This is a highlights miniseries drawing together the wisdom and experiences of past guests. We've picked a few of the most inspirational, powerful, and hilarious moments that feature these women's stories and how they can translate to our own lives.
In previous episodes we’ve explored the nature of resilience, self-care, and fighting prejudice. Today we’re delving into the ever-elusive notion of work-life balance.
Responsibilities at home -- child care and housework -- have always fallen more heavily on women than on men, and that remains true even when both partners work outside the home. Juggling domestic and professional life has always been hard, but COVID-19 has made that balance impossible. Today, working women find themselves in surreal, unprecedented situations: they’re working from home and all means of outsourced care -- schools, nannies, grandparents, and camps -- are gone. Even in two-parent households, mothers are disproportionately finding themselves holding the bag to homeschool, make lunches, break up arguments between siblings, and partake in playtime in between their own work and Zoom meetings.
While the guests featured in today’s episode were recorded pre-COVID, there is still so much richness to be found in their own perspectives and experiences as working moms, particularly now.
We’ll hear from women who have planned their home lives around their careers, and those who found it all happening at once and learned to adjust. These guests prove that, even in the best of times, there really is no ‘one’ or ‘right’ way to manage family life. And, with a global pandemic raging, sometimes the best one can do is just get through the day.
Featuring:
- Dr. Odette Harris, MD MPH, professor of neurosurgery at Stanford -- America’s first black female tenured neurosurgery professor ever.
- Mariam Naficy, Founder and CEO of Minted, an online stationery store that solicits designs from artists all over the world and one of the biggest crowdsourcing platforms on the Internet.
- Karla Gallardo, Co-Founder and CEO of of clothing and lifestyle brand, Cuyana.
- Ginger More, pioneering venture capitalist and former General Partner at Oak Investment Partners.
- Julia Collins, Founder and CEO of Planet FWD, a company helping to reverse climate change by making craveable snacks from regenerative ingredients.
- Amy DuRoss, Co-Founder and CEO of Vineti, a company that’s defining a whole new software category for precision medicine therapy management by enabling vein to vein supply chain documentation and analytics for these breakthrough new therapies.
Want more WoVen? Check out all our episodes here and wherever you get your podcasts.
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
You're listening to Woven, a podcast from Canaan. WoVen stands for Women Who Venture, and represents a platform, a community and really a celebration of venturesome and adventurous women in healthcare, tech and business.
This is a highlights miniseries drawing together the wisdom and experiences of past guests. We've picked a few of the most inspirational, powerful, and hilarious moments that feature these women's stories and how they can translate to our own lives.
In previous episodes we’ve explored the nature of resilience, self-care, and fighting prejudice. Today we’re delving into the ever-elusive notion of work-life balance.
Responsibilities at home -- child care and housework -- have always fallen more heavily on women than on men, and that remains true even when both partners work outside the home. Juggling domestic and professional life has always been hard, but COVID-19 has made that balance impossible. Today, working women find themselves in surreal, unprecedented situations: they’re working from home and all means of outsourced care -- schools, nannies, grandparents, and camps -- are gone. Even in two-parent households, mothers are disproportionately finding themselves holding the bag to homeschool, make lunches, break up arguments between siblings, and partake in playtime in between their own work and Zoom meetings.
While the guests featured in today’s episode were recorded pre-COVID, there is still so much richness to be found in their own perspectives and experiences as working moms, particularly now.
We’ll hear from women who have planned their home lives around their careers, and those who found it all happening at once and learned to adjust. These guests prove that, even in the best of times, there really is no ‘one’ or ‘right’ way to manage family life. And, with a global pandemic raging, sometimes the best one can do is just get through the day.
First, we go to Professor of Neurosurgery at Stanford, Dr. Odette Harris.
ODETTE HARRIS:
Did you time getting married and starting your family with your training path and career?
