INTRODUCTION

Who knew Nora Ephron was such a Harpy? Barbara Walters, that’s who.

Following Ephron’s death in June 2012, the New York Post reported that she and Walters were members of the Harpies, described as “a close-knit cadre of lunching ladies who’ve met to eat and argue over twelve years at Michael’s, the Four Seasons, and ‘21.’ ”

The Harpies include other media moguls too, and according to my favorite tabloid, the ladies often gossip about Hillary—her whereabouts, her fatigue, her hair—and engage in “intense debate” over the latest headlines. “God forbid you were wrong,” a Harpy insider told the Post, “or you were dismissed and reduced to rubble… with great affection.” It seemed that these women were exacting and precise, that they held themselves and each other to high standards, and that they pushed and challenged their friends. But they did it with humor and ultimate kindness.

I was approaching my book deadline when I read about the Harpies at the breakfast table. “See?” I jumped up and cheered. “All the girls are doing it! It’s sweeping the nation!”

As a cabal of bold-faced names, the Harpies are pretty swank in their own right. They’re movers and shakers, no doubt. But, I wondered aloud, do they know they’re part of something bigger? Do they know that their group and others just like it are changing the world?

My three sons rolled their eyes. They raced out the door to their all-boys school.

I didn’t plan to write a book at this very moment in my life, but it’s my family’s consensus that with all the testosterone at home, I needed to talk to some girls. And once I started interviewing dynamic, motivated women, I found I couldn’t stop. I didn’t know exactly what was happening, but I knew it was important.

At the beginning, it was a gut feeling, a notion that I had unearthed something meaningful that was shaping women’s lives. But I didn’t yet realize how important it would be for me personally. I didn’t know I’d end up living this story as I was writing it, that it would be the story that changed my life. But more on that later.

It all started at a women’s conference in California. There, I met one female senior executive who introduced me to another and then another, and each one was fascinating and charismatic, engaging and kind, vulnerable and bold. They didn’t carp about “balance” or lament not “having it all.” They didn’t feel oppressed and under siege, and their days weren’t some dismal, tough slog. They took evident joy in both work and personal life, adoring jobs and families alike. “Why don’t we ever see anything about women having fun at work?” one woman asked. “Sure, there are battles, but I work so hard and I love it. Can’t we ever accentuate the joys over the battles?”

They didn’t carp about “balance” or lament not “having it all.” They took evident joy in both work and personal life, adoring jobs and families alike.

While it’s not PC to say this, these ladies were also cute. I liked their outfits. They had chic shoes and healthy hair. Here were women comfortable in their own skin, not trying to dress and act and sound like guys. Here were the opposite of hoary archetypes—those sharp-elbowed, steamrolling, ball-busting bitches. And here was an antidote to the dreary navel-gazing and hairy-legged petulance of Women’s Studies 101. These chicks were successful, but still really fun.

So what was their secret? I started listening and learning, observing how they made it all work. And before long, they were gushing about their girlfriends.

Professional women from their twenties to their seventies started recounting hilarious stories, and often they’d begin like this: “Well, in my dinner group.…” “Your dinner group?” I’d ask. “Who’s in your dinner group? What do you do when you get together?” Eat, naturally. Drink, copiously. And gossip, naughtily. It all sounded like a blast.

I started to discover dinner groups and salons and coworking and networking circles in major cities across the United States. In almost every case, the women thought they were alone in assembling clusters of dear, smart girlfriends who met regularly to learn and share. They’d never heard of the other groups, and when I told them they were thrilled. “You’re onto something,” they’d say, and then introduce me to their pals.

At that point, I didn’t have a thesis or a commissioned article or a book contract. All I had was a hunch. Yet accomplished, indemand women agreed to talk to me. They made themselves available for open-ended interviews that, for all they knew, might go nowhere—just because a friend had asked them to. So many times in the course of reporting, I heard, “I never talk to the press. I’m only talking to you because so-and-so said to.” The ladies were busy, but not too busy to do a favor for a friend.

I was captivated by their clandestine coteries, as I was trying to navigate my own professional life. Nine years ago, after my first son was born, I’d left a career in consulting and investment banking to become a journalist. I went to grad school, got pregnant again, took a hiatus, started freelancing, finished grad school, got pregnant again. Now I write from home while caring for young children. I work incredibly hard for a tiny fraction of the money I made before, but I’m around for my kids and I love my job.

The more conversations I had with women, the more I reflected on my own path. When I began trying to freelance, I was clawing my way into a new industry, working in a vacuum with no network of journalists or editors to guide me. I perused mastheads and targeted senior staff at dozens of publications. I researched and pitched and researched and pitched. Inevitably, I was met with silence. Editors didn’t read my e-mails, much less return my calls.

I knew my previous experience was relevant—that I’d learned to interview, think logically, solve complex problems, and communicate—but editors didn’t seem to agree. Did I need to take an entry-level job to prove myself? I’d worked twelve- to fifteen-hour days at an investment bank until three days before giving birth. I’d teamed up with great minds on challenging, stimulating projects and supported myself. Now, at any writing job I considered, I’d be earning less than I paid a nanny. I felt humbled and demoralized and irrelevant.

But writing had been my first love. And I knew I could be good at this, if someone would only give me a shot. Finally, someone did, when a prominent female writer put herself on the line. “Tell her I sent you,” she said, directing me to an editor at the New York Sun. “Use my name.”

