WHAT WAS YOUR PRIMARY MOTIVATION FOR DECIDING TO RETURN AND CONTINUE TO GROW YOUR WORK?

Returning to work was never a question for me. My mom worked, my grandmothers worked, my great-grandmothers worked- I suppose it’s in my DNA. It was actually shocking to me when people asked if I planned to return to work after the baby was born. I remember thinking to myself, “I’ve been grinding for over a decade, earned a master’s degree barely a year ago and people think I’m going to stay home?” It almost felt insulting, as if my value in the workplace expired the moment Isabel entered the world. It felt very personal. The work I do has always been such a strong part of my identity, how I make sense of my place in the world and why I’m here, that the thought of putting it on pause or abandoning it all together was unfathomable.

Becoming a mom was motivation for growing in my career for both personal and professional reasons. It always presented itself as a win-win to me. Personally, I felt that I could provide more opportunities for my family if I continued to grow in my career, reaching roles with greater flexibility and a higher salary.

Since families and children are at the heart of our organization’s mission, I could suddenly empathize with the families we serve every day in a completely different way.  I made the leap from sympathy to true empathy- I could put myself in those families’ shoes. When I was pregnant at work and would go about my duties at our Stanford location, it was natural for the pregnant moms staying there to ask about my baby and how far along I was. It was absolutely heartbreaking to me knowing that I had a normal pregnancy and perfectly healthy baby and these moms did not. They were far from home, dealing with a scary prognosis, and so much uncertainty, yet just like me there were going through the normal emotions of excitement and curiosity about pregnancy and expectant motherhood.

Almost instinctively, I doubled down on my efforts to grow professionally because the impact my efforts have on families and mothers were tangible and meaningful. In a way, it was how I showed gratitude for my healthy child and for the talents and opportunities I had been given.

YOUR WORK WITH THE RONALD MCDONALD HOUSE CHARITIES BAY AREA SUPPORTS FAMILIES IN CRISIS.  HOW DID YOU MANAGE TO CREATE AND SHARE NEW WAYS FOR MOTHERS TO BENEFIT FROM YOUR REMARKABLE RESOURCES DURING THE PANDEMIC?

We continue to pivot and innovate during the COVID-19 era and adapt to the ever-changing circumstances while keeping families at the center of our efforts. Expectant moms with diagnosed fetal anomalies that need to travel to San Francisco for specialized services from their home communities are a population we’ve paid special attention to given the complications and hardships they face leading up to delivery with the additional requirements of quarantining, testing and visitor/partner restrictions. The hope was that even though partners/support people couldn’t be in the delivery rooms, having a place nearby where they could reunite as soon as the mother was discharged, would reduce anxiety and stress. Knowing that these moms needed to be near the hospital waiting to deliver for weeks and nearby caring for their newborns while they were inpatients for months after birth, we had to get creative and tap into our network of resources to find the best possible solutions to support them.

Thankfully, through an existing partnership with Apartment List and Veritas, we were able to secure a gratis master lease agreement for furnished apartments that we could use to house these expectant mamas and their partners/caregivers during their antepartum journey. It was the perfect solution for all the necessary COVID-19 precautions and protocols and provided a safe, temporary, “first home” for their little ones as the new parents received the proper care and training to transition back home.

Here’s a link to a feature story on the partnership that aired in April: RMHCBA Apartment Housing .

 

YOUR WORK REQUIRES AN INCREDIBLE ATTENTION TO DETAIL AND BOTTOMLESS ENERGY. THAT IS A BIG LIFT!  WHAT KEEPS YOU MOTIVATED?

There is an endless need, so there is always another gnarly goal to reach for. What keeps me motivated is seeing our impact and how even during a pandemic we’ve been able to grow programs. My team is full of amazing, passionate, people and they are a huge motivating factor. I am inspired by the families we support. I’ve been doing this work for over a decade and I still wake up every morning with a fire in my belly. RMHC Bay Area’s success and ability to make a greater impact each year keeps me motivated because I have the benefit of seeing how far we’ve come in the last ten years and know what we have the potential to be in ten more. I want to continue to lead those efforts and inspire others to join me.

COVID REQUIRED YOU TO QUICKLY REFOCUS ASPECTS OF YOU WORK AS VP DEVELOPMENT AND STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIPS. WHAT HAVE YOU LEARNED ABOUT YOURSELF? HOW CAN OTHER WORKING MOTHERS BENEFIT FROM THIS INSIGHT?

