Almost defying her own expectations, Eva Sheibar Heyman navigated a fast-track trajectory as a high-powered career woman with relative ease. And while she appreciated her achievements and lifestyle on a cerebral level, it took a shock to the system to recognize how much more joy she could cultivate by slowing down and being present. Find out how sometimes it takes settling into the experience to find the joy.
Almost defying her own expectations, Eva Sheibar Heyman navigated a fast-track trajectory as a high-powered career woman with relative ease. She had started out on a marketing track in a company that embraced the digital wave just before it crested and so she developed exertise not only in content but management. After a long initial run at that company and the grounding of business school, she found C-suite roles in a number of organizations.
And while she appreciated her achievements and lifestyle on a cerebral level, it took the covid pandemic and attendant lockdowns with family to help her recognize how much more joy she could cultivate by slowing down and being present.
In this episode, find out from Eva how sometimes it takes settling into the experience to find the joy… on ROADS TAKEN...with Leslie Jennings Rowley.
About This Episode’s Guest
Eva Sheibar Heyman is a seasoned marketing and communications executive who has held C-suite roles in a diversity of industries, most recently as Chief Brand Officer and Global Head of Commercial Operations and Marketing Services, Bloomberg Media, and Marketing and Communications Executive at Civic Entertainment Group. When not in a board room, she can be found in the middle of a comfy sofa in New York, intertwined with her husband and their three children.
For another story about finding joy through being present, listen to our episode with Karen M. Smith DeBolt.
Find more episodes at https://roadstakenshow.com
Executive Producer/Host: Leslie Jennings Rowley
Music: Brian Burrows
Email the show at RoadsTakenShow@gmail.com
Eva Sheibar Heyman: The difference in what I wanna unlock moving forward is there's a difference between what's happening and how you're feeling. How do I actually enjoy my amazing life? There's a real difference between being present in the moment and enjoying your life versus appreciating on an intellectual level that you have an amazing life and you have all these gifts, but you can't enjoy it.
Leslie Jennings Rowley: Almost defying her own expectations, Eva Sheibar Heyman navigated a fast-track trajectory as a high-powered career woman with relative ease. And while she appreciated her achievements and lifestyle on a cerebral level, it took a shock to the system to recognize how much more joy she could cultivate by slowing down and being present. Find out how sometimes it takes settling into the experience to find the joy, on today's Roads Taken with me, Leslie Jennings Rowley.
Today I'm here with Eva Sheibar Heyman, and we are gonna talk about surprises that make us wake up and what we're waking up for in the next part of our life. So Eva, thank you so much for being here.
ES: Thank you for having me, Leslie. I'm excited to be on your podcast.
LJR: Excellent. So on this podcast, I start with the same two questions of all my guests, and they are these: When we were in college, who were you and when we were getting ready to leave, who did you think you would become?
EH: You know, having just recently been at our 25th college reunion, I had a lot of time to—whether I wanted to or not—I was thinking a lot about who I was at Dartmouth. And I think, you know, kind of despite myself I had an amazing experience and built so many wonderful friendships. I look back at that time and I think that I didn't really have a sense of who I was or what I wanted, and I don't know how I fell into my major. I'm not sure why I ended up participating in the volunteer clubs I did. But somehow I got incredibly lucky and, you know, met just these wonderful, caring, strong women. And I also met my now husband. So I did something right. But it was sort of a…it was a conflicted experience for me being back there in that I thought about, you know, those four years and how precious they are and how much opportunity there is for self-discovery and exploration and growth. And I think I was very anxious and not very self-aware and reflective. So I have mixed feelings about it. But on, on the, on the whole, it was at the surface level, I was hopefully caring and warm and fun and, you know, interested in my academics and a typical Dartmouth student who is—we're not allowed to say this anymore, but—like the work hard, play hard. But I think that when I left I felt like I had family, like real, you know, chosen family and my friendships and that was such a support and confidence-builder leaving Dartmouth to go out into the world in terms of who I'd become. But I'm not sure I had figured out at Dartmouth what I wanted to do or who I was.
