it right?

One of the best things that I heard one of the individuals that we stepped in for say is that Having somebody come in for their role not only made them feel like they were valued to their company, but their work was as well.

They're like, my role and the contributions that I have to the company were too important to leave to chance or leave to be dispersed amongst my coworkers and then me feel burdened.

They talk about the loyalty that they feel and the mountains that they will move for their employer because unfortunately they recognize that That isn't the experience of many and how hard it can be to find an employer that does truly value a working parent and know what they need to feel supported.

Or again, just any individuals we talked about often bring your full self to work.

Well, that can feel like a double edged sword of if I do share that, like I've got an aging parent that I need flexibility and support around, well, that'll eventually be used against me.

So Feeling that psychological safety is so powerful to a lot of employees today because it's unfortunately still too rare.

What makes somebody a really strong lead partner?

We ended up

navigating infertility and eventually IVF to have my daughter.

And two days after finding out that I was finally pregnant, I got laid off.

And that was a moment in my life where I felt like it was possible that it was coming, what my company was facing.

Of course, I was on the leadership team.

I knew what financial crunches we were navigating and I remember saying to my husband when we were waiting for the test results to find out whether our embryo transfer had worked or not was would you rather the test results are negative but I get to keep my job or they're positive but I don't have a job tomorrow and I'm a primary breadwinner of my family so it wasn't a small thing to lose my job but I have a wonderful husband and he did not hesitate to say lose your job let's have a baby so that is what ended up happening.

But then, like I said, because I'm a primary breadwinner, I couldn't take that much time away.

So how did all of these different pieces affect how you shaped your business?

Yeah.

So as much as I was, uh, upset about what happened to me on a personal side of it, what led to the idea of Mothercover was when I was up at night now rocking a newborn, my wheels were spinning about why this is still seen as such a disruption to companies.

'Cause, uh, I had shared my, my story publicly and heard from hundreds of other women and men, uh, of what they had experienced when they entered, uh, a parenthood.

And I put back on my hat a- as a former executive, and even on my own teams when somebody would come and share that they're pregnant, hopefully you're saying congratulations, but in the back of your mind you're immediately going, "Oh, no.

What does this mean for who's going to cover?" Or, "This is extra work on my plate 'cause now I've gotta figure out what's happening." Or maybe you're just finally in a good spot with your team and you've got it humming the way that you want it, and now this is a, as a, is a disruption.

And the thought is I'm not gonna be able to solve for the extreme cases of discrimination, but for those, 'cause I don't believe most companies have ill intent.

They don't wake up thinking, "I don't want any parents or women or anything in my, my company," and I don't believe that anything should interrupt, uh, work.

Mm-hmm