Mommybites Chit-Chat: Conversations with luminaries, entrepreneurs and influencers in the parenting world
Q: Tell us a little about you (your background, your job, what makes you tick or anything else you think our Mommybites moms will find interesting).
I’m a born and bred Londoner with an investment banking background where I was at Goldman Sachs for 10 years. I moved to the US after I got married, and now have a 4.5 year old son and 2.5 year old daughter. When I thought of re-entering the workforce after taking nearly four years off to raise my kids, it was like none of that had ever happened. I felt firsthand the stigma attached to having a resume gap, and how taking time off to be with my family was perceived as lack of ambition and being a quitter.
The current employment infrastructure does not do enough to help moms like us – once an integral part of the workforce – return. Thinking about how to solve this problem became all-consuming. I lived and breathed this mission, and so for me turning this passion into a business was a very natural next step.
As a Brit from London, with heritage from Assam, India, I couldn’t help but notice the startling differences with not only re-entry of women in the workforce, but the perception of motherhood in general in this country. Arguably, we have a broken system in the US and I want to fix it. We do a terrible job of helping people launch their families in this country—the U.S. is the only developed country in the world without a mandatory parental leave policy, and the numbers of re-entrants into the workforce has gone down.
As I considered what I could do to address this problem it seemed that what was missing was a platform that could make it easier to bring these incredible women back into the workforce. And so I created Uma, a platform to bring talented women back to the workforce after a career break, through educational Uma Academy workshops, curated Umaship job placements and our Party with a Purpose networking events.
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