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When Divya and I had our son Ayaan in 2018 in India, Divya decided to quit her job so that she could spend time with him in his early formative years, beyond the standard maternity leave given to mothers. We were privileged enough to not have to think about the financial impact, which made it easier for her to make this decision. 

As a father, I will be forever grateful to Divya for making that choice. As her husband, I was very worried about how she would reenter the job market once she was ready. 

In 2019, I was asked to lead global operations for Udacity, a change from my then-role as the managing director for Udacity in India. This was a great role for me but would require us to move to the US. Divya, a true life partner, immediately told me that I should take the new role, while she would focus on getting us settled and looking after Ayaan during the transition. This enabled us to relocate to the US in late 2019. 

In 2020, COVID hit and Divya took an even greater role of managing the home while I was working there as well. The days for me got busier — the edtech world was getting headwinds from the pandemic as more people turned to online learning. Our son was growing up fast and Divya kept on holding fort. When Divya decided to go back to work, I was firsthand witness to the challenges that she faced. 

During my career I have had the privilege of working with very impressive women. The conversations that I have had with them about their struggles in leaving work for their maternity break and coming back to work afterwards have been deeply troubling. I have often heard that when a mom returns she is expected to either show up in exactly the same way she showed up before she was a mom — or it is assumed that she will not show up the way she did before she was a mom. While in the former situation it is ignored that the mom also now has children to take care of, the latter situation denies her equal opportunities at work. Both of these biases make it difficult for moms to be their authentic selves in the workplace. 

As a leader, when I reflect on such stories, I can’t help but think about how much we could scale our teams with this incredibly capable pool of talent. But it will require us to make it easier for expectant moms to prepare for their maternity breaks and for moms to return to work afterwards. They were all great partners at work before they took a break to raise a child. And that does not change just because they took time off. Here are some questions we can think about: 

• What are the practices to help more women stay in the workforce? 
• Are managers trained in hiring and supporting young adults as they begin to consider and embark on the parenthood journey?
• When parents-to-be in the organization tell their managers that they are having a baby, is it an easy and celebratory conversation?
• Are there part time options for returning moms to ease their reentry?
• Does the company have specific roles that are structured in a way that’s attractive to returning moms?
• Can we normalize that moms returning to the workforce also have to take care of their children?

These are some of the questions we’re thinking about at Liftery. If you’d like to help out, or if you’d like to share your own story, we’d love to hear from you.

 

As a man, it never occurred to me to plan my job changes to coincide with the births of my kids. Two months after starting Eightfold, I learned that my wife was pregnant with our second child. While she suffered through nine miserable months of pregnancy (it was a particularly difficult one), I continued with my life. While she worried about things like iron deficiency anemia, gestational diabetes, depression and anxiety, fetal problems, high blood pressure, infections, hyperemesis gravidarum, and nausea, I was busy working and building Eightfold. As I reflected on the last few years, it became very apparent to me that there is a massive imbalance in our society — one that is preventing women from achieving true equality. Women are the primary caregivers and are expected to both take care of family and manage their careers at the same time.

Providing a few months of maternity leave is not enough. And neither is saying that paternity leave should be the same as maternity leave. What women endure through pregnancy, childbirth and nursing is just not the same as what their male partners do. And societal expectations of primary caregiving are not the same. How often have you heard of “soccer mom” (15M results on Google) vs “soccer dad” (just 1.2M results)?

Our commitment can’t be limited to maternity leave and some returnship related services. We need to do much more so that women in every stage of motherhood can thrive in their careers. So we couldn’t be more proud to introduce Liftery — a platform providing holistic support across all stages to enable moms to rise higher in their careers. Stay tuned!

 

 

This Mother’s Day, I am grateful for the gift of motherhood. I feel blessed by the inordinate support I’ve had that allows me to pursue both a thriving career and deeply meaningful family goals. My mother did the unimaginable for her — flying solo from India to the US to help with my first-born when I was a year into my MBA at Stanford. Dev, my husband, booked a room near the offsite location of my Touchy Feely class and brought my daughter Ashna over for nursing breaks. After my second daughter was born, time off from my career wasn’t a choice, both because of financial reasons as well as personal drive. Dev has often been more than the 50-50 parent.

The stats show that this is an exception, not the norm. In India, there is 42% female enrollment in colleges, 32% in entry level jobs, and less than 1% at senior CXO levels. In the US, women increasingly outpace men in college graduation but at the top we still see mostly men. ~15% of CEOs in Fortune 500 companies are women. While in society, women are not the minority, in our corporate world, they are. Even in the 21^st century, becoming pregnant or taking time off can end a woman’s career — even just a year without employment can result in 39% lower pay. And a woman with a flourishing career and great potential has to start all over again once she takes a break of 2-3 years.

This Mother’s Day, as I define the pillars of the impact I want to make over the next decade(s), one goal is to build a transformative, high-growth company serving creators in the web3 world – more on that over the next few months. The other is to make it my life’s work to partner with the ecosystem to enable ten million moms all over the globe to climb higher in their careers. Once we achieve that, we’ll get to the next ten million, and then the next. 

This is not a women’s problem. It impacts society & economies at large. I am thrilled to join forces with Ashutosh Garg, CEO & Co-founder, Eightfold.ai, and the father of two adorable boys, in this social impact mission. Plus, founding team members, Cindy, Deepika, Emily, Ishan and Parul. 

One of the leaders I admire, Carolyn Everson, taught me to define a big bold vision and share it. It’s 42% more likely to happen if you write it down. The odds are even higher when you share it. This Mother’s Day, I’m committing to enabling ten million moms across the globe to climb higher in their careers. More to come on this over the weeks. 

 

 

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