“My husband has enabled me to have the career that I have,” Kimberly Petillo-Décossard said on this week’s Drinks with The Deal podcast. “My husband has his master’s in aeronautical engineering, he has his M.B.A. from Wharton. He was an engineer turned developer turned banker.”

But in 2019, when the couple was commuting in and out of New York every day and their three children were quite young, “We decided that both of us working banker and lawyer hours, not seeing our children for days at a time when they were getting to an age where they noticed that mom and dad weren’t around, wasn’t sustainable,” said Petillo-Décossard, the global co-head of M&A at White & Case LLP.

“I was at a point in my career where I was really taking off. He was at a point in his career where he was doing really well but wasn’t really satisfied and had been thinking about making a move to something else. We made the tough decision for him to step away from work and to stay home.”

That choice helped Petillo-Décossard navigate the pandemic and her move to White & Case from Cahill Gordon & Reindel LLP in 2023, which she also discussed on the podcast. “The support network that I have built around me is absolutely critical to my success,” she said. “My husband is the center of that, holding everything up around me. I am incredibly grateful for his support, which has enabled me to soar.”

Listen to the podcast with Kimberly Petillo-Décossard below:

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