‘Work-life balance is a lie’: TIAA’s CEO broke down at a bus terminal after a long work day, then found a better way to think about it
Many professionals struggle with chasing work-life balance—TIAA President and CEO Thasunda Brown Duckett was one of them, until a breakdown in a bus terminal over her intense schedule gave her an epiphany. “Work-life balance is a lie. It never reconciles…so get rid of that,” Duckett recalled the wakeup moment in Fortune’s Titans and Disruptors of Industry podcast with Editor-in-Chief Alyson Shontell. Her mindset shift came one night during her nearly nine-year tenure at JPMorgan Chase, where she rose to become CEO of Chase Consumer Banking. Her intense workdays were sandwiched between long commutes to New York City from New Jersey, leaving little time for family outside her office life. Duckett was waiting for the last bus of the day at Port Authority, watching as stragglers headed to the casino and the janitor cleaned up for the night, when the pressure hit a breaking point. In tears, she called her husband to vent about never seeing her kids before or after work. And her husband—a stay-at-home father, marine, and engineer—delivered a perspective-shifting response: “then quit.” He reasoned with her that if her current situation wasn’t working for her, then it wouldn’t work for the family either. And thanks to his bluntness, something clicked. “It was in that moment that something had to change, and it was my mindset,” the TIAA leader said. “And so this work-life balance, I was catching an L [loss]. I was feeling like I was failing my husband, I was failing my children, I was failing my mom, my dad, my brothers, everyone. I was just not winning, and I needed a win.” That realization has impacted how she’s moved throughout her career since. After letting go of the fight for work-life balance, her success only continued to grow; in 2021 she was tapped to be the CEO of a Fortune 100 company, retirement planning giant TIAA. Duckett’s secret to managing all responsibilities: A ‘diversified portfolio’ mindset Leaders of billion-dollar businesses each have their own