively involved.

We're also teaching men at our firm about how to sell to women. A good friend of mine works at a very large company on the West Coast, and one of our male partners was trying to sell her some business. And he kept calling me and telling me he wasn't getting to first base. I asked him how he was approaching this woman, and after he gave me his list of what he'd done, I said, "You haven't asked her for her input about anything." I suggested he go back to her with a plain proposal marked "draft." He took my suggestion and sold the job.

MS. BRALY: Billie, you should probably tell him not to say that he's trying to get to first base with women.

MS. SAMMONS: I think the idea of a "draft" works well with things you send to male customers, too.

* * *

Why So Few Managers?

WSJ: Just 16% of senior managers are women. Why is this the case -- and what in your background helped you keep advancing?

MS. HEALEY: We have to change corporate cultures, but we also have to be aware of biases we unconsciously have outside the work force. My husband is a stay-at-home dad. We've lived in Brazil, Mexico, Venezuela and now Cincinnati (P&G's headquarters).

When we first moved to our [current ]neighborhood, the talk of the street was, "Oh, there's a stay-at-home dad. I wonder what that's going to be like. Should we invite him to the book club?"

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As long as we still live in a society that thinks this way, it doesn't make it easy for women -- and, frankly, men -- to make the kind of bold decisions that enable a different kind of environment that promotes more women.

What helped me as I look back on my career is, first of all, I had an amazing mom who was terrific at tough love, and also a family environment that drove and pushed me to go after my dreams. And certainly one of my dreams, having come from a very multicultural background -- my father is English, my mother, grandmother and great-grandmother are Chilean, I was born in Brazil, and my kids were born in Mexico -- was to give my kids the same opportunity to experience different cultures. The point is don't just think about your profession, think about your entire life.

WSJ: Michele Mayes, does stereotyping still hold women back?

MS. MAYES: Women are put into this box that I call the four-H club. What the four H's stand for are a woman's hair, hips, hemline and husband. You rarely hear any of these for a man -- and of course you expect his wife to be at home. So there's this unconscious bias stuff swimming around when people are interviewing others for positions. They think to themselves, "This woman can't travel," or "She's married, she's not going to want to move," or "She's going to want to have kids so therefore won't be available." The only way you get around the stereotypes is to make sure people get to know you and what you want.

MS. SANDBERG: There's a Harvard Business School case about a woman named Heidi Roizen, who moved to Silicon Valley and used her interpersonal relationships to become a very successful venture capitalist. A business professor at Stanford last year took that case and changed the name to Howard. So then she had two cases, the Howard Roizen and the Heidi Roizen case and polled her students. When she asked, "Is this person competent?" Heidi and Howard came out even. Historically, I believe that is new, a huge step forward from 15 and certainly 30 years ago. But when the professor asked, "Do you want to work with this person and do you like this person?" Howard did a lot better than Heidi, who was seen as out for herself and too aggressive.

Melanie Healey, of Procter & Gamble, and Michele Coleman Mayes, of Allstate, discuss stereotypes that remain in the workplace.

So there's still some room to improve how people see women who are working hard at their careers versus men. I've become more attuned to this.

A woman who is a rock star who works for my team at Google was going to have a baby, and I had a baby a few years prior to her. So I took her to lunch and said, "I want this to work for you. I'm doing this myself and we don't want to lose you." And she looked at me and said, "You do? Well, then, stop sending out emails at 11:30 at night." What she was saying was, "Look, you can take me out for lunch and be nice, but as long as you're sending out emails at 11:30 at night, everyone thinks you need a response by the morning." So we have to think not just about what we say but about what we do.

MS. BRALY: I think we need to understand that to be in the positions we're in involves a lot of hard work. An 11:30 email is a controversial thing. We've had a whole debate in our company about making sure people know you don't have to respond by midnight because sometimes you get that "ping, ping" back right away.

And that's not the point of an 11:30 email. The point in my life is that I chose to go home for dinner with my family, instead of staying at the office till 7:30 or 8 o'clock. Then I'm doing my emails late at night because that's what is required for me to get the job done the way I want to. So everybody has to know that we're going to do it in different ways.

* * *

Women vs. Men and Culture

WSJ: Angela Braly, you head a company where 70% of your employees are women, as are 50% of your managers and one-third of your board. Is the culture different?