LJR: Did you take that chosen family along with you? I know at least one became real family, but…
EH: Yeah, I really did. I have to say like throughout my life I've been very lucky. I've had wonderful friends in high school, college, business school, work, through my children, but my college friends are to this day, my dear, dear—I mean, I obviously, there's a few other exceptions—but my group of college friends we've all stayed in very close touch and been on this journey of work and parenting and marriage and life, and I consider myself very blessed for that.
LJR: Great. All right, so let's talk about work and family and marriage and life and all of that. So where did that group of people end up, or at least you, in the center of a subset of those people end up right after graduation?
EH: A few of us moved to Boston. And many moved to New York City. Fast forward, everyone's dispersed all over the country and world right now. But initially I think people, you know, got jobs primarily in New York and Boston, and I think that I fell into my job similar to falling into being a history major. I then fell into my job.
I got a job at Bronner Schlosburg Humphrey in Boston, a small direct marketing firm. It turned out to be, again, the like one of the most important formative career experiences and kind of, you know, set my trajectory. I was at Bronner Schlosburg Humphrey for two years. I was one of a handful of employees who raised my hand to help open the New York office. Digital was becoming a big deal. I started working in digital. We sort of rebranded our company in anticipation of going public, and we took the company public as Digitas. By that point, I was living in New York and had really advanced rather quickly through the ranks at Digitas, and I decided to go back to business school. I went to business school. And I returned to Digitas after business school because I loved my job and I was going to business school more because as a history major, I didn't have that kind of business foundation that, you know, I'd be in meetings and people would be talking about P&Ls, and I didn't know what that meant.
So when I left Digitas, I had been there 16 years. So I had gotten married there. I had had my first and second child there. My close friends at work had been at, you know, my wedding, my bris. And so again, sort of without really knowing what I wanted to do, I became a passionate marketer. And you know, I think that the focus of my early career was really around achievement. It was very similar to school. I got a lot of gratification from doing well and being, you know, recognized and rewarded for hard work and leadership. And so then I kind of took a left turn. I went and I worked at a biotech startup for six years, cause I'd been doing healthcare marketing at Digitas. And then I went and worked in media. And so I've done a few different things since then, but I credit a lot of the leadership skills and the marketing craft, you know, that I learned to Digitas. It was an amazing experience and to be at a company for that long and really feel so valued and appreciated. And it taught me a lot about how to motivate employees and how to invest in people, you know, for professional development and how that pays back in terms of loyalty. I mean, the world is very different today, but I've seen enough good and bad to know that I was very lucky to have spent 16 years at Digitas.
LJR: Yeah. Really at the beginning of the entire, what is normal now of digital marketing. [EH: Yes.] And we were there at a really interesting time trying to figure it all out in real time as the world is changing.
EH: Exactly.
LJR: So I can see why that's attractive to stay and, and see that life cycle out. And so at the same time, you were bringing other things into the world and seeing them along as they grew. So what was the balance like of being a working mom?
EH: I thought I had it all figured out.
LJR: Oh.
EH: I thought. And I, you know, as you become, or at least. My experience was as the more senior I became, the fewer women there were around me. And when I was on the senior leadership team at Digitas, I was notably the only woman who had young children. Everybody else either had children out of, you know, old enough to be on their own and or were divorced or never, you know, had children or never married. And I think we represented maybe 10 or 15% of the leadership team at the time. And so I mentored a lot of young women and talked about, you know, how to make it work. And I had a few really important mentors in my life who had done it, who had kind of passed along their wisdom. And that was a really important part of my role. And a, something I really enjoyed doing is that you don't have to—and I really believe this—you don't have to choose, you can't do everything all at once, and they're gonna be, you know, bad weeks and, days, but there's also like life. You, you figure out what the priorities are and you know, there are times where you need to be really invested in what's happening with your kids and you downshift at work and vice versa. And I think having a good leverage model was also critical. I had an amazing team who I had the privilege of, you know, working with and I also had an amazing nanny at home. So if you have people you trust in both places, then you know, you can definitely make it work. But you have to invest in the time to build those support structures on both sides.
