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Most of us have been trained to think “having it all” is a fantasy for women, or a setup for guilt and burnout. Kelly Hopping disagrees.
Kelly is the Chief Marketing Officer at 6sense, a five-time CMO, an author, and a mother of three teenagers. Growing up, she never believed she had to choose between an ambitious career and a full life at home. That belief wasn’t something she arrived at after years of trial and error - it’s how she was raised, and it’s shaped every major decision she’s made since.
Her story offers a different lens on an old debate: not whether you can have it all, but whether you’re willing to define it, ask for it, and create the support system that makes it all possible.
Can Women Really Have it All?
Kelly’s counterintuitive belief is simple: she thinks you genuinely can have it all. She was never told otherwise. Her mother worked, her father worked, and there was never a suggestion that she’d need to pick a lane.
Where people get stuck, she says, isn’t in wanting too much - it’s in trying to keep career and home in separate boxes.
“I think if we try to force this sort of separation between our work and our life... I think that’s where the challenge exists.”
Instead of walling off “work time” from “mom time,” Kelly blends them - sometimes catching up on emails during a kid’s practice, taking a call during a timeout, or arranging work travel so she remains present for her kids’ key life moments.
The goal isn’t balance in equal daily portions; it’s integration across a season, with her husband tagging in when work is heavy and vice versa when home needs more.
Why Defining Your “All” is the Missing Key
If you ask Kelly what “having it all” means, she turns the question back: how are you defining success, and where did that definition come from?
For her, the answer is concrete: she doesn’t miss pivotal moments with her kids - games, performances, award ceremonies - even if it means red-eye flights home or occasionally checking Slack from the sidelines. Her upbringing played a major role in these views. The measure of success isn’t hours logged at home; it’s whether her presence is really felt by her kids.
“I think success is if the kids can feel like you were as present as you would have been if you stayed home... hopefully that’s a quality thing. Hopefully that’s a presence thing.”
This clarity has paid off in unscripted ways: her kids, when she asked if they wished she didn’t work, said they didn’t know what would even be different.
The Promotion She Said No to Twice
Clarity about her boundaries didn’t mean playing small, but even Kelly needed a push earlier in her career to take on bigger roles when her kids were younger.
Early in her career at Rackspace, a new CMO tried to promote Kelly into a much bigger role running the full marketing engine. Kelly said no, twice. She was home by 5:30 every night for her three young kids, made good money, and didn’t want the “extra headaches.”
The third time, her boss didn’t ask. She just promoted her - and then made a promise:
“I will protect your boundaries. I know what your non-negotiables are... but I need you in this role.”
That one conversation reset what Kelly thought was possible. Within a few years she was a VP, then a CMO - a title she’s now held five times - without ever abandoning the boundaries that mattered to her. Mentors like this are incredibly important in paving the way. For Kelly, this boss showed what was possible when she set firm boundaries and worked for someone who respected them.
Getting Herself Fired, On Purpose
Not every chapter was smooth. Kelly took a role reporting directly to a founder for the first time, lured by a bigger title and salary, and ignored the red flags from the interview process. It was, in her words, torture. She fundamentally disagreed with the marketing direction and realized the friction wasn’t fixable, it was just how the founder was wired.
So she did something unconventional: she asked to be fired.
He eventually agreed, and the exit package bought her the freedom to take a deliberate six-month sabbatical, something she’d never done in her career. She came back from the sabbatical with a different focus, better patience as a leader, and more clarity about what she actually wanted next.
Building the System That Makes It Work
Kelly is candid that none of this works without the right support system. Early on, daycare came with guilt she had to work through. Later, an irrational fear of unsupervised middle-schoolers nearly convinced her to quit and become a stay-at-home mom - until her husband decided to change his career instead, and the whole calculation changed.
Today the family runs on a color-coded shared calendar. “Busy” means Kelly owns it, “free” means her husband or a carpool does. And she has a support network that flexes as much as her kids’ schedules do. More recently, when Kelly had a family crisis and had to place her full attention there, Kelly’s own boss stepped in and covered two full days of customer meetings without even being asked.
“Those moments make you feel really good. You’re like, okay, I’m working with stellar people who care about humans.”
Having It All (Without Asking Permission)
If there’s a thread underneath all of Kelly’s stories, it’s that she rarely waits for permission - she decides what she wants and asks for it, assuming a solution exists. She traces that instinct partly to her father, who “just sort of believes that rules don’t apply to him,” and admits she’s inherited it, negotiating flexible start dates and part-time ramp-ups into new jobs without hesitation.
Her advice for anyone chasing their own version of “having it all” starts with the question underneath the question:
“What would you build or do if no one was watching?”
It’s a powerful invitation to imagine what’s possible. It’s also refreshing to hear from someone like Kelly, who at an early age assumed that a life of abundance and “all” was possible, and has worked hard to make that happen for herself, her family, and the many women who look up to her and her success.
Kelly’s Tips:
Integrate, don’t separate: Stop trying to build a wall between work and home. Let the two blend across the day and the season, and see how it feels to be more intentional about mixing them.
Ask for what you want, without waiting for permission: Whether it’s a promotion, a flexible start date, or finding a creative way to make something seemingly impossible work - define it, assume there’s a solution, and see what happens when you ask for it.
Define success in your own terms - then hold the line: Decide what you will never miss, and build everything else around protecting it. Clarity about your non-negotiables makes every other decision easier.
