Moms Who Build

Shannon McLaughlin — Building Products People Love, Creating Brand Ambassadors, Fourth Trimester Struggles, I Am Because We Are, Making People Matter, Whole Body Yesses, and More (#012) “When I hired, I always said that it was going to be half-day jobs for everyone, because we are moms. So when we had the shop, we didn't open from nine to five, we opened at half past eight in the morning, and we closed at 1:30pm, because whoever was in that shop was a mom, and she had to fetch her child from school and then go spend the afternoon with their child.” —Shannon McLaughlin

Mimi Chan — Building Three Companies, Overcoming Self-Doubt, Fundraising while Pregnant, Fighting Over the Home Office, Creating Productivity, Exciting News, and More (#011)  “Thinking back to those early days, those long nights, those moments where I had to pick myself up from the disappointment and push through it, surviving through this pandemic. And somehow with the combination of luck and preparation and just the belief and conviction in what we’ve been doing with Littlefund, we were able to have this amazing outcome.” — Mimi Chan

Cherie Hoeger — Modernizing Reusable Period Care, Menstruation Education, Changing Stigmas, Believing the Mission, Building Pro-Family Workplaces, and More (#010)  “And so we realized that there was so much power that one period cup could have to literally keep girls in school, break cycles of poverty, help their confidence, help them become young women and mothers who could provide for their families.” — Cherie Hoeger

Hannah Levy — Fertility Knowledge & Empowerment, Female-Led Startups, Elevating Underrepresented Groups, Parent Inclusive Workplaces, and Much More (#009) “I approached motherhood as a ‘oh, now I need to be completely selfless’ mentality, where I was just like, ‘hey, now I’m a mom, I matter less, I need to put my kid above myself in all forms’. And that worked for about a month until I broke down. The guilt around putting yourself first or taking time has been very difficult. And so, I have slowly regained boundaries and space. And trying to figure out what does it mean to prioritize myself, what does it mean to prioritize other people, my friends, work, my partnership above my child in certain times. What are the trade-offs, risks, and rewards?” — Hannah Levy

In my first solo episode, I talk candidly about why I started building Moms Who Build and what’s coming up on the show this month. “I didn’t feel this way all of the time. I mainly felt this way when someone, and it didn’t matter who, but anyone asked me what I did for a living. I would reply that I was a stay-at-home mom and would almost immediately follow that up with, ‘oh, but I also volunteer as a special events coordinator for a nonprofit organization’, ‘oh, I also . . .’ fill in the blank for whatever I was doing at the time. And I was making it up in my own head that the person asking me was judging me for choosing to be a stay-at-home mom for my career, but again, that was in my head— no one ever said that to me. Fast forward to me driving home from Zumba and I was thinking about the kids growing up, about what I wanted to do. I was thinking about being surrounded by inspirational moms and women who were building things, and I thought, ‘huh, if I were made up of little cups of fulfillment, which cups needed a refill or to be filled in general?’ ” — Margie Chuang