Founding Moments

About a year and a half ago I decided to put 100% of my effort into building a company focusing completely on helping women achieve a healthy integration of work & life, a transition which is most difficult most during those first 5 years of life. (For a number of reasons, childcare costs being the largest financially, but more so, what you’ll read below.)

For us the rosy glow of post c-section motherhood turned into a completely unexpected crisis pretty quickly. The mountain you talk about, that feeling of being backed into a corner without a path out, in every area of life presented it self.

I was a breadwinning mother of a 6 week old, at the top of my career, being recruited by companies 6 weeks after having a baby, asking me to leave my Global Head of Marketing job to go work for them, with 100% remote flexibility and more money. I had to ask my boss, I needed to have some type of “meet me halfway, I would be silly to just pass this up” conversation.

To my complete surprise I was met with: “Britt, you just had a baby, you aren’t even going to be productive for at least a year, you’ll really have to prove yourself again before you get any kind of raise from me.”

One thing is certain, no one ever told me when I was 5 playing office under my moms desk; dreaming of being a boss mom one day that this would happen. That the moment a baby entered my loving arms, I would have to start my career over again.

That little girl would have thrown her hands in the air, made a face and said, NO. That is not how it would be. No way.

So, I said, NO that is not how it will be, no way.

I left that position, made over 200% of my salary consulting over the next 12 months and have since founded a company which will focus on helping women make the transition from boss to bossmom. Every hour of free time I have had, every moment I haven’t been nurturing my family, I have spent nurturing my 3rd baby, The Haven Collection. It will be a network of clubs tied together by a tech community which will allow the modern family to thrive.

Because, parity means so much more than money.

More millennial women graduate with 4 year degrees than men. Women are delaying having children until they have reached a point in their career which they feel strength in and confident in.

Not one of those women will tell you they put all of that hard work into building their education and their career in order to give it all up once they have an adorable little baby in their arms. Not one of them. No way.

The greatest moment of pride and assurance I have experienced during this rollercoaster ride that is startup fundraising has been one day when my eldest daughter wanted to leave her playroom with her sitter and come up to my office. When asked what she was doing she said, “I’m going to go to work, I want to work like Mommy does.” – I brought her some crayons and some paper and gave her a fun task to do and she now is endlessly proud to “Work like Mommy”.

In that moment, that made every single bit of effort resound, a massive sense of pride well up inside my tired body and the push to further evolve the workplace for women and families continues. Not one single second of doubt, 100,000 women and families to support in the next 5 years.

NEVER. EVER. GIVE UP. – THE 5 YEAR OLD DREAMER IN YOU AND THAT LITTLE ONE NEXT TO YOU DEPEND ON IT.

#yourhavenlife #yourhaven #paritymeansmorethanmoney #startwitheight