She Quit Her High-Paying Job to Take a Risk. Now She’s a Top 1% Earner.

Working in tech, Nancy Marzouk was used to being the only woman in the room. But that doesn’t mean she liked it.

“I felt like I constantly overperformed, yet was under potentially more scrutiny than other people, if that makes sense,” said Marzouk, 52.

She’d gone to school for fine arts, but fell into advertising after undergrad and grew to love the industry. As she rose in the ranks at various marketing and tech agencies, she felt like she was always working harder than the people around her but wasn’t moving up the ladder at the same rate.

“The companies weren’t going to change. I had to leave to change it, basically. That’s how I felt,” she said. “I felt like I had gotten to the point in my career where it wasn’t about what I did. There was too much politics at play. And so, if you weren’t part of that, like, boys’ club, then … it didn’t matter what I did.”

Marzouk took a risk. She left her stable corporate job and launched her own startup, MediaWallah, a data management company, in 2013. Now, Marzouk makes between $600,000 and $800,000 every year, placing her in the top 1% of income earners in the country, according to SmartAsset.

Among the top 1% of income earners in the United States, only 5% are women, according to an American Sociological Review study from 2019. Emily Riley, another woman in the top 1% and a researcher, recently surveyed 145 of these women to find out what it takes to be a woman in the top 1%. Another 180 women surveyed in the report earn more than $300,000, and about 170 other women surveyed make between $100,000 and $300,000. Ranges vary slightly, but for Riley’s study top 1% income earners make more than $775,000. Women are well-represented in top 1% households as wives and partners to high-earning men, researchers found, but women themselves are rarely the sole earners in top 1% households.

“What I realized sort of in my mid career, as I started having children and I wanted more flexibility, is that I really didn’t have the tools to negotiate it in a way where I felt like I was in control,” Riley, 48, said. “I always felt as though I was one step behind, I was missing out on something. And while I continued to be reasonably successful, it just made it obvious to me that there weren’t a lot of women above me who had created a path that I could follow.”

Riley took a risk, too, after she decided to have a third child. She wanted more flexibility as a working mom, so she became a technology consultant. Like Marzouk, she found that being her own boss actually led to more income for her and her family. She said she makes just under $1 million per year.

Most of the talk around women in the workforce focuses on challenges and hurdles, Riley said. She thought about how, as a younger working woman, she had always wished for a roadmap to success. So, she went after her own research, tapping successful women in her network, in women’s groups and across LinkedIn.

“I was overwhelmed by the positive feedback,” she said. “It really seemed to touch a nerve, that other career women agreed with me, you know, this is something we would all enjoy. Instead of just feeling annoyed or frustrated or challenged, we can actually do something about it and be really excited to hear each other’s stories and to learn from one another.”

Women in the Top 1% of Income Earners Tend to Be Married, Have at Least 2 Kids

The results of Riley’s survey found there are three traits that women in the top 1% share: Drive, career management and a willingness to learn and grow.

She had anticipated that women in the top 1% would be intense and competitive, which she found was true as 44% of women in the 1% say they are competitive compared to 25% of women in the $100,000 to $300,000 bracket. But she also found women in the 1% are less compliant and more “willing to go their own way.” One in five women in the 1% are likely to “go with the flow,” versus one in three women in lower-income brackets.

Most women in the top 1% of income earners are married and have children, the survey found. While these women are usually the primary breadwinners of their households, 89% are married and 71% have two or more children.

Marzouk has two boys. Her husband works, but she has been the primary breadwinner for her family for a while now. Earlier in her career, Marzouk said, she felt like she had to go “above and beyond” at work, “or else it would impede my ability to climb up the corporate ladder.” Her partner was instrumental to her success, she said, by being supportive and encouraging her to follow her dreams and goals.

Things have gotten better for working moms in recent years, Marzouk said, but she still feels like she missed a lot of things when her kids were little. Riley said she heard a lot about guilt from the women she interviewed for this research.

“You really can’t have it all, but you can live a full life,” Riley said. “And that’s when you have a lot on your plate, and of course you can’t be everywhere at the same time. You’re going to miss some of those midweek holiday parties at your kids’ school, but you will be there for their recital on Saturday night, you know?”

‘What Would a Man Do?’

There aren’t many women who are CEOs in tech, Marzouk said, and even fewer founders. She gets excited when she hears about women who are looking to start their own company in the advertising and technology space, and wants to help them. Raising capital funds as a women is difficult, she said.

“Women are very pragmatic. Like, we think of things realistically,” she said. But being realistic with financial projections doesn’t excite potential funders, who are mostly men. “People only want to invest in the pipe dream.”

Her advice? Think like a man, Marzouk said.

“What would a man do? What would my husband do if he was in this situation?” she said. “And I actually do the opposite of what my gut is telling me, because I know who my audience is.”

A lot of women are stuck in “mid-tier” roles, Marzouk said. Sometimes, she said, women need to think about what they want to accomplish and the best way to get there − which might mean getting out of their comfort zone.

Once you break through the glass ceiling, Marzouk said, “you can do whatever you want to do.”

Madeline Mitchell’s role covering women and the caregiving economy at USA TODAY is supported by a partnership with Pivotal and Journalism Funding Partners. Funders do not provide editorial input.

Reach Madeline at [email protected] and @maddiemitch_ on X.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: She quit her high-paying job to take a risk. Now she’s a top 1% earner.

Reporting by Madeline Mitchell, USA TODAY / USA TODAY

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