We could probably talk ad nauseum about as women and mothers in particular, that whole journey of like, can you off-ramp and on-ramp. Like I'll be honest, I've been in the work world 30 years: It's really hard. And I have a lot of friends who have as much, if not more to give than me professionally and they can't get back into the workforce. Because it's just, there's a 36 year old who's been working who wants that job too? It's, you know, so I, I'm, I'm skeptical of the truth of that downshifting and shifting back up. What I realized though—and I didn't realize this until the pandemic was—even though I thought I had kind of figured it all out, I think there's a really big difference between being a good parent in terms of like parenting all the behaviors and reading and knowing what to do. And there's a big difference between that and being really kind of mentally attuned to your children and being connected to them in a way where they feel seen and heard and understood. And so Covid—and I feel a little badly saying this—but it was a real gift for me because I was, you know, I took time off, I was home, I was cooking, cleaning, helping my youngest who at the time was a first grader with her homework, and being around my older kids who were, you know, kind of struggling with this new reality of lockdown. And I realized both at work I was, you know, kind of on autopilot and I kept achieving and advancing and that was all great. But I wasn't sure it was connected to a personal purpose, and I think it was just an amazing transformation for me on a personal level as a parent to really be able to spend the time trying to understand who are my children and how do I connect with them, like on their terms, and how do I get to know them in a way where, you know, I'm not like dragging into the museum on Saturday and then checking like, I'm a great parent. We all just went to the MoMA, but like, I'm really like, oh, George, you love sports. Like I'm gonna sit down and I'm gonna understand like who's playing who, what's going on. And interestingly enough, I also realize that all parts of your life are very integrated and I've become, now that I'm back working again, I'm a much, I think, more sensitive person at work in that I think that, you know, for high performers, I was probably always a great boss because I'm…I don't micromanage. I set the vision clearly. I give people space. I give people the spotlight and the accolades. But I think for people who struggled more, I probably had a harder time connecting with them and trying to really understand like, what's going on for you? How do I help you? And I think, so the learning kind of has translated across all parts of my life.
So now I'm at this crossroads where, you know, I'm turning 50 next year. My husband makes fun of me cuz like I literally turned 49, you know, a month ago and I'm like, I'm almost 50 and I feel like I have another decade in me at least. And so, you know, how do I be more planful about that time. Like I don't, you know, I think I have had a very fortunate life. I have an amazing loving husband. I have three wonderfully healthy, happy children. I have these friendships and I'm so grateful. But I also feel like I want to be purposeful then about like how I prioritize all of those wonderful things in my life, and the importance of nurturing that and spending more time on that. And also doing something that I find satisfying that, you know, of course it also pays the bills and I'm not sure what that is. I mean, I think I really do love what I've been doing, you know, sort of in a, like a strategic slash marketing, you know, leadership position where I'm part of driving the strategy, I'm part of managing the talent. I'm also thinking about operations. Like I really do enjoy the variety of that kind of role. But I feel like I have, I owe it to myself to now really reflect on like, what, how can I make an impact in the world? How can I tie my skills to something that will be more meaningful and also helpful to others?
LJR: Yeah, I totally hear that. And yet what I was hearing about the first 50 years is that kind of despite yourself, you said you found yourself in these places where you accumulated people and you got yourself in the right job, and then that one parlayed to another right job, and then you shifted again, and that was right. And you weren't reflective at the time you said, and now you're saying, well, now I need to be purposeful and planful, and I'm wondering: Where does that really come from? Have you been like that all the time and it just was like, oh, I had this plan and the mystery happened and it came to fruition? Or are you like, okay, I had that time where I wasn't planful and now I need to be, and where does that come from?