As I spoke with vibrant ladies for this book and watched them lobby for one another, I realized that every opportunity I’d gotten in journalism had come through a woman: at the New York Sun (where I was the oldest living knocked-up intern, waddling in two afternoons per week—“Fatty will work for free!”), the Financial Times, and the New York Times. I’ve written for amazing male editors, but it was always a woman who got me through the door.

Why was that? Were women somehow more open to seeing that I, an untraditional candidate—sometimes pregnant, sometimes nursing, often wearing yoga pants (though obviously not to meetings)—had something worthy to offer? Did they, with their own struggles and juggles, somehow understand mine? Did it matter less to them how my work got done—sometimes taking calls from my bathroom, barricaded behind two sets of closed doors that rattled when my toddler crashed his Big Wheel in the hall—as long as it was on time and good quality?

I was doubly meticulous, and not just because I enjoyed the work, but because I feared no one would take me seriously. Years into my writing career, I was making progress, but I still wasn’t where I wanted to be. I didn’t feel particularly successful. But, I reassured myself, there would be time for that. If I’d focused on landing more and bigger scoops, that would have meant time away from my boys, time I could never recapture. To be the kind of mom I wanted to be, I felt I had to choose. My goals and dreams would wait.

And then something changed. Before I could acknowledge what was happening, women were helping me. I started landing interviews with powerful female sources because their friends had urged them to talk. Even before I asked, these women offered. “You ask good questions,” they’d say. “You get what we do.” Maybe my prior training was handy after all. “You need to talk to this person,” they’d say, and immediately connect us by e-mail. “Here’s her cell phone number,” they’d say, and trust me with personal information for executives normally ensconced behind gatekeepers and a fortress of PR. “Tell her I sent you,” they’d say. “Use my name.”

I did, and doors flew open. Prominent women took my calls. “How can I help?” they asked, and answered my questions. They didn’t qualify or censor themselves, and they didn’t say everything was off the record. Because I’d come through a trusted friend, they just talked. They batted around ideas, and they told me about their work and dinner groups. They opened up about their families and their fears.

These women were so honest with me, and still I lied, a little. I didn’t mention that I work from home, and I hid the fact that I’m often with my kids during the day and write late into the night. I worried that truly hard-core, accomplished women—the ones who sat in corner offices and business class—would write me off. I worried that they’d think I was weak for having compromised, that they would dismiss my choices.

But these women let me in, and every time I tripped and fretted, someone picked me up. At one point, I embarrassed myself and started crying at lunch with a sixty-year-old CEO who’s become a great friend and mentor. I told her I’d stopped sleeping, that I was exhausted and scared and stressed, that I didn’t feel good enough, and that I wasn’t spending enough time with my kids. I felt like I was failing at everything and I was questioning all my choices. “What if I’ve been wasting everyone’s time? What if I just… suck?” I said, head in my hands. “Maybe I should do yoga.”

“Fuck yoga,” she laughed, waving her hand. But then she looked at me, stern and serious and straight in the eye. “You’re doing edge work. You’re creating and uncovering things. You’re putting things together in a way no one else has. Whatever happens, you’ll be fine. Just keep going.” No one had ever said something like that to me, and as far as I knew, no one had ever thought it. I was having trouble believing in myself, but she believed in me. So of course I kept going.

Stiletto Networks aren’t about titles, and you don’t need power or wealth to create one. Stiletto Networks are about trying to make your own personal dent in the world.

This is what Stiletto Networks have been doing for each other, and now it’s what they’ve done for me. They’ve enabled me to take this next step in my career, to write my first book, to find a way to make my dreams happen now, even when I didn’t think I was ready. They’ve inspired me, absorbed my weakness, and made me stronger.

What I’ve learned is that Stiletto Networks aren’t about titles, and you don’t need power or wealth to create one. Stiletto Networks are about trying to make your own personal dent in the world. For me that means writing books, while for others it means leading companies, directing schools, or rallying behind candidates. As my friend Claudia Batten, a serial entrepreneur, says, Stiletto Networks are about becoming “the biggest, boldest, bravest version of yourself that you can be.”

This book is about groups that make women big, bold, and brave: the “Harpies” and “Power Bitches,” “Babes in Boyland” and “Chicks in Charge.” It’s about what happens when bright, caring women—from their twenties to their seventies—come together to celebrate and unwind, debate and compare notes. But it’s also about what happens when they leave the table, when the talking stops and the action starts. It’s about how they mine their collective intelligence to realize their dreams or champion a cause, how they lift up their friends and push them forward, how they collaborate to ensure each woman gets what she needs—be it information, an introduction, a recommendation, a partnership, or a landmark deal. It’s about women banding together to achieve their destinies and change the world.

Yet it’s even more than that. When they talk about their clusters, women now use words like life-changing. Destined. Fated. Magical. Meant to be. These are terms unheard in business, words reserved for love. At first it’s disconcerting, like walking in on your parents having sex, or overhearing your boss purr intimacies to his wife, or mistress. They’re just not supposed to behave like that. Executive women aren’t meant to act like girls, much less talk like Oprah.

But see it twice, three times, ten or twenty times over, and know the workplace will never be the same. Yes, these ladies have big jobs. They move real money. And still, so many influential women attribute recent victories to doing what comes naturally: listening to and advocating for treasured friends.

So this is a love story disguised as a business story, a tale of female friendship. It’s a story of women whose huge hearts match their mighty brains. Women who choose passion over balance. Women who leap into life.

It’s about the kind of woman so many of us are striving to be. And with help from our Stiletto Networks, we can.