DuPont CEO weighs in on work-life debate

One of few women to run a Fortune 500 company, CEO and Chairman Ellen Kullman reflects on her career and personal life.

柯愛倫是杜邦公司全球董事長兼首席執行官，是公司1802年創立以來首位擔任這項職務的女性；在全球商業界內，她的領導能力和聲名絲毫不亞于惠普前CEO菲奧莉娜等女性領袖。而女性領導者的崛起，也被認為是20世紀末21世紀初全球商業領域的亮色之一。

She’s the woman with a plan and a vision.

Change isn’t something that happens to you, change is something you do to make things happen.

Important qualities in a leader of a company more than 200 years old, constantly forced to adapt to an ever-changing technological and economic landscape.

Certainly the 4 years I’ve been CEO has been marked with quite a substantial uncertainty in the marketplace.

Ellen Kullman took the reins of chemical mega-cooperation DuPont in 2009, a company they got it starred producing gunpowder in 1802 and now has attained thousands of products, from Kevlar to air filters. She became CEO at the height of the financial crisis.

70,000 people are looking out, saying what do we do? Where do we go? What’s gonna make a difference, so much fear and so much uncertainty. And you know, I went back to basics, focus on what we can control.

DuPont operates in more than 90 countries, which means Kullman is always on the move. A few months before she gave this speech in Durham, North Carolina, we caught up with her in Davos, Switzerland.

Walk us through a day in your life at DuPont. What does it like?

You know, they are very full. Earlier this week, you know, I, we had our earnings call, we’re talking with media, we’re talking to investors. And I went from there to do 2 videos for meetings I couldn’t attend for our groups that I wanted to send specific messages, then I went into a ballroom full of 400 of our top leaders from operations, from around the world, and talked to them about 2013.

And then you get on a plane and fly to Davos.

And that’s when I think, plane time historically has been my time to kind of just think, and catch up on things and read and say what are we doing well, what are areas that we should focus on?

Back at Duke University in North Carolina, she’s hoping to inspire the next generation of leaders. Kullman was once a student in her hometown in Wilmington Delaware. And it was a history teacher in high school who inspired her.

He helped me see that by majoring in science and engineering specifically, that it would open doors not narrow what I do.

If it weren’t for your history teacher encouraging you, do you think you could be in this position today?

Absolutely not, no, I don’t.

Her philosophy on work and life is one of no regrets. And that balance thing, she thinks it doesn’t exist.

It was always a give-and-take, it was always something that work’s 24 hours 7 days a week, and my family is 24 hours, 7 days a week and somewhere in there you figure it out.