Purpose: This paper aims to understand women's careers better in order to help organizations make changes to increase female retention. Two specific questions are addressed: Are women adopting a protean career orientation by becoming career self-agents?; and Are women's career decisions guided by the kaleidoscope values of challenge, balance, and authenticity? Results are used to discuss changes that organizations can make to better attract and retain female talent. Design/methodology/approach: Open-ended semi-structured interviews were conducted by telephone with 25 women graduates of a top ranked international business school located in the USA who had voluntarily left the workforce at some time in their career and had since returned to work. Findings: Results show that 17 of the women interviewed followed a protean career orientation when they returned to the workforce, finding part-time or reduced-hours positions or completely changing careers. Of the women, five returned to work following a traditional career orientation and three chose to return to a job rather than reinitiating their careers. The vast majority of the women who adopted a protean career were driven to do so in order to satisfy their need for balance in their lives. Overall, eight of the women expressed a need for authenticity in their careers and only two mentioned a desire for challenge. Many of them felt they had already satisfied their need for challenge earlier in their career, as the KCM suggests. Practical implications: As with protean careers, protean organizations adapt to evolving circumstances. Companies that recognize and respond to the need to reshape how work gets done and how careers are built will achieve a competitive advantage by attracting and retaining valuable female talent. Organizations should shift their focus from an emphasis on face time to an emphasis on results, giving employees more control over how, when, and where they work. They also need to move away from the traditional career model that emphasizes full-time, continuous employment and instead embrace arc-of-the-career flexibility that allows women to adopt a protean orientation, managing their own careers in order to align them with their personal values. Originality/value: The paper helps to explain the motives behind professional women' career moves and makes suggestions on how organizations can better attract and retain female talent. (Contains 1 table.)