She decided to become a single mom. Then she became a CEO

Like many working mothers, Eileen McDonnell tries to limit business trips and after-hours events,and she feels guilty when she has to miss an event at her daughter's school. 

Unlike most working mothers, however, McDonnell is the CEO of a Fortune 1000 company,insurance firm Penn Mutual. And she came to the job as a single parent, having chosen in her mid-40s to adopt her daughter, Claire, from Russia.

McDonnell didn't decide on single parenthood lightly. She first seriously mulled over the idea when she was president of New England Financial, then a subsidiary of MetLife. "I'd done a lot of soul searching about how I would acclimate as a mother," she said.

She'd been around kids her whole life -- first as one of six siblings, and then as an adult with all her nieces and nephews. But by her 40s she had yet to have any of her own. 

"Up until that time it hadn't happened for me," she said. "I realized I had the capacity to love a child and that it would round me out as a person."

Once she learned she would be allowed to adopt a baby from Russia, she opted to leave her jobat New England Financial. 

Eileen McDonnell with her daughter, Claire, soon after adopting her from Russia in 2006.

"I thought it was in the company's best interest for me to step away. I didn't think I could do my best as a mother and as an executive having a foot on both docks. So I stepped out of corporate life," McDonnell said. 

That was in 2005. But then the adoption was put on hold until March of 2006. By that time, McDonnell had decided she didn't want to return to the inflexibility of corporate life and had started her own consulting business as an executive coach and was teaching an online leadership course for the American College of Financial Services.

After coming back from Russia with Claire, who was a year and a half old at that point, she devoted the next several months to be at home with her new daughter before resuming her consulting work.

During that period, a recruiter asked McDonnell to recommend people who would be good candidates for the role of chief marketing officer at Penn Mutual. Three of her recommendations became finalists for the job, she said, and the then-CEO of Penn Mutual asked to meet with her after learning she was the source of the referrals. 

She saw the meeting as an opportunity to market her consulting services. The CEO offered her the CMO job instead, with the possibility of succeeding him as CEO if all went well.

Penn Mutual offered a flexible work environment. And McDonnell was happy to see the company had women in senior roles -- since, as McDonnell put it at a conference last month, often "women get stopped up the chain because life happens."

Claire is now in the 9th grade.

In her interview with board members, McDonnell stressed that she too would need flexibility. "I was clear I would give them my all, but if it were going to be an issue that I might have to step out to be a reader at my daughter's school, I'm not the right one for the job."

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