MS. BRALY: Sometimes I think we take for granted the strength and number of women at WellPoint. We're really privileged to have this mix. And we share a lot in common. There are a lot of women I work with whose husbands have chosen to stay at home. We see a lot of women be successful. When we talk about developing a network in our company, we think maybe we need to develop a men's network so the men can stay connected. Because the women's network happens pretty naturally.

WSJ: Mary Sammons, in companies you've worked in where men were the majority of managers, was there a lot of informal male networking on the golf course or after work that women were excluded from?

MS. SAMMONS: Those networks are still there. There's a positive side for women: You can stay at work, get good results and while the men are still playing golf, you're running the company. But it's unfortunate to me that male networks are still so prevalent. I think it shows up on a lot of boards. So the question comes up: Do you actively go out and look for women for your board? I know I did.

* * *

Work-Life Balance

WSJ: Is work-life balance possible when you are in a top executive job?

MS. HEALEY: I would say you can't have it all at one time, but you probably can have just about most of what you want over time if you're willing to make the right choices. And the measurement I use is to ask myself, "Am I happy? Am I having fun?" As long as the answer is yes, then I'm fine with a 12-, 14-, sometimes even a 15-hour day. But if the answer is no, that's when I stop and rethink my choices.

Billie Williamson, of Ernst and Young, says you need to balance your ambition with what is important to you as a person.

It is a lot of stress, there's no doubt about it. I don't think you can ever expect to get into a job like this and think it's going to be a smooth ride. But at the end of the day, it's your life and you want to have a good one.

Another measure for me is, "Are my kids feeling like I'm happy?" Because if I came home every day and felt like I was showing them misery, that wouldn't be healthy for them either.

WSJ: Angela Braly, you, like Melanie Healey, have a stay-at-home husband. Was this something that evolved over the course of your marriage?

MS. BRALY: We have three children, and when they were babies I was the one who owned parenting in a more direct way. Then when I had the chance to go to WellPoint's headquarters in Indianapolis, we together made the decision to move from where we'd lived before for my husband's job with his family's business. We were also moving the kids for the first time in their lives, and they were approaching high school, so it was pretty traumatic. Now they're happy as clams, but you would've never thought it -- we were going to ruin their lives moving them. Now we can't get them to go back to their former home because they're too busy.

But my husband really made it possible for me to think about what life was going to be like with him taking the responsibility for the kids. And I so appreciate the choice that he's made -- and he's so good at it. I think this is where we're really sexist. We think, "How is this going to work?" And it's fabulous, it works really well.

MS. SANDBERG: One of the really big issues is how do you make this work for everyone? How do you make it work for people who haven't risen to senior-executive ranks? Google provides day care now. It got oversubscribed quickly, so we're busy opening up more centers, and we haven't yet met all the demands even though we're close.

And there's a lot to think about for men, too. It can be as hard for a man as for a woman to say, "I'm leaving at 6."

One of the reasons women drop out of the work force is they're doing more at home, and that's still largely true in my generation. Finding ways to help not just women but also men have balance -- so they can do their share so their wives can be successful -- is an important part of the equation.

Rite Aid's Mary Sammons discusses the role spouses take when it comes to success in the workplace.

MS. SAMMONS: I think we all need to learn to have the courage to bring up issues that may be hard to bring up. It isn't always easy to talk to someone about the fact that you should be paid more or the fact that you believe a situation hasn't been dealt with correctly by a senior manager. But it's important that people you work with understand when they've created a situation that's unfair. When you look at where women have gotten in the workplace and the pay inequities that still exist in a lot of industries, I think we have to take the bull by the horns and ask about that very directly in our companies.

* * *

Normal Flexibility

WSJ: Billie Williamson, what is E&Y doing in a formal way to help women advance?

MS. WILLIAMSON: We're trying to create an environment where flexibility is the norm, rather than something abnormal or different. We're also coaching young women to build relationships with clients and get involved in business development. That's where women tend to freeze. They love doing the technical work but say they don't know how to sell.

And we're trying to make sure women managers have the right opportunities. We're looking at what clients they are assigned to and who they're working with. One-third of our new partners last year were women, which is a very high percentage, and we want to sustain that.

MS. MAYES: Billie, I just have to say this -- it may not be politic. Don't assume just because your manager is a woman that you're on the same page.

