As generations of small business founders can attest, having a baby while running a company is nothing new.
From Birchbox’s Katia Beauchamp, who had a complicated pregnancy and negotiated deals from the hospital for months on end, to WEX’s Melissa Smith, the public company CEO who set the precedent for how to reveal a pregnancy to shareholders, these women are shaping the realities of early motherhood and leadership for the next generation.Noura Sakkijha, co-founder and CEO, Mejuri
Having women as our VCs was a game-changer. They completely understand the toll it takes on your body. As much as a man can say, “My wife went through it,” it’s not the same. During Audrey’s pregnancy, she’s spent a lot of time on building our executive team; when we were fundraising during my pregnancy, we didn’t have our CFO Diedra Nelson, who led the charge on our 2018 Series C round.
During my first pregnancy, we didn’t have a parental leave policy; I took short-term disability and my predecessor who had only recently retired as CEO came back to work with the executive team to manage while I was on leave. We introduced a parental leave program afterward, and it reinforced the importance of letting parents take time off.Katia Beauchamp, co-founder and CEO, Birchbox
The day the Walgreens deal was closing, I went into labor unexpectedly. I was on the operating table, and the last thing I remember saying to my husband is, “Tell Viking I signed and it’s done.” I didn’t want them to think I hadn’t gotten it done before I had my baby. I’ve always had a process of internal calibration: work I need to do mentally and emotionally to prepare myself for the fundraising process, which gives me the energy, confidence, and resilience to see it through. Whatever I did before my pregnancy—exercise, meditation, coaching, practice-pitching—I chose to double down on during my pregnancy. It helped me to be confident and excited about the process instead of second-guessing myself or worrying my pregnant belly might put me at a disadvantage.
Kier: When Alex and I met in the summer of 2014, we were both seriously dating our partners but we didn’t have children. Since then, we’ve gone through four rounds of funding and we’ve had three children between the two of us. Out of 25 or 30 meetings, there was only one where I wasn’t the only woman in the room. And I was always the only pregnant one in the room. Baked into that is a natural feeling of otherness. I felt like an appendage to the business. My co-founder and husband would get asked specific questions about margins and our product suite. Mine would be like, “So what role do you play?”