Yes, and no. We timed getting married to coincide with having two weeks off, because back then you would only get one week off. We actually asked permission two years in advance to get like two weeks off sequentially. So, so yes, we timed that. And then we didn't have kids for like, maybe six years into our marriage, because of the demands and really wanting to be focused, for sure. And I was young enough that that was possible. And, and it was just a crazy time for both of us in terms of our own individual career aspirations. It just made more sense. I don't regret it one bit because again, I had the luxury of time. I think one of the difficulties with our field is that a lot of women don't have the luxury of time, because we start later. And it's seven years. Yeah. And then if you want to do a fellowship, and if you want to find the right person and all the rest of it, it becomes complicated for sure. So a lot of women will have children during residency. I was fortunate that what I wanted and what biology dictated aligned, yeah.
And how do you make it work? Now any strategies for sort of balancing work and family and...
I don't know if it works for everyone, but for me, the strategy is being really open to outsourcing. I think a lot of people feel they have to do everything themselves. And I don't. But again, that recommendation comes with being privileged in the sense that, you know, I have a great job, and you know, I have the resources that go with that. And I have a husband who works and so I don't give the advice flippantly like, I don't think it's necessarily applicable to all women at all stages of life. But if you are in the position to be able to outsource it's really what our generation before us called, it takes a village. Right? So having people help you...
It used to be in-laws or your parents or, or the community, exactly. I mean, it sounds like it's in some ways, pick that which is most important to you in terms of quality time with your family. Yeah, and outsource whatever else you can.
When they were younger, I didn't find it was ultra important to do certain things until I would outsource that and then focus on being there for things that were a value to me that I thought I could add value to them. And as they get older, that changes as well, but I can't do it all. I absolutely can't do it all. Again, if you have a village I think it works. I can't imagine a female neurosurgeon having children doing it on their own. At the same time, I can't imagine a female CEO doing it on their own or a male CEO doing it on his own.
And so my advice is being humble enough to accept that you need help, and getting that help either from family from friends, and if you're able to afford it to outsource that way. And also, I think one other piece of advice that someone gave me, is that you can't do it all all the time either. And so rotate what you do and focus on what you find important. And then lastly, just because you can have children doesn't mean you should, meaning not my decision to have children, but the number of children that you have, you should weigh what you're able to provide for them. And I thought that was at the time it was advice that I found unwelcome. In retrospect it was one of the most powerful pieces of advice, because when you look at children and why you have children, what you're going to impart to them for their own success and for the next generation beyond you, you need time, you need to be there and so you have to make the decision as to what that means. Is it two kids? Is it four kids? Is it five kids, you know, but don't just have children and then figure it out,
Marshal your time and marshal your energy?
Exactly, exactly.
***
NINA:
Quality time at home is a continuous consideration for our guests. Dr. Harris suggests deep deliberation of your own resources before starting or extending a family, and our next speaker takes that idea to the nitty gritty of daily life. Founder and CEO of Minted, Mariam Naficy, shares her decision to prioritize certain moments, and define those special moments early on.
***
MARIAM NAFICY:
I'm a little bit like in between two generations, in some ways, mentally, I would say on the one hand, I kind of feel that your success is critical to being able to control your career. So business success, like if you're going to start it, I think success delivering the results is really the best way to basically get everything that you want to have happen. The path lies through delivering results, and there's no substitute unfortunately for that,
On the other hand, I've also said to myself, if there are boundaries to be made, I don't want to miss any critical moments of my kids lives. So I do draw the boundary around what those moments are. And you know, I don't want to miss the cross country meets and I don't want to miss back to school nights, you know, or like a special school show. I won't miss those things. I think it'd be harder if I were in a job that required a tonne of travel. But I think that would be one consideration as you're thinking about what to start. You could design it cleverly. You can design it such that often is near your home, if you're the one who's starting it. You can design it such that you're not traveling. And you can compartmentalize and carve out moments that you have to preserve. So it's a big juggling act. But like when the kids are napping, I do work on the weekends. For example, when the kids were asleep, I do more work, for example, everything that I can afford to outsource in terms of things that take me away from my kids that are things I outsource. And that's because I had to do the first company to gain the means to be able to do that with the second company with children. So I think that's the sort of lead up that's really been helpful to me. Yeah. But literally, it just became work and family and everything else, right had to go by the wayside for me. Thank you for sharing that.
