Karen's page.

Recently, I spoke at Mellon Bank in Pittsburgh as part of its Take Our Daughters to Work Day program. As the girls filed into the auditorium, I sat in the front row of chairs, slugging down Coke in an attempt to wake up and actually make some sense at 9 a.m. This nice girl I'll call Lauren sat next to me. I asked her if she was excited to be spending the day at the bank with her mom and learning about what goes on at a big important financial institution like Mellon.

"Heck, yes," she said. She told me she had scored the highest on the seventh-grade math placement test and thought about someday working at a place like Mellon. "Very cool!" I said.

Then she leaned in and whispered, "So where do you think the lady is?"

"Uh, what lady?" I asked, knowing perfectly darn well what was coming next.

"You know, the editor of GL. She's supposed to be here."

Er, yeah, present and accounted for. "Um, that's me.

The look that came over Lauren's face registered somewhere between confusion and horror. She looked at my jeans, tee, ponytail and lack of lipstick. Lauren stammered for a second and blurted, "I thought you were here with your mom. This isn't the first time anyone has had a hard time believing I am who I am.

When I started Girls' Life, I was 23. And I looked about 16. Trying to convince people to give you millions to start a business that 90 percent of people fail at is hard enough. Try doing it when you look like you should be interviewing to be their babysitter. Lucky for me, most of my first encounters with people in the magazine business were over the phone. I could use my secret weapon--The Voice.

I was painfully aware of my deep voice in grade school. The chorus teacher informed me that, in addition to being a pretty horrible singer, my alto was so low that I was throwing off the harmony of the whole lower range of the choir. I was the only girl I ever knew who was asked to learn to conduct.

But in high school, The Voice had a few advantages. One was being asked to do the morning announcements, a job I loved and not just because it got me out of homeroom. The other upside was that any school official who called my house to ask why I was tardy got assurances from "my mom" that it was all her fault. They never clued in that the dusty-day-on-a-gravel-road-sounding voice was mine.

When I started CL, I'd call people, lay on The Voice and convince them I was a seasoned professional. Since I often did business with companies located far away, it was usually months before they met me and discovered my dirty little secret--I was young enough to be their daughter. But, by then, I'd proven myself and we'd have a good laugh over the fact that they'd expected a middle-aged woman.

I tried to look older. I bought some suits. I attempted to blow dry my hair into a conservative style. I even tried eyeliner. The suits didn't last long--I looked like I was wearing my older sister's clothes. The hair was a joke. And the makeup? One day, I wore lavender eyeliner that would have made any other brown-eyed girl look like a goddess, only to have one of the guys I work with ask, "What's that purple crap on your eyes?" Not exactly the desired effect I was hoping for. I tossed it that night.

Our next issue will mark GL's ninth anniversary. To say we've beaten the odds against success is an understatement. Almost all the other mags that debuted with us in 1994 have either folded or been sold. Thanks to everyone here, GL is a bigger and bigger success every year.

As for me, I wake up every morning, throw on jeans and a tee, and pull my hair into a ponytail. And when I answer my phone at the office, I don't even need to use The Voice.

Karen