What happens is that a search firm gets a call ‘informally.’ What happens is that every single decision I make for the next year gets read through a lens that says is she up to this.

“And I want you to understand that none of them would think of themselves as discriminating.

Every one of them would say they were being prudent.

That is the whole problem.

It isn’t malice, it’s prudence, and prudence is unanswerable.

“I have a merger that closes in March that I have worked on for two years and that is the thing my father’s company will still be doing in thirty years.

If I disclose in November, I do not close it.