What was your first job and what did you learn from it?
In 6th & 7th grade, I delivered "The Courier Express" which was the morning paper in Buffalo, NY - 5:55 a.m., 7 days a week, through the Buffalo summer and winter. It was a great experience of learning customer service, basic financials, managing a small team on Sundays, general responsibility and reliability, and how to make a bunch of money for camp!

I also sold millions of things via school fund raisers; at one point I remember I was simultaneously selling fruit, candy bars, kindling wood, candles, light bulbs, seeds, and magazine subscriptions for various clubs, sports, youth group, and other activities.

Who is your hero, mentor or person you most admire? Why?
I admire Nelson Mandela, Jimmy Carter, my partner Kara and my parents ... all of them are persistent, successful and are great at working to change things for the better from the inside.

What is your favorite book?
That's a tough question...I love Tom Stoppard's "Arcadia," John Steinbeck's "Cannery Row," the kids books "Stellaluna" by Janell Cannon, Vonnegut, many recent business books, and most of my school books K through college, especially physics and mechanics (!)

What advances in your field do you envision over the next 10 years?
Persistent access to the Net. The ability to always be connected will have profound effects on individuals, families, society, the nation-state and the world.

What do you see as the single most interesting element of your work?
I love how so many things come together via PlanetOut. For our customers, we reduce isolation and improve lives with community, entertainment, information and products people can't get other places. At the same time, we are building a business - this is the first time we can build a media company of scale for the gay and lesbian community. Gay and lesbian consumer buying power is $450 billion in the US alone, and is a totally underserved and hard-to-reach market outside Internet. PlanetOut is the first company in history that serves the gay and lesbian community to have venture funding. And PlanetOut represents the first time we can build a large, profitable, high-quality business for gay and lesbian customers because the Internet is the first time we can reach our the majority of our customers in a cost effective way.

What do you consider to be your greatest accomplishment?
Keeping the company alive, despite inheriting it after it bought out one of the most famous venture capitalists in the Silicon Valley, back in early 1997.

What was your greatest challenge and what did you learn from it?
I think it will be in the future, today we face 2% hate email and 40% love email at PlanetOut. I expect as we become more and more successful as a company serving our customers, this will push some people's buttons. I figure most people who have a problem with the gay community, are having major internal struggles or confusion around lack of exposure. So, my largest challenge I think we be patience and persistence, and compassion in spite of adversity, while we build this amazing company.

What strategies do you use to maintain balance in your life?
I think there are two important things to do. First, it's critical to love what you do and work with people you like and respect, because work takes so much of your time. Second, build a family, or make sure you create other interests outside of work that you also care about a lot, so that you have a reason to do other things beyond work. Take time with other people, schedule it. And also figure out how to integrate work time and home time. I have an incredible partner, we both work too much, but we also have incentive to spend time together building our family and home.

What advice would you give to young women who want to enter your field?
I'm a fan of choosing steep learning curves, big challenges, and focusing on things that interest you. Take on responsibilty, follow through, be a self-starter, speak up, be known as reliable, resourceful and flexible. When you start projects, think about how you want to define success and then measure all along the way so you can chart progress, and change course quickly if needed. Listen. Focus on having a great batting average, not doing everything perfectly. Ask people for help and advice, many people. Also, if people treat you poorly, go somewhere else. Life is too short to put up with ridiculus behavior. I took acousitics from Professor Bose at MIT, he had great advice, which was to keep your bags packed, not that you should walk away from challenge, but if anyone ever asks you to compromise your integrity, go work with other people. I agree with him.