I don't believe you can actually, as an entrepreneur, have it all quote, unquote, like have the perfect amount of time you want with your kids and be able to spend the perfect amount of time with the company, and the reality is if you embark on it, you are going to feel inadequate at all times on both sides, always, you know. If you're going to do it, I've really benefited from having a really great support network.
So the first thing I would say is if you're a woman, before children, take as much risk as quickly as you possibly can, because if you can set yourself up in a way that you can have an early win. And this is why I think what young women should actually take more risk than men actually, because they have a shorter runway before the childbearing years right emerge. And nobody really wants to talk about that. I think it business school like well, we didn't talk about business school.
We didn't either, when I was there. I wish we had.
Yeah, but if you can raise out of the gates and get something done, what happens is you have more financial means to then set yourself up for having a career with children because you can afford to pay perhaps for some childcare, you might have better negotiating leverage with the next round of funders for your next thing. And my husband did not travel for his job and was very supportive, which is another critical component, like probably the most critical component. And then my parents moved from Washington, DC to Berkeley. And that helped me create minted, like all that support network.
***
NINA:
Spouses, parents, nannies…. Even the most accomplished and powerful women need help sometimes, whether it’s to give you an extra hour in bed, or to provide the space for you to launch your company. Karla Gallardo, co-founder and CEO of Cuyana, talks about her support network, and how the consistency of having these key people around affords her time with her son.
***
KARLA GALLARDO:
I married a man that really, truly, authentically supports me and then pushes me outside of my comfort zone to, to focus on work, and not feel guilty at home. And so, by that, I mean that, you know, never made me feel guilty for, you know, traveling for too long, and he's helped me arrange the support system I need at home to be able to focus at work, you know, we need care and that's something that if you don't have care at home, you can't do this job and be being okay with that and finding the person that I feel comfortable with, to take care of my son. That's another very important piece. And I think that if I didn't feel confident or comfortable with our nanny, my life would be miserable. And so that's a second very important person in my life.
And this third aspect and you know, many have heard this from anyone but it really matters. It's just building separation and specific moments in time and I know for me, it's very pure, better, it's very little about the time I can spend with my son during the week, but I spent a really good chunk in the weekend with him and we have our routines, the same routine every day, where if I'm not traveling, we spend an hour and a half together doing the same thing every day. And so it really is wonderful, you know, he wakes up we we make breakfast with him and my husband, we read we play, we do books, and then I head up to work and so that really makes the difference because I'm fresh. And awake and I can focus on him only and then most evenings it's hard for me to get back on time before like 10 minutes before his bedtime I always try to make sure I get there before he goes to bed but at night you know it's it's very little time but the weekends work and so just being able to separate that and just feeling that there's our routine has really helped me because then I don't feel like I'm giving him kind of a choppy experience through life.
***
NINA:
Ginger More is another guest who found a mixture of routine and community to be the key when she returned to work a decade after starting a family. A pioneering venture capitalist, and former General Partner at Oak Investment Partners, More found enviable support not only from her family but also from her employers. After, you’ll hear from Founder and CEO of Planet Forward, Julia Collins, who reflects on her own management style and meeting her employees’ needs.
***
GINGER MORE
I got married at 20. I had Bob at 21. And I had Donna 18 months later, and my husband was in the military. We were stationed in Nevada, I thought it was terrible at the time, it was a blessing because there was nothing else to do in Nevada except bring up the kids.
When I went back to REITs I made a deal that I would come in at 730 in the morning, and I would leave at 330 in the afternoon. They had a driver, if I could not leave because something was going on... we were meeting with people or whatever... they drove my children to my mother's house. I was very lucky with that, and very lucky that, you know, Ed & Stu are family people and you know, at one point, my daughter was in the hospital, and they said, go to the hospital, you're not doing anything here, you know, sort of things so they were very good people to work for.
So it takes a village or an infrastructure and some kindred souls in your partnership.
