Men and women leave college as equals — how do you preserve that spirit in the partnership of marriage? What choices give you a better shot at leading the life you want? How do you find equal room for two careers and enough time for a happy family? Sharon Meers and Steve Dostart will talk about why your most important career decision is selecting your life partner; and how to set up that partnership so everyone wins.
About the speakers:
Sharon Meers was a managing director at Goldman, Sachs & Co. where she worked for 17 years. In April 2005, Sharon resigned from Goldman to work on a book about women and work. Following her book-writing sabbatical, she will return to full-time commercial work.
When she first joined Goldman, Sharon worked in Fixed Income sales and then spent five years as part of a team restructuring financial institutions following the S&L crisis. In 1996, Sharon moved to San Francisco to re-establish the Goldman's equity derivative business on the West Coast. In 1999, Sharon opened a private banking office in Menlo Park to address the fast-growing Silicon Valley business. Over three years, she built a team of 50 people with revenues over $44 million and Sharon became a managing director in 2000. From 2002 through 2004, Sharon ran the national product management team in Goldman Sachs Asset Management focused on the private banking business. In 2005, Sharon moved to equity research in San Francisco.
Sharon graduated from Harvard College Magna Cum Laude in 1989. She earned a master's degree in economics from New York University in 1991 while working at Goldman. Sharon serves on the board of The National Women's Law Center and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Steve Dostart develops commercial real estate in the Palo Alto area. He founded the Dostart Development Company, LLC in 1999 after working for a Palo Alto developer, John Mozart, and the Trammell Crow family in Dallas, Texas. He was also a summer associate at Goldman, Sachs & Co. during his time at Stanford's GSB. Steve graduated from the GSB in 1990 as an Arjay Miller Scholar.
Steve is originally from Mason City, Iowa and is the sixth of seven children. He attended Harvard College, spent the summer of 1985 working for the Center City Development Corporation, an arm of the San Diego Redevelopment Agency, and graduated Magna Cum Laude in June of 1986.
Steve is involved with many activities at Harvard and Stanford and is a board member of YES Reading, a non-profit entity that helps at-risk, elementary school aged kids catch up to the reading levels of their peers.
Steve Dostart and Sharon Meers are a husband and wife team with two young children.