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Mistal's own push from the corporate world came when she was laid off from Arthur Andersen when it became ensnared in legal issues over its auditing of Enron . An accountant who switched to consulting and who wanted to do it on her own, she put in motion her strategic plan to break away from corporate. She moved to Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, working as a senior trainer instead of a manager.

“I took a 35 percent pay cut in the transition,” Mistal said. “I spent four years at the [MSLO] day job. People think that’s a long time, but opportunities came up along the way, like radio.”

For Melissa Wildstein, president of The Matchstick Group , the pivotal moment came when her daughter was born. A senior vice president for an advertising agency in New York, her commute from her home in Hartsdale, N.Y., to New York City took 90 minutes each way.

After a three-month maternity leave in 2010, she went back to working long, demanding hours. Late one night in the office, with the lights being turned off around her, she realized that her daughter had been in bed for three hours and she was still working.

“I said, ‘This is not the life I want,’” Wildstein recalls.

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