The last 4 years: what have we learned?

It’s been quite the few years hasn’t it?  We all have had our own unique journeys leading up to 2024 and yet I often find, in the community that I have built, a sense that so many of us have been on a similar precarious journey of growth and learning, especially those of us who are mothers navigating work and care and invisible loads on unimaginable levels.  

Many of us came out of 2019 with hope and excitement for a new decade. I personally was finally getting my head above water post divorce as my own kids were on the cusp of higher levels of self-management as they moved out of toddler zone into elementary zone.  I remember how freeing that was and, because of this new season of life, how the time finally felt right to move my leadership business to the next level.

And then, we had a pandemic. It was a pandemic that rocked our worlds and was a “first experience” for nearly every one of us. We were all in it together, and family, work, and care blurred together incomprehensibly. Ironically the blurring of those lines led us also to such clarity. A clarity that women and mothers were holding too much of the burden and that the belief that we were solely responsible and capable for solving this problem (and if we couldn’t we were failing ourselves and society) began to erode as we sank deeper and deeper into time and energy debt and the shovel was never big enough to dig us out.

Having already been deep in the data on working mothers prior to the pandemic and having spent those previous few years working with organizations and their leaders to help solve the leaky pipeline of women leaders, there was no better time than the pandemic to launch a course at Stanford that would dive deep into the cultural, societal, organizational, and systemic challenges that mothers face and look to the kinds of solutions that could offer positive change.

This week, we begin the 4th consecutive year of that course. Some things have changed and some things have not. But, the difference today is that we have a much deeper sophistication and understanding of the problems, we have loads of data to back that up, and we no longer believe that the challenges that mothers face is an individual problem to be solved but is instead a collective problem, a “we problem”, that affects everyone, all genders, all ages, all cultural, racial, and ethnic identities.

So as I get ready to meet this cohort tomorrow I am grateful that we still have movement towards change, I am grateful that there are now thousands of brilliant and smart individuals and businesses that are taking the lead to make change. We still have a lot of work to do but the number of people passionate about change continues to grow bigger and voices are getting louder.

But I won’t stop. We still need more voices, particularly the voices of those that don’t identity as mothers as you are an intricate part of the web of change.

And, organizational leaders, I see you. Building a future that is founded on the principles that will positively impact working mothers and caregivers will also positively impact all your employees. So this year, let’s move beyond good intention directly to positive results that impact all your employees.