EH: It's a great question. You know I think we're all kind of products of our circumstances, and I do a lot of work in reading around how your childhood informs you and how those formative relationships inform you. And I think I didn't have a completely stable childhood, and so as a result, I think I sought a lot of comfort in my school environment. And then I think the same thing happened in my work environment. So, yes, I, I think for sure I am very blessed and have had a great, objectively a great first 50 years. But when I look back, I think that the difference in what I wanna unlock moving forward is there's a difference between what's happening and how you're feeling. And I think that I've, you know, I've always been driven a little by anxiety and sort of, you know, insecurity and, and wanting to gain the love and praise of others. And I think now, like having spent a few years at home, you know, more integrated in my family, having done more work, you know, because I've had the space and time to think about all of that: Like how do I actually enjoy my amazing life? Like when I'm away with my college girlfriends for a girls’ weekend. There's a difference between being there and knowing you have like the best friends in the world versus like being present in the moment and actually enjoying that time in a real way. It's actually really funny cuz I was thinking a little about this before I got on your podcast and one of the few classes that has really stuck with me at Dartmouth was I took an education class with a Professor Testa, I don't remember what education class it was, but like he talked a lot about this concept of being present and it's a concept that like I've always just sort of kept with me and you know, it like in some ways I've been chasing it and haven't been able to fully attain it. And I think during Covid part of the, you know, transformation with my family is I have learned to be present with my children and enjoy them in the moment versus like be sitting next to them, but wondering like, when can I get up and go to my to-do list?
Or telling them like, oh, you're fine. Like, watch the movie. I'm gonna go for a run. You don't need me to sit here. And what I realize now is like, actually, like, it might be really boring for me to watch the cartoon, but like for my kids, like there's nothing better in the world than them like wrapping themselves around me while they're, you know, watching tv. And so, that being present has unlocked so much joy for me. And I think with my friends, and it's funny because I think it was Margie Steinman at my wedding—She was one of my bridesmaids—Her rehearsal dinner toast was something to the effect of like, Eva was always the one like sitting, you know, on the corner of the couch. Like she, you know, she was always like on the armrest, ready to bolt. Like she was never the one like, sitting in like ready for the long haul conversation or hangout that we, that all the girls were having. So I think like I have found like great enjoyment and satisfaction in starting to like be able to just enjoy sitting around with friends and you know, having a glass of wine and talking, which somehow my friends love me, despite the fact that I was not built that way always. Does that answer your question? Just there's a real difference between being present in the moment and enjoying your life versus appreciating on an intellectual level that you have an amazing life and you have all these gifts, but you can't enjoy it.
LJR: Yes, I hear it. I feel it. Definitely. How was it to hear Margie's observation of you at that time? Did you was you were like, yep, that was me.
EH: Oh my God. It happened while we all lived together in the Love Shack senior year and it happened.
LJR: Oh my gosh.
EH: Oh my gosh. And let me tell you, driving last weekend to Dartmouth and passing it and showing my son, like that's where we lived. It is, it has not, like no one has bothered to like put a new. You know, coat of paint on that building.
LJR: It needed one back then.
EH: It's so dilapidated. I can't believe. I mean, even when we lived there, it was like that, but oh my gosh. No. My friends all made fun of me even then that I was like one foot out the door or that I'm the one who like, you know, the semester ends and I don't say goodbye to anybody. Like I'm just gone. Like I've left at 7:00 AM and you know. It's all a long way to say that I have come to really appreciate my family, and there's no doubt, I've always so greatly appreciated my friends, but to have. The ability to be in the moment and be present and want to be hanging out and not view that as, oh, I'm not being productive, or, oh, I should be you know, the shoulds in your life. Like learning that there is no such thing as should. And one of the other things that I've kept with me that I just think has really helped me like change my lens on things is that like life is about the process. It's not about the content. So there's no like right path, there's no wrong path, there's no better or worse choice. It's just about how you do whatever you're doing. And so I hope, I think I've, you know, achieved great progress with my, you know, family and friends and so I'm sort of, when I, when you reach out to me and I said, oh, I'm at kind of this crossroads with my career. It's like, now how do I do that with my career? So that it's not just about like achievement and productivity, but it's about like meaning and purpose in a different way.
LJR: Right. And as you said, when your epiphanies at home, during covid led you to greater empathy and, and a different way of being at the office, you know that you'd integrated it both.
