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Thirteen years ago I was in my first year of business school at Penn as a recently-single
mom with a one year old daughter. There was a family picnic and as I wandered in with
my daughter Talia (here in the audience) I struck up a conversation with one of the student
dads. He asked me: What class is your husband in? I said, confused, “I don’t have a
husband. I am the student.”
That night I called mom to complain and she responded with five curt words.
“Amanda, Just deal with it.”
That is my pearl of wisdom. “Just deal with it.” It may seem a little harsh but it is
not intended to be. Life is unpredictable. We don’t know the challenges we are going
to face and my mother’s advice was wise: –deal with it head on, with conviction and
integrity.
My mother was 5 feet tall. She was little and tough. And she said it like it was. She
was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 1997. Six years later, on a cold February morning
we sat in her doctor’s office as blood was being drawn. She was being tested for BRCA,
a genetic defect. She turned to me and said “I will probably test positive.”(Her sister,
mother and aunt had all died of cancer.) “And if you and your sisters test positive, you
need to ‘deal with it’.” She died the next morning.
A month later I found out I too had the BRCA1 defect (my sisters didn’t) – I was 5 times
more likely to have breast cancer, 20 times more likely to have ovarian cancer than the
general population. I was a 34 year old time bomb. This gave me a great sense of clarity
about what I wanted in life. I felt I couldn’t waste any time.
I did two very radical things. While my mother was very ill I dated a wonderful guy who was
crazy about my daughter and me. But between my mother’s chemo sessions and her deteriorating
health, I could not commit. Once she died I realized I lost a great guy. He had just
moved to India. I jumped on a plane and miraculously convinced him to move back to Texas. He’s
here today and I would not be here without his love and support. Second, I quit my job
which I didn’t love. I convinced the CEO at Match.com that I could
run a start-up within Match. I had never run a business before. Three years later I was
asked to run all of Match.com. But the clock was ticking. I was faced with a choice – should
I have a mastectomy & hysterectomy now when I was healthy or should I just monitor and
pray I didn’t get cancer. I watched my mother and aunt die and I didn’t want my two daughters
to go through that. I decided to “deal with it” and had the surgeries.
My mother’s advice became a guide. Things don’t always work out the way we plan. A
marriage doesn’t work; a parent becomes sick; a promotion doesn’t happen. I never
imagined I would be running Match.com. Yet, every day I come to work and I know that what
I am doing is changing lives. The world really has changed – this is how people meet. I
get e-mails every day from people thanking us and saying they never would have met, married,
or had kids if it weren’t for Match. People ask me how I ended up being the biggest matchmaker
in the world. It has been lots of hard work. But most importantly it is because of the
advice from my mother, which I want to pass on to my two daughters, Maya and Talia, and
the girls impacted by JWI’s incredible programs.
Life is not always easy. Deal with things head on with integrity and conviction. Believe
in yourself. Always be true to yourself.