Work-life balance is a ‘gauntlet’ for women, Sallie Krawcheck says

The Wall Street veteran, whose illustrious career has spanned nearly three decades, recently told Fortune she still remembers sitting on a panel in the mid 2000s. Then Citigroup’s chief financial officer, Krawchek sat alongside C-suite executives from other Fortune 500 giants including IBM and GE. But while her male counterparts were asked about “balance-sheet management,” Krawcheck was asked about how she balanced her responsibilities while being a working mother. 

“I remember thinking, ‘it’s not enough that I made it to this table as a CFO,’” she told Fortune.

Krawcheck, who took the reins as CFO at Citi in 2004 at just 38 years old, has held a variety of top jobs at Wall Street titans like Sanford C. Bernstein, Smith Barney, Merrill Lynch, and Bank of America. Dubbed the “Last Honest Analyst” by Fortune reporter David Rynecki in 2002, Krawcheck solidified her ascent to the C-suite by shepherding Sanford Bernstein through the murky dot-com bubble burst of 2000. Her strategy? To tell the truth—unlike peers who hyped stocks while privately trashing them. 

Yet during her climb to the C-suite, she says she was the “only woman, or one of the only two women” in the room. 

“I think my gender was always a factor,” she said. “I think it was a factor in my success, and I think it was a factor in times when I stumbled.”

“There were times in my life, when I just went, ‘go, go, go, go’ with the career, and did a perfectly adequate job as a mom,” she said. “But [I] was not that perfect mom with the homemade cookies.” 

Likewise, Krawcheck said, “there were times in my life where my kids needed me when the career took the backseat.”

Now 59, Krawcheck is the founder and CEO of Ellevest, an investment platform she launched in 2016 that was “founded by, funded by, built by, built for, investing in investing through women,” she says. Under her leadership, the robo-advisor has grown to over $2 billion in assets under management and has enjoyed support from backers like Melinda French Gates and Penny Pritzker.   

After spending years of her career at traditional firms “looking to make change from the inside out,” Krawcheck is now on a mission to break the “boys club of Wall Street” and help introduce women to investing.

“Ellevest is sort of the inverse of Wall Street in terms of the make-up of our company; we’re about 85% women,” she said.

Krawcheck’s company is now fully remote, and not commuting is an “enormous perk” for working parents, she said. When asked about her thoughts on work-life balance and whether she’s achieved it, Krawcheck says she has “so many thoughts” on the goal.

“I just don’t love that we sort of put this question down almost as a gauntlet for women as another level of success that needs to be achieved,” she said.“You’ve been successful in business, lady, but that’s not enough, now you need to also have balance.”

Between team meetings, Krawcheck gave Fortune an exclusive look at her daily routine that kicks off as soon as she exits sleep. 

The art of the afternoon cookie 

5:30 a.m.: If she’s not attempting to catch some shut-eye on a red-eye flight—which happens “relatively often”—Krawcheck typically rolls out of bed when the sun comes up. She’s immediately greeted by her cats, Newcomb and Meekum, the latter of whom is “very demanding.”

“The first thing is, she needs to get a rub down, and I mean like a deep-tissue rub down to start her day and my day.”

Once Meekum is satisfied, Krawcheck brews a decaf oat milk latte and challenges her younger brother to a virtual game of spelling bee.

7 a.m.: The next hour is spent exercising, whether it’s walking around a park near her New York City apartment or cycling on her Peloton bike. 

“I love to get a really good sweat in, love to get a little bit of light weights in, and I love to get a stretch in,” the CEO said. 

9 a.m.: After a quick shower, Krawcheck starts her commute—a brief walk through her bedroom and living room to her home office. 

“When I’m blow-drying my hair, when I’m putting on my makeup, in that first hour at the desk tends to be absolutely my most creative,” she said. “I learned a long time ago that I’m my best thinking self in the morning; in the afternoon, my brain is mush.”

12 p.m.: After a jam-packed morning filled with Zoom calls, Krawcheck carves out time to meet a potential client or investor for lunch and get a bit of fresh air before returning to her desk. 

From then on, “it’s one meeting after the other.”

3 p.m.: There are two things that happen in the afternoon, “and they’re both really important,” Krawcheck said. 

For a boost of energy to power through the rest of her workday, Krawcheck takes a 15-minute nap. It’s a “perk” of working from home. she said.

“I sit up on the sofa in order to do it because if I lie down, that 15-minute nap is going to be a two-hour nap for sure.”

Next: An “afternoon cookie,” a key differentiator “which is the sugar I need to get through the day.”

6 p.m.: Evenings are often filled with networking events and cocktail hours hosted by Krawcheck in her New York City home for small groups of women to talk about money, power, investing, and more.

If she’s not hosting an Ellevest event and has spare time after her work day, Krawcheck said she loves to cook, and often whips up dinner for her children on Sunday evenings.

“My roast chicken is better than your grandmother’s. I mean, it would knock your socks off,” she said. “My pie? The flakiness, the crust is unbelievable.”

8 p.m.: Krawcheck starts winding down around 8 p.m., and her family and friends are well aware of when she’s ready for bed.

“I say, ‘I’m going to take my cranky ass upstairs,” she said. “That’s just sort of a signal [that] the conversation’s over, I’m going to that quiet place where I read for a couple of hours.”

Krawcheck may enjoy a glass of Chardonnay before nodding off to sleep and dreaming up her next big business idea.