One Couple’s Perspective

Discussions about dual-career couples tend to focus on challenges and conflicts. But couples who are juggling two ambitious careers and family life also enjoy advantages—ones that go beyond having two incomes. Tamar Dane Dor-Ner and Dan Krockmalnic illustrate this mix. Dor-Ner has spent 20 years at the consulting firm Bain, where she is a managing partner and the head of its Boston office. Since the two married, in 2009, Krockmalnic, a lawyer, has worked for two large law firms, as an assistant attorney general for Massachusetts, and, starting in 2017, as general counsel for the Boston Globe. The couple—she is 42, he is 39—have two boys, ages eight and six. They spoke with HBR about the professional upsides of being a dual-career couple. Edited excerpts follow.