Anaheim, Calif. - Women need to know their appetite for risk and abandon the "myth" of a balanced life if they're to gain equality in Silicon Valley's executive suites, a former female chief executive told an audience at the Design Automation Conference here.

"The only way the world will be sane is when men and women hold equal power," said Penny Herscher, the chief executive officer of Simplex Solutions Inc. before it was acquired last year by Cadence Design Systems Inc. "Until we have equality, we will still have the brutality of war."

Herscher, who is now vice president and chief marketing officer at Cadence (San Jose, Calif.), laid out four tenets for success: build a diverse team and trust it, manage other people's perceptions of yourself, find a mentor who will speak truthfully and realize that there's no balance in life.

"If you want to move up through the power chain in technology, it is almost impossible to do it in a balanced way," Herscher told a group of largely female listeners. "I don't do anything except work and hang with my kids in the evening."

Herscher, who speaks often on such topics, said her first six months as chief executive at Simplex were "just terrible. I just didn't know what to do." Richard Newton, an engineering professor at the University of California at Berkeley, came to her office one day, shut the door and closed the blinds ("because he knew I'd cry"), and told Herscher she was "screwing up."

"He said I was not taking charge. What you have to understand about a CEO is there's no one to tell you what to do," said Herscher. After 18 months as Simplex's CEO, Herscher said, she felt competent in the role. "After four years," she said, "I felt I was in the groove."

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