Sylvia Ann Hewlett is an economist and the founding president of the Center for Work-Life Policy where she directs the "Hidden Brain Drain" - a task force of 40 global companies committed to fully realize female and minority talent over the lifespan. She also heads up the Gender and Policy Program at the School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University.

She is the author of six critically acclaimed nonfiction books, including When the Bough Breaks (winner of a Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Book Prize), The War Against Parents (co-authored with Cornel West), Creating a Life (named as one of the best books of 2002 by Business Week) and, most recently, Off-Ramps and On-Ramps (Harvard Business School Press). She is the co-author of Harvard Business Review articles "Leadership in Your Midst: Tapping the Hidden Strengths of Minority Executives," and "Extreme Jobs: The Dangerous Allure of the 70-Hour Workweek." Her articles have also appeared in the New York Times, the Financial Times, and the International Herald Tribune.

Many of the forward-thinking policies described in her new book Off-Ramps and On-Ramps were developed by The Hidden Brain Drain Task Force which Hewlett founded with Carolyn Buck Luce of Ernst & Young, and Cornel West of Princeton University to encourage 40 forward-thinking companies to become stakeholders in a research effort on second generation policy capable of keeping talented women on the road to success.

Dr. Hewlett has taught at Cambridge, Columbia and Princeton Universities and held fellowships at the Institute for Public Policy Research in London and the Center for the Study of Values in Public Life at Harvard. In the 1980s she became the first woman to head up the Economic Policy Council - a think tank composed of 125 business and labor leaders. Hewlett is well known for her expertise on gender and workplace issues.

She has appeared on 60 Minutes, The Today Show, Good Morning America, Newshour with Jim Lehrer, Charlie Rose, ABC World News, Oprah, The View, All Things Considered, Talk of the Nation and been lampooned on Saturday Night Live. A Kennedy Scholar and graduate of Cambridge University, she earned her Ph.D. degree in economics at London University.