When Erica Cerulo and Claire Mazur met in college in 2002, they bonded instantly. Fast-forward to 2010, when they founded the popular fashion and design website Of a Kind. Now, in their first book, Work Wife, Cerulo and Mazur bring to light the unique power of female friendship to fuel successful businesses. Drawing on their own experiences, as well as the stories of other thriving “work wives,” they highlight the ways in which vulnerability, openness, and compassion — qualities central to so many women’s relationships — lend themselves to professional accomplishment and innovation.
Featuring interviews with work wives such as Amanda Hesser and Merrill Stubbs of the influential food community site Food52, Ann Friedman, Aminatou Sow, and Gina Delvac of the hit podcast Call Your Girlfriend, and Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh Jennings of Olympic volleyball fame, Work Wife addresses a range of topics vital to successful partnerships, such as being co-bosses, tackling disagreements, dealing with money, and accommodating motherhood. Demonstrating how female partnerships in the office are productive, progressive, and empowering, Cerulo and Mazur offer an invaluable roadmap for a feminist reimagining of the workplace.
Fun, enlightening, and informative, Work Wife is a celebration of female friendship and collaboration, proving that it's not just feasible but fruitful to mix BFFs with business.
Author quotes
When asked about our proudest business accomplishment, the answer is always “Us!” - the friendship we’ve nurtured and the successful partnership it’s fostered.
What we’ve realized in taking a closer look at the way in which our relationship functions is that our professional partnership has been the beneficiary of the tenets that anchor female friendship; emotional intimacy, vulnerability, a penchant for collaboration, and a pattern of mutual support - qualities that have unique power and potential to spawn great ideas and create foundations for strong businesses.
This evolution in the business world coincides, unsurprisingly, with a long overdue cultural shift that recognizes that female friendships aren’t all about backstabbing and cattiness.
About the authors
Erica Cerulo and Claire Mazur met as undergrads at the University of Chicago in 2002 and founded Of a Kind in 2010. They have developed a reputation as influential curators at the forefront of the maker movement, with a knack for identifying “the next big thing” when it’s still a small thing. In addition to unearthing America’s most talented up-and-coming designers for feature on their website, Cerulo and Mazur have also become known for their popular 10 Things newsletter and its podcast companion A Few Things, where they expand their enthusiasm for new discoveries across product and lifestyle categories. Accolades for Cerulo and Mazur have included being named to Forbes’s“30 Under 30,” InStyle’s “Best of the Web,” and Fashionista’s “Most Influential People in New York Fashion Right Now.” This is their first book.
Why LoA loves it….
Choosing the path of building a business as a woman entrepreneur can be both challenging and often lonely at times. So choosing to go on that journey with a BFF who is also your business building buddy can be a great choice for many women entrepreneurs. In their fabulous new book, Work Wife, authors and entrepreneurs Erica Cerulo and Claire Mazur show that it is not only possible to build great businesses with a fellow woman who has your back along side you, but it can also be a richly rewarding and emotionally uplifting experience too. This is a really wonderful read for all those women who are thinking of going into business with their BFF and want to see that it can work. --- Melanie Hawken, founder and ceo of Lionesses of Africa