It’s interesting, I think my work as VP of Development & Strategic Partnerships in the COVID-19 era has really mirrored how I parent. There was no playbook for fundraising in 2020- I threw our plan out the window in March. I quickly adopted the mantra “this is our very best shot at meeting X goal,” rallied support and went for it. I embraced the chaos, found out it was okay for things not to be perfect, and I gave and received grace in copious amounts. Isn’t that parenting in nutshell? What other working mothers should know is that they don’t have to put up this artificial wall between how they conduct their professional and personal lives. The skills are transferrable, you can shoot from the hip, pivot and iterate in the same way at work that you do at home.

The stay-at-home order that COVID-19 necessitated has been a gift to us. It has shown us that a better life is possible. It has normalized working moms as humans and whole, real, people. My seven-year-old frequently pops into my Zoom meetings and I’ve been intentional about introducing her to the people I’m meeting with and teaching her to do the same. I take a moment to tell her what we’re discussing and ask her what she’s doing. This is really important for those of us in leadership positions to model so that women coming up in the organization feel like they can make the decision to be a working mom. I want the women that I support to know that if and when they have kids, there will be flexibility, their skill set will grow and be valued as mothers and they will have a place on this team – and elsewhere!

Donors and community partners are literally looking into my makeshift office, in the corner of my kitchen. They see my cat, my dirty floor, my family photos, my Ice Cube figurine and holiday decorations- they see BRI. Our professional relationships are developing in deeper ways that, I believe, ultimately enhance the programs and services we provide for families and children.

I recently remarked to my neighbor, who is the CEO of a start-up and mother of two, that our daughters don’t ask to have “playdates” they ask to have “meetings.”

Our kids are getting an immersive experience in what it means to be a working mom.  Isabel sees me running team meetings, hosting webinars, writing proposals, putting together budgets, strategizing with team members. She sees me working with board members, asking partners for funders, being interviewed for the local news- all of this was done out of sight previously. She now knows EXACTLY what I do all day when I’m away from her. Guess what? My mom guilt is at an all-time low.

All working mothers can grab this moment of time and normalize all of this. Normalize the kid interruptions, involve your children in your work, take a break and have lunch with your child, dip out and take a bike ride, jump on to email in the evening if you need to catch up. I don’t ever want to go back to compartmentalizing my life – I don’t think that’s healthy for anyone.

 

YOU TOOK TIME FOR YOU AND YOUR DAUGHTER TO GO ON AN ALL OUT ADVENTURE DURING COVID. WHAT WAS YOUR INSPIRATION? HOW DID YOU AND SHE BENEFIT FROM THE TIME ON THE ROAD?

I suffer from an uncommon strain of wanderlust. For example, I joined the Peace Corps straight out of college and instead of being overseas for 2 years, I stayed for 8. I’m pretty sure this most recent RV adventure to the National Parks in Utah in the middle of winter (not to mention a global pandemic!) was my “wanderlust” flaring again.

My eldest and I always talked about taking a road trip up the coast or to the Grand Canyon. We’ve literally talked about it for years, but because of everyone’s obligations with school, dance, work travel, etc. it was impossible to do. It just sort of occurred to me that THIS may be the time to do it since everything has been canceled. Andrea is now a first year in college and the time that she will want to travel and be able to travel with us is limited. It felt like a “now or never” situation. Again, this time felt like a gift.

Also, with all the travel restrictions and guidelines, traveling in an RV, literally taking our “bubble on the road” seemed to be the most responsible option. Hiking outdoors seemed to be a safe activity.

Twelve days on the road, 1,633 miles traveled, 50 miles hiked, and thousands of hours spent out of our routine, in nature, exploring and seeing things for the first time TOGETHER. It was a once in a lifetime adventure! The biggest takeaway for me was that we got to know each other better and enjoy each other as people. So much about what we do in our daily lives involves the mother-child dynamic and parenting that it was such a huge surprise to learn new things about my baby girl once we put that aside. Literally, Izzy in the wild, on the loose. I learned that she gets frustrated when she can’t physically do things that she wants to do. She learned that I like to read. We talk about those two things all the time now.

Most importantly, that won’t be our last adventure. It was too good not to repeat in some fashion.

HOW EASY WAS IT TO PUT A CHILDCARE ARRANGEMENT FOR YOURSELF? WHAT IS ONE PIECE OF ADVICE YOU WISH YOU COULD OFFER YOUR FORMER, EXPECTANT SELF? 

