81: Activating the power of dual-career couples with Eve Sprunt

How can couples best navigate dual careers? How do you balance work-life throughout a career? How can dual-career couples benefit companies? Eve Sprunt answers these questions and shows how management and individuals alike can truly activate the power of dual-career couples. This is a wide-ranging conversation that touches on career development, workplace bullying, how professional societies can propel your career in downturns, and much more. This conversation with host Andrew Geary is based on Eve's recent book, A Guide for Dual-Career Couples. Visit https://seg.org/podcast for the complete show notes and to buy her book. BIOGRAPHY Eve Sprunt is the author of two books that deal with the issues impacting those in dual-career couples. Her first book, A Guide for Dual-Career Couples, is based on extensive research she has done on the topic. She felt compelled to write her second book, Dearest Audrey, An Likely Love Story after she found her aunt’s letters that were written in the mid-1950s. Eve is working on a new book that explores the challenges her mother, Ruth Chew, faced trying to combine her career as an artist and later as a children’s book author and illustrator with raising five children. Eve earned her bachelor of science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). At the age of 21, while working on her master’s degree at MIT, she eloped before meeting any of her husband’s family. She went on to become the first woman to receive a doctoral degree from Stanford University in Geophysics in 1977. Her first child, Alexander, was born 9 months after she defended her Ph.D. thesis. Thirteen days later, Eve returned to work as a research associate at Stanford bringing Alexander into her lab. Her daughter was born while she worked for Mobil before there was any maternity leave. She spent 35 years in the petroleum industry (21 years for Mobil and almost 14 years for Chevron). She was the 2006 President of the Society of Petroleum Engineers and received that society’s highest award, “Honorary Membership.” In 2013, she received the highest award given by the Society of Women Engineers, the SWE Achievement Award. She acted as vice president of the Society of Exploration Geophysicists (SEG) and served as Past Chair of the SEG Women's Network Committee. She founded the Society of Core Analysts in 1985 and was the 2018 President of the American Geosciences Institute. She authored 23 patents, 28 scholarly papers, and over 150 other articles. CREDITS Original music by Zach Bridges. This episode was hosted, edited, and produced by Andrew Geary. Thank you to the SEG podcast team: Jennifer Crockett, Ally McGinnis, and Mick Swiney.