Margaret Hamburg

I've been a medical and public health professional as well as a mother. I became skilled at juggling a number of priorities and competing interests. Like many other female leaders, I've tried to serve as a role model for the young women at my organization who are trying to balance a high-level leadership position and a family.

At FDA, our mission is to promote and protect the health of the public. As commissioner, I've worked hard to galvanize people around that idea. I want employees to be thinking about the unique and essential contribution they are making to our mission.

I don't want to over generalize, but I believe that women are typically drawn to leadership styles that focus on consensus building, effective listening and working in teams. That's certainly been my leadership style, and I think it's been very successful.

If we live a self-directed, self-motivated, self-centered life, always needing to get our own way, then we're going to be miserable. In fact, many times we believe it's our problems that are making us unhappy when, in reality, it's because we're focused on ourselves!