With a dozen
investment portfolios in her care, each with an average value of about
$35 million, Jennifer Scully-Lerner can't afford to leave even the
smallest market detail to chance. Before the clang of the opening bell
on the New York Stock Exchange at 9:30 a.m., she's perused today's Wall
Street Journal, examined the results of after-hours trading, analyzed
the action on the London, Tokyo and Hong Kong exchanges, checked the
prices of gold and oil and scanned the values of several currencies. Of
course, the 36-year-old mother of two has also squeezed in plenty more
"before the bell," like getting her little ones dressed and fed and
often taking a four-mile run.

A vice president in
private wealth management in the New York City office of Goldman Sachs,
Jennifer manages assets for the global financial firm's individual and
family clients, as well as for several foundations. "It's pretty
fast-paced," she says. "You never look at the clock because your eyes
are constantly on so many markets and portfolios. I'm always shocked
when it's the end of the day."

When the end of the
workday does arrive, it always seems there are more numbers to be
evaluated. And a couple of hours after the final bell, usually by 6:00
p.m., Jennifer has hopped into a cab and is headed home to have dinner
with her husband, Rick Lerner, and their two children, Jack, 4, and
Annabelle, 1.

The demands of a job
such as hers could easily become all-consuming, but both Jennifer and
Rick, who's also a Goldman Sachs private wealth management vice
president, have made protecting family time their first priority.
"We're committed to having dinner at home at least four nights a
week—every week," Jennifer says. "We sit around the table as a family,
playing word games like "This or That" where someone will call out two
things like vanilla and chocolate, and we all yell out which is our
favorite."

To make sure things
run smoothly, Jennifer keeps her household as well hedged as her
clients' portfolios. Their trusted babysitter arrives every day at 7:30
a.m. to take Jack to preschool and then play and read with Annabelle.
Jennifer also calls upon her sister and mother-in-law, who both live
within several blocks of the family's two-bedroom Upper East Side
apartment. In fact, she pays her sister, a documentary filmmaker in her
twenties who can use the extra money, to do activities with Jack. She
also works with him on reading and other elementary skills. "I call her
my 'co-parent,' " chuckles Jennifer. "She loves Jack as much as I do,
and I get to see her more often as well." Recently, she also upped her
housekeeper to two visits a week. "I felt like, 'Gosh, how can we
afford this?' " she says. "So we cut back on takeout dinners. It's so
worth it to have help. The dirty clothes pile up, and the house gets
trashed pretty fast because we're all in a small space, and my
husband's and my careers keep us so busy."

The babysitter
usually leaves at dinnertime—unless Mom and Dad get hung up at the
office—and the next few hours are all about the kids. They may have a
bath, and then Jennifer and Rick will sit down and read to both
children -favorite board books for Annabelle and classics like The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and Stuart Little for Jack. "Even if we're home a bit late, we do the stories," Jennifer says. "They're so important."

After the kids are asleep, Jennifer and Rick divide the housework and
the bill paying. "He really does 50 percent," she says. And to save
precious time, they do nearly all of their shopping on the
Internet-even ordering Annabelle's diapers through an online grocery
store. When chores are done for the night, they read together or talk
politics-they met working on the Clinton transition team in 1993-before
Jennifer turns in at about 10:00 p.m. "We never turn on the TV, because
there's no time," she adds. "So when people at work chat about Desperate Housewives, I'm clueless!"

The family also
circles its wagons on weekends, visiting the zoo or the park or the
beach together (though Jennifer does check her BlackBerry several times
to make sure there aren't client questions that require her immediate
attention). She and her husband try to carve out some private or couple
time, as well as ease stress and stay healthy, with early-morning runs.
Both are long-distance runners and have finished several marathons
together. Sometimes they run with Annabelle in the jogging stroller, if
they can get someone to look after Jack. Otherwise, they trade off
watching the kids.

Having made work and family the strict focus of her life, Jennifer says
she has little to no "selfish time." Besides not having seen an
Oscar-nominated film in years (though she's seen plenty of G-rated
movies-sometimes twice), she most laments the loss of time with her
girlfriends. "I really miss them! But they're very understanding, and a
lot of them have kids, too. We're all juggling right now."

The juggling act has been made somewhat less stressful by the support
she's received from her company and her colleagues, says Jennifer, a
steering committee member for the firmwide Women's Network and a cohead
of the network for her division. When she was pregnant with Annabelle,
the three male partners in her group-two of whom have kids-made
business trips to Canada to meet with her clients. And when her
babysitter's father died and Jennifer had no child care for six weeks,
her colleagues covered for her when she ran late due to her patchwork
day-care situation.

The family-friendly
atmosphere at Goldman Sachs, a Working Mother 100 Best Company, is
fostered by the firm's culture. "I've used the terrific on-site
child-care facility many times," says Jennifer. "And there are a number
of women who work part-time four days a week

or work from home,"
she says. "One works three days in the office, one day at home and has
one day off. So that's always an option. Where I am at in my career
right now, I'm very focused. I'm building and running my business, so I
choose to work five days a week."

Jennifer's role model
is her manager, Josephine Linden, who heads the New York City private
wealth management office. "I look at her and I think, She has an
incredible career, she's a top woman at the firm, and, perhaps more
important, she has three really wonderful children." So Jennifer tries
to emulate her by putting her kids first and her career a close second.

The
feeling between the women is mutual. Says Linden of her mentee:
"Jennifer has set an example and a bar for how you can have a very good
and flexible life. She's proved that you can enjoy yourself and be both
a terrific professional and a mother."