For many people, being ambitious relates to the accomplishments they hope to achieve either professionally or financially. But according to Kelly Evans, anchor of CNBC’s “The Exchange” and “Power Lunch,” you can “be ambitious at home as well.”
Ambition drives Evans, 37, every day as she reports on what’s happening in the world of finance, real estate and economics. But she says that this drive may show up differently for other people.
“Ambition doesn’t always look like you think it might look. [I have] a relentless drive and a hunger for information and for understanding these complex global markets,” Evans tells CNBC. “It’s not ambition to achieve some certain end or the other; it’s more this ambition and this drive to want to know what’s happening in financial markets and what that tells us about where the world is going.”
Evans’ strong desire for success also pushes her to be the best mother she can be, an aspect of her life she says is harmonious with her professional duties. She encourages people that their personal goals can be just as big as their work goals.
“You can want to have a large family. We had four kids in five years. And you can have that ambition to have a beautiful home life and still have this drive in the workplace. And those things often help each other. They’re not at odds.”
Working mothers especially can struggle with lack of ambition when balancing a career and life at home. That can often result in women choosing to sacrifice their jobs to fulfill their other responsibilities.
During the pandemic, mothers quit their jobs at twice the rate of men, according to the 2022 “State of Motherhood” report from Motherly, an online parenting platform. After surveying over 10,000 moms, Motherly found that a lack of access to child care only worsened these circumstances — among unemployed millennial and Gen Z respondents, nearly half (46%) say they left the workforce in 2021 specifically because of child-care issues.
Evans is no stranger to the hardships that come with being a working mom. Still, she says, her ambitious nature helps her push through.
“I’m in a season of life that is very hectic right now with four kids under five at home. But the same ambition that drives me to want to understand the world can be ambition at home to have this big, beautiful family to take care of and want to raise them with the access that I might have to financial markets and to understanding the world in a very unique way,” she says. “And it motivates me to be able to now have people to share my professional life with.”
For people seeking to become ambitious across various aspects of their lives, BetterUp, a virtual coaching platform, has five tips to get started:
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