Sylvia Ann Hewlett is an economist and the founding president of the Center for Work-Life Policy, where she directs the “Hidden Brain Drain” - a task force of 34 global companies committed to fully realize female and minority talent over the lifespan. She also heads up the Gender and Policy Program at the School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University. She is the author of six critically acclaimed nonfiction books including When the Bough Breaks (winner of a Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Book Prize), Creating a Life (named by Business Week as one of the top 10 books of 2002), and, most recently, Off-Ramps and On-Ramps: Keeping Talented Women on the Road to Success (Harvard Business School Press, May 2007). She is also the co-author of Harvard Business Review articles,” “Leadership in Your Midst: Tapping the Hidden Strengths of Minority Executives,” and “Extreme Jobs: The Dangerous Allure of the 70-Hour Workweek.” Her articles have also appeared in The New York Times, the Financial Times and the International Herald Tribune. Dr. Hewlett has taught at Cambridge, Columbia and Princeton Universities and held fellowships at the Institute for Public Policy Research in London and the Center for the Study of Values in Public Life at Harvard. In the 1980s, she became the first woman to head up the Economic Policy Council - a think tank composed of 125 business and labor leaders. She has appeared on 60 Minutes, The Today Show, Good Morning America, Newshour with Jim Lehrer, Charlie Rose, ABC World News, Oprah, The View, All Things Considered, Talk of the Nation -- and has been lampooned on Saturday Night Live. A Kennedy Scholar and graduate of Cambridge University, she earned her Ph.D. degree in economics at London University.

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