Had a Baby, Closed the Deal

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Talk about being a working mom: Kimberly Roberts Stepp signed the biggest deal of her career a few months ago, only 40 hours after giving birth by Cesarean section.

While pregnant last summer, the Charles Dunn Co. senior managing director in Century City was about to sign a huge deal for a property listing she’d been chasing since 2006. So she planned the final meeting for a couple of weeks before her due date.

But only days before the meeting, Roberts Stepp, 39, was forced to have an emergency surgery to give birth to her daughter, who was healthy. Two mornings later – the day of the meeting – Roberts Stepp’s nurses encouraged her to take a walk around the hospital.

But she called her business partner, had him pick her up and they snuck over to the meeting, only a few blocks away.

“I walked a few steps to the meeting and that was my walk,” she said. “I didn’t want them to think I’d had a baby and couldn’t handle the project.”

So she walked into the meeting, with her hospital bracelet hidden under her sleeve, closed the deal and returned to the hospital, thrilled.

“Obviously my baby comes first,” she said. “But the baby was alone for an hour and a half with the nurse and my husband, and then I got the deal.”

Digesting Down Under

Ficus trees with lights and ornaments, trips to the beach, Boxing Day barbecues – Christmas in Australia might be just like Christmas in Los Angeles. If it weren’t for the food.

That’s what Cathy Browne, general manager of plastic bag manufacturer Crown Poly in Huntington Park, has found in the years since marrying her husband, Paul, a native Aussie.

Browne, 45, went to Australia to visit her in-laws over the holidays and said Australia’s warm Christmas weather – it’s summer in the Southern Hemisphere – is nice, but it makes it hard to stomach one particular element of Australian tradition.

“There are a lot of English traditions, including Christmas pudding,” Browne said.

What is Christmas pudding, precisely? It’s a moist, dense cake filled with raisins, and possibly prunes and dates. Browne isn’t quite sure. But whatever’s inside, it’s certainly not a summer food.

“It’s very dark and very intense, and then they cover it in custard, which is like a runny vanilla pudding. It’s the last thing you want to eat in the heat,” she said.

Staff reporters Jacquelyn Ryan and James Rufus Koren contributed to this column. Page 3 is compiled by Editor Charles Crumpley. He can be reached at [email protected].

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