And we went away almost every weekend, we skied in the winter and we had a place up in Vermont. And that's one of the things I would say particularly when you have children if you can get away without working on the weekend and Ed & Stu did not work on the weekend. We took the weekend and spent it with our kids was really important to do that.
***
JULIA COLLINS:
From a leadership perspective, if I could go back and critique myself I would say that there are probably moments in my career when I could have created more space, for people that were at very different points in their lives. Sometimes that means becoming a parent, it might mean caring for someone in your family who's sick , it might mean going through a separation or a divorce. There's so many times in our lives where we need extra space and extra flexibility from our companies to support us, and I hope that going forward with this new awareness, I can be an even better leader, an even better boss, by giving space and permission to people, to essentially just be people.
As a woman I was always pretty ambivalent about the idea of being married ever, or becoming a parent. I want to share that because I think there's sometimes these tropes, these archetypes that tell us that if you are this, you should want that. And if I could do anything to free people up from that thinking I want to be a part of that.
The second thing for me is I became a mom at 38 years old, so that's another beautiful thing, there's a myth that if you haven't got everything figured out by the time you're 32 then just, you know, good luck to you. And I think that's another myth that we need to debunk.
I have so enjoyed becoming a mom, for me it is the most incredible thing that has happened to me. And at the same time, I do not think a woman is the measure of her reproductive choices in any shape or form. So the only thing that I want to share is, we all have the power to live the lives that we choose to live, and the more that we can free ourselves up from other people's expectations of what that looks like, the better.
***
NINA:
Our final guest also looks at society’s predicted path for women. Amy DuRoss, Co-founder and CEO of Vineti shares her thoughts about the many ways to start a family. She encourages planning ahead, honors single parenting and egg-freezing, and then talks about the parallels between starting a family and starting a company.
***
AMY DUROSS
I myself always knew I wanted to have the opportunity to have children and and really felt that I would do that with her without a partner. So that was fundamental, I think know yourself early. I didn't happen to meet my partner till my latter 30s. And so as a result, if we were going to have children at all and or more than one children, we were gonna have to get on it. And so we were really fortunate to have three children very close together. And, you know, in retrospect, it was a blessing that I really couldn't have imagined another way of doing you know, I think I personally felt like I wasn't emotionally ready earlier in my 30s. And in part now looking back on it, it's because I hadn't met the right partner, although again, in a very sort of fiercely independent mode, I thought I will have a child no matter what, and I have great respect for women who do but for me my own emotional kind of journey. When I met my partner, I really think that this was someone I wanted to do this in partnership with.
As far as the career I think if I really had to be honest about it, I don't think it's a great idea to have a child and a company at the same time. That being said, there were some really interesting parallels that again, in retrospect, I can see with more clarity, you know, I think the level of forgiveness around particularly recouping strength after giving birth to a baby and really spending time getting to know that baby and each baby being very individual and and or birthing a company that has very individual attributes, there's actually a lot of parallel kind of learning going on. I think if you were starting out if I were starting out, and I had the option to freeze my eggs and really make that a very planned effort, I would absolutely do that as an insurance policy. Again, assuming I knew I wanted to have children, and then be able to slot that in potentially with more precision. I think that makes a lot of sense. Because it's not just your career. It's your emotional self and all your other family dynamics, all these shifts and partnership, right. And so so many of these things we can't control. We don't know what opportunities are going to present themselves. We don't know the people we're going to rely on most in our lives as we grow into them. So being able to take some of that uncertainty off the table would have saved an enormous amount of concern and worry on my part. So I would absolutely encourage people if they're interested in having that option to pursue it.
***
VOICE OVER:
Women have always shouldered more child care and housework, and the Covid-19 pandemic has put these gender inequities “on steroids,” as the economist Claudia Goldin recently told the New York Times. To all the working moms out there, we hope this episode brings some comfort, light, and even a sense of sisterhood … there is no “right way” to juggle the work and home demands in our lives. Know you’re not alone. Remember it’s always OK to ask for help. And, take peace in knowing you’re doing the best you can.
Were you inspired by these women? Be sure to listen to the full interviews on any podcast app and find out more at canaan.com/woven