Now you need to integrate it again in this new way of thinking, well, what do I want and what makes me joyful? And how can I do all of these things? And yes, maybe achievement is part of being joyful, but it might not be the end goal. It's just part of the practice and the presence, as you said.
EH: Right.
LJR: I think that's a good thing to strive for.
Okay. So I think you're at this place where you're looking for that integration. You're feeling like you've been chasing presence, and you're almost there. We know a lot about how you saw yourself and how others saw you back in the day, but what if you went back to that Eva, 19 years old, sitting on the edge of the couch and said, Hey, let me show you where you will have been by the time you're 50. What do you think she would've said?
EH: I'll be honest, I had no idea I was destined to be a, you know, high powered career woman. I had always envisioned, again, because of my family circumstance that I was going to get married young. I was going to have children. I was going to be this wonderful caretaker, homemaker, and I ended up, you know, building this health practice within Digitas and running the, the New York health practice and then going to a biotech and becoming the chief commercial officer. And then ultimately, you know, holding C level positions at another agency and at Bloomberg. And my friends thought of me as one of the career women. I wasn't the only one, but like one of the women who was a baller who was, you know, had a real career. And now I'm really struggling cuz that was so much my identity and since covid I have, I started consulting and it became kind of a full-time freelance job, and I've been very lucky. I've been there two and a half years. It's a small strategic marketing and comms agency, and the people are wonderful and the work's been very intellectually stimulating and it's also, I've done a lot of communications, which was not as much my background as marketing, so it's been fabulous.
I'm not sure that I'm striving for a C level job anymore. You know, like as I think about, like, for a while I was taking conversations, but I don't feel that same motivation or that same ambition anymore. And partly because the trade off is pretty significant. Like, I, I wasn't with my children for any of their three meals cuz kids eat early. You know, no judgment. Like, I did it and now I, I don't think I wanna do it anymore. And so that, that's another layer of this, like how do you find a job that it's like finding an apartment, like you're not gonna get everything on your list, so you have to prioritize. So I'm kind of in that process of, you know, what are the most important aspects? And how do I find a job where I can really make a big impact? Because the kind of work I do is in-person work. So I can't just be choosing my hours from my home office. But do it in a way where I'm not giving up the things that I maybe deprioritized. So I have a 16 year old, a 14 year old, and a 10 year old, and my relationship with my 16 year old is really wonderful now. I feel. Very, very lucky, but it wasn't that way when he was younger. We like butt heads a lot. And I, quite frankly, I don't think I really understood or took the time to know. I think I was really anxious and I've apologized to him for the fact that like I wasn't around kind of to really understand. So I wasn't curious. I was, it's like the spectrum of curiosity to judgment. I was like judgment, judgment, judgment. And now that I'm curious, curious, curious, like, it's so much more rewarding and then your child is like telling you who they are and what's going on, versus you just like making some assumptions and then parenting from that.
And I've done it very different with my daughter. And as a result, like I don't wanna miss things that I thought weren't that important or weren't high priority that I missed with my boys. Not to, like, again, I'm saying, oh, I was such a bad mom before, and, but again, I don't think I was a bad mom, but I don't think it was rewarding for either of us. And, and I see how different the relationship can be, and so I'm, I'm unwilling with my son, you know, one year away from going off to be in a role where I'm gonna miss some of those important things when he needs me, or, you know, I want to be around for everything. So, It's hard.
LJR: Yeah, exactly. It's just a different season and, and you're just that mindfulness of what season is it and what do I want it to look like when this season's over and I'm gonna start my next one I think is a really great project for you to get ambitious about. So Eva, thank you so much for sharing all of this and we do look forward to seeing how this one unfolds for you.
ES: Thank you so much, Leslie.
LJR: That was Eva Sheibar Heyman, a seasoned marketing and communications executive who has held C-suite roles in a diversity of industries, most recently as Chief Brand Officer and Global Head of Commercial Operations and Marketing Services, Bloomberg Media, and Marketing and Communications Executive at Civic Entertainment Group. When not in a board room, she can be found in the middle of a comfy sofa in New York, intertwined with her husband and their three children.
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