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Jan has been my best friend for more than 40 years. What a gift! We’ve had lots of adventures together but often our lives get in the way so we are not able to connect as often as we like. Several years ago we started a tradition which I would like to strongly recommend to all Great Dames. We celebrate our birthdays. Together. Passionately. Humorously.

Here’s the trick. Our birthday celebrations are a complete surprise. Neither of us have a clue what adventure will unfold for our birthday. And the birthday girl is treated like a queen. Total attention. No cell phones or work. The wallet never comes out.

My birthday is in July. Jan’s lucky. The summer in Western New York is glorious with lots of festivals and things to do. But boy does she know how to put a spin on things. Imagine a bunch of Seneca Indians bursting into Happy Birthday in their language when she announces –”It’s Kathy’s birthday!” Or the time she rented the biggest white convertible I ever have seen so we went cruising. Or being blindfolded and taken to a National Museum of Play. Every thing she does has this amazing spin to it because she wants me to really have fun.

Her birthday is in November, and there is little to do in Western New York. Fall is pretty much gone and holidays haven’t started. So I take her on trips. Charleston, S.C and Nashville were so very much fun. I take her to places I want to go and hope she has not been there. And we indulge. Good food. Great music. Corny tourist stuff.

But really what this is is a celebration of growing older together. Of being filled with such immense gratitude that my most kindred spirit on the planet is still on this planet with me — growing wiser, crankier, creakier and even more precious to me.

So this weekend we leave on Jan’s Birthday Adventure. And I’m not telling you where just in case she reads this. But I will keep you posted.

Kathy Palokoff
Director of Innovation
Great Dames

Today I had the remarkable opportunity to sit on a discussion panel hosted by the CEO Women’s Club (www.tinyurl.com/GenerationBattle) with several successful women. Four generations of them, in fact. Because of the variety in our ages, these women were all at different points in their careers but shared very goal-oriented, highly motivated outlooks. Because of this commonality, we were able to discuss the similarities and differences behind what drives each of us to be successful and, more importantly, how exactly we define success.

As you can imagine, our definitions of success were very different. It came down to a question of loyalty. With whom do our loyalties lie?

For the tried and true, traditionalist female leaders, who have held impressive 20 plus year careers at the same company, their loyalties lie with that company and their careers. What is fascinating to me is the evolution of this loyalty over time to something completely different. It appears that my own, millennial generation has lately become invested in a more holistic, personal kind of success, and not necessarily the success of the company they work for. The shift in loyalty is that we are becoming more and more loyal to ourselves.

This means that women are now looking to other places besides their careers to define their success and happiness. No more are the days of women working an 80 hour work week just to compete, but, rather, a lesser hour work week with the other hours going to something perhaps a little more meaningful. Graduate school, volleyball, travel, community service, art classes, happy hours. Millennials seem to be able to focus more on what makes them feel personally fulfilled at the end of the day.

My biggest insight of the day is this: We Millennials would never be where we are today if it wasn’t for the dedicated, revolutionary women before us. Thanks to these women, Traditionalists, Baby Boomers, Gen Xs and Ys, whatever category you want to put them in, we now have more opportunities in the workplace than ever before and I am eternally grateful to the women before me who have blazed that trail. Because of this, my generation can spend less time at the office and more time examining what is really important and how to create a better balance in our lives.

For more information on ways women can make their lives more meaningful, please visit www.Great-Dames.com

Heather Hake

Director of Operations, Great Dames, Inc.