And if you could just tell us why you chose to dive into this work as a starting point, that would be awesome.

Yeah, absolutely.

So I, first and foremost, I have two toddlers.

I have a three-year-old son and a two-year-old daughter.

So life is full toddler chaos all the time, every day.

It's exhausting and wonderful.

And we live in the Netherlands.

So what do you think about the external versus the internal pressure that as women, we tend to put on ourselves around being working mothers?

So talk to me about that one.

Yeah, so the future of working motherhood, that really looked at globally how women are supported in the workplace, working moms are supported in the workplace, especially around that maternity leave and return to work experience, but more so the sustainability, the long-term effects of working motherhood.

And we found that women, largely the single greatest request that would improve the sustainability of working motherhood is flexible work design.

So being able to get flexibility without consequence either.

And we found that managers have the single greatest impact on if you have a positive or negative experience in your return to work, which is huge because managers don't get any training.

There's no formal training.

If you have a woman on your team going on maternity leave.

I'm going to break this into two

Like, we've had more and more guests coming on that are doing this kind of work, and would love to hear a little bit about the work that, well, how you started your business, right? And then I know that you all have recently launched new research, and I would love to hear kind of like some of your findings and, you know, what you're hoping to do moving forward.

Yeah, absolutely.

Great questions.

So, I originally started my business as maternity leave coaching, right? And, like, workshops for corporations on how to better support moms and maternity leave.

And that's how I started it, but I felt that it was never fixing the, the higher up problem, right? There was always gonna be more moms who were unsupported, more businesses who were fucking it up and not doing it right.

And so I was like, "Okay, how do we get to the original point of issue?" And so we pivoted last fall into, like, a broader systemic redesign of the business, and that meant, like, research and reports so that we had real data behind what the issues were so that we could pinpoint the gaps better, and shifting the narrative of how working moms are perceived and valued by society.

Because if working moms are seen for strong, capable, ambitious leaders, it makes sense to provide support for them, right? It makes sense to say, "Of course, we will support you in maternity leave return," or "Of course, we'll, you know, have better equitable pay," right? If you're seen as equal and more...

... thing to take on.

[laughs]

... developed advanced skills in prioritization, boundary setting, and decision-making with real-world consequences, and operated with limited resources, shifting requirements, unclear communication, and no sick days while keeping the system running.

Talk about that and how attitudes may or may not be changing in that respect.

Yeah, I think it's definitely a cultural commentary that's going on and in society that doesn't frame motherhood as a major life transition and developmental experience, right? We see it portrayed in media, TV shows, movies, that it's something individual, the mom goes through, and then just clocks back into work.

But in any other developmental major experience that you go through, there's-- your identity shifts.

You develop new skills, new strengths, and that's exactly what motherhood is.

And so I think the more we talk about what we know as mothers to be true about how much stronger and more capable we are, the more we talk about that out loud, the more we can all bring that into the workplace and easily translate the skills we're using every day and developing every day into the workplace.