If (when?) I run for public office, this would be my platform- AFFORDABLE, SAFE, LOCAL CHILDCARE FOR ALL!  Literally, I want to shout it from the rooftops. Childcare was the absolute most stressful and most difficult part of returning to work- it’s still the greatest obstacle to being a working parent. I’m grinding my teeth thinking about it. The thing is, the childcare situation is never completely solved. You “think” you have it handled and then the kiddo starts pre-school, and then they start extracurriculars, and then the sitter moves. It’s insanely expensive and nerve-wracking. The advice I would give wouldn’t be to my expectant self, it would be to my 16-year-old self coming into my feminist identity, to take up the banner of safe & affordable childcare as a feminist issue. It’s not until we’re into our childbearing years and faced with these issues that we realize how debilitating and sometimes career ending they can be. I suppose if I had to give my expectant self advice, it would be to buckle up and prepare to re-jigger childcare constantly, to opt for the flexible option over the cheapest option. I don’t even totally buy that advice. The gift that COVID-19 has given to me is not having to worry about childcare to the degree that I did before, it truly has been the silver lining. COVID-19 has normalized work-life integration in new ways for working moms who are suddenly working from home. It made the childcare thing easier for me because I’m not stressing out in traffic trying to pick up my kid, or ducking out of meetings earlier and phoning in to get on the road, or coaxing a friend to do me a solid and pick up my daughter on an evening when I have a late meeting. Now, I take a 15-minute break, hop in my car, in my slippers, and pick my kid up, get her settled with dinner or a snack, and jump on my next Zoom call.

WHEN DID THE “NEW NORMAL” (AFTER BABY) SET IN FOR YOU?

We’re keeping it real, right?  Nothing felt stable until my daughter was 10 months old. I breastfed for 14 months. Her sleep didn’t regulate until she was 2. I was a hot mess until she was 4. I was really shocked at how much new moms had to scrap and scrape and find resources on their own- as if it wasn’t enough to grow, bear, birth, nurse, and care for the child. Then you have to keep doing everything else at the same rate and speed and level of efficiency on top of figuring out your new place in the work world? I was like WHAT THE FUCK?!?!? I was dumbfounded about what society and the community expects from women, from mothers, but how little it gives to them in return. In California, we get six weeks of maternity leave, which I could barely afford to take financially. I actually went back to work earlier than scheduled because I craved some normalcy, to feel like “Bri” again. What actually worked for me was a phased-in return to work, some time to regain my sea-legs.  So there I went, pumping in the car during my commute with an old cardigan thrown across my chest lest I get a creeper stuck next to me on the bridge “Leaning In” like Sheryl Sandberg told me to.

 

YOU HAVE BEEN COMMITTED TO SUPPORTING PHILANTHROPY YOUR ENTIRE CAREER. WHAT WORK ARE YOU MOST PROUD OF?

This is a really tough question for me to answer because I’m proud of things I’ve done throughout my career as they have meant a lot to me at different moments. For example, when I was a Peace Corps Volunteer in El Salvador, I started a girls soccer team in my village because there wasn’t any social activities for them to participate in and I thought it would be a good way to slide in some reproductive health education. At the end of two years, not a single girl on that team had an unwanted pregnancy. The teen pregnancy rate in my village, outside of the soccer team, was staggering. I was, and still am, pretty proud of that. Two girls from that team even went on to play for the Salvadoran National Women’s Soccer team- I’m proud of them for that too!

To bring it to more recent history, RMHC Bay Area was very successful in 2020.  We beat our fundraising goal by over $800K, in a very difficult fundraising environment, while expanding programs to meet urgent needs like food insecurity and housing fragility. I’m so, so, proud of the amazing teams that I have the privilege to support. We do important, life-changing, work and they work very hard to care for families.

 

WHAT PRO-TIPS DO YOU HAVE TO SHARE WITH OTHER MOTHERS?

When you’re able, choose job opportunities that provide growth opportunities, strong mentorship and managers who support working mothers in deeds, not words. I can’t stress this enough. Sometimes making a change is stressful, or even taking a pay cut can be scary, but think about the long game and what you are trying to achieve. Growth, mentorship, and real support is where its at. Look around, observe the women who are moms in your organization, see how it is for them ask them about their experience. If it’s not good, use maternity leave to job search.

WHO WAS YOUR BIGGEST SOURCE OF SUPPORT IN BUILDING YOUR CAREER AS A MOTHER?

Hands down, my working mom colleagues & friends! Other women in the trenches are a great support and those who are a little farther along in the journey are also great resources. My boss, our current CEO Laura Boudreau, has probably been my greatest support in building my career as a mom. She’s brilliant, strategic, a wonderful mentor, an amazing manager and a great mom. She walks the walk and talks the talk. I know that she has my career and my best interest as a human being at heart – how many people can say that about their boss?

FILL IN THE BLANKS:

As a working parent, I never expected childcare would be so hard and avoiding mom guilt would be so much easier.

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