MS. WILLIAMSON: Absolutely. You're right.

WSJ: Mary Sammons and Angela Braly, you are both CEOs of very large companies. What has been the most surprising part of your jobs?

MS. SAMMONS: The most surprising thing for me when I came to Rite Aid was not knowing what I didn't know.

I came in thinking I could just put my operational plan in place and get everything moving. And then I discovered there was no money. I was looking at the cash sheet every day, just to make sure there was a little bit of cash there. And I quickly understood I couldn't stick with my plan because it costs money to remodel a store or do more advertising. So I spent my first months in the field just talking to associates in our stores and distribution centers, and built the best kind of network with everyone who deals with customers. I also spent time with suppliers. It didn't cost me money to do that, and I learned a lot of the things that helped me later when finances improved.

MS. BRALY: What's been most interesting to me about becoming a CEO was the amount of surprise there was about me being chosen. Women are out there working very hard, although not necessarily promoting themselves in the same way as some [male] colleagues. So when we pop up, people say, "Oh, that's surprising, you came out of nowhere." Well, because you had your head down.

* * *

Keeping Your Head Down

WSJ: Do women keep their heads down too much?

MS. WILLIAMSON: I think we're very focused on going through the to-do list, and finishing the job. Then I wanted to go home and take care of my child and family. So I didn't invest enough time in building relationships with people at different levels. I do that today, but I wish I'd known to do it earlier.

WSJ: Some of you do a lot of global business. Are there vast differences or similarities among the women customers you sell to around the world?

MS. HEALEY: We're in a much more interconnected world today. And one thing I've found -- and I'll use feminine-protection products as an example, since most of the people in this room are women -- is the degree of similarity. Feminine protection at P&G is Always and Tampax -- and if you go around the world, you find the way every teenager learns about her period is through her mother, sister or friends. It's the same everywhere. And whether women have a positive or negative attitude is very much because of how their mother, sister or friends talked to them. We tend to focus on global differences, but if you go into different countries looking for similarities, you can create huge business opportunities.

MS. MAYES: I mentored a 26-year-old woman from Lebanon. She told me she'd been afraid to come to the U.S. because of our differences. First, I was a lawyer and she was a creative director -- and she doesn't think lawyers are creative. Second, I was substantially older than she. And finally she said, "I thought you might think I was nothing more than a terrorist."

Michele Coleman Mayes, of Allstate, discusses the need for mentors and mentoring throughout one's career.

I spent 30 days with her and we bonded in so many ways. So I say, find the common ground.

WSJ: Some of you have daughters and you all have women in your lives you care about. What's the one piece of advice you'd give them?

MS. MAYES: Don't defeat yourself. Arianna Huffington quoted a French philosopher, who said it in a much wiser way than I have. He said, "Many terrible things have happened in my life, but most of them never occurred."

MS. HEALEY: You can choose to have the right attitude or the wrong attitude. And if you choose to have the right attitude, life is just much better.

MS. BRALY: I would say to my daughter, who is going to rule the world one day, I think, don't be mediocre. Choose to do your best at what you can do and have a good time doing it.

MS. SAMMONS: I go back to something I said in the very beginning: Get out of your comfort zone. Even if it doesn't all work out the way you want it to, you'll be better prepared for the next thing that comes along.
MS. SANDBERG: Do things you care about. It's more interesting, more intrinsically valuable.

MS. WILLIAMSON: Have confidence in your own abilities.

AUDIENCE QUESTION: How do you as leaders in the private sector view your responsibility to the public sector?

MS. HEALEY: I think you can sometimes marry the public and private. We have a program with Always and Tampax in Africa. Girls in Africa miss a week of school a month because they get their periods and don't have the protection they need. So when we think about making periods more positive to women we're also thinking about how to improve women's lives. Enabling these girls to go to school by building bathrooms and giving them products is a way we can make a big difference.

AUDIENCE QUESTION: What can you tell us about your failures? Have you had any?

MS. SAMMONS: If any one of us from the day we started working didn't have some failures it would mean we didn't take any risks at all.

I've had a couple of instances in my career where I was asked to go back and do something of a lesser level of work. And I think I made those decisions wisely. Because if you are willing to move back at some point and then demonstrate a success, then you have another opportunity. And you learn even more when you work on something a second time that will make you a better leader in the future.