The Mama Bear by Chairman Mom

I’ve been clinging to a life raft of Liane Moriarty books over the last month. I’ve been listening to the audiobooks of her entire oeuvre when I’m running, when I’m doing dishes, when I’m chopping vegetables, when I’m hiding in a bath with a glass of wine, when I can’t sleep at night. She has become my ultimate nadir-of-my-pandemic escape. 

Her books are definitely too white, too thin (unless a character’s main plot line is losing weight), too privileged, and to hetero/cis. And, yes, that feels jarring in 2020. Read more...

Listening to Kamala Harris’s first speech as Joe Biden’s presumptive running mate, you could see the impact of her mom on her. She talked about growing up as a kid in the racial justice movement in Oakland, with some of her earliest memories being strapped into her stroller on marches, and her mom answering her typical kid complaints with the phrase: “What are you going to do about it?”

Tears were streaming down my eyes listening to her speak. I grew up in a house that talked a lot about God, but not so much about the fight for equality. I never went to a protest until I was in my forties, and I was part of the lost generation of white women who focused our fight on getting ourselves ahead. The “Lean In” types who wrongly thought that all you had to do was play the right game and work harder to get yourself ahead in a man’s world. The generation that normalized and stuffed down sexual assault and sexual harassment.  Read more...

In what seems like a lifetime ago, I found myself in Medellin, Colombia with a gaggle of people from the tech industry and government. 

It was all so different then.

This was during the Obama administration, so the idea of “government” was totally different. I was on a trip organized by the Hillary Clinton-run State Department—again, unthinkable to imagine going anywhere with the current U.S. State Department, or maybe any State Department ever again. 

Tech was different then too. People honestly believed that in the aftermath of Arab Spring, social media could be good for global democracy.  Read more...

Today’s intro and subsequent blog post are from Anne Kenny and Natalie Tulsiani, co-founders of the company Shift.

We’re honored to make a guest appearance in the Mama Bear, particularly because it’s one of the reasons we got so fired up about how ERGs can make 90% of women’s lives better at work. Today, we’re featuring six ERG leaders and advocates who have made huge strides to support caregivers at their company by revamping parental leave, creating custom programs and resources, mentoring, and securing compensation for ERG leaders.

We’re Anne and Natalie, co-founders of Shift, and we partner with companies to support caregivers. How do we do this?  By creating a safe space to build empathy, connect caregivers, elevate stories, and deliver actionable findings with depth and nuance. Click here to check out the entire article!

Today’s new questions on Chairman Mom: Read more...

Newsletter editor Lily here.

After a five-month break, I finally laced up my running shoes two and a half weeks ago and went for a 15-minute jog. And whew, what a time it was.

To recap, I’d been training for a June 2020 marathon since last November, and the final pre-pandemic time I ran was in early March, a few days before I left New York City for what I thought would be two or three weeks at my mom’s place to quell her panic over the city’s COVID numbers. When I finally made my way back to the Big Apple three and a half months later, I hadn’t run at all in that time. I quickly worked long walks into my daily routine, but something felt strange about going on a run. Read more...

We knew the promise that Joe Biden was going to pick a female VP and most likely a woman of color. Many of us assumed, predicted, or even hoped it would be Kamala Harris. But the powerful emotional sensation I experienced when I heard the news was unlike anything I was expecting. 

I have avoided posting explicitly about politics for years, because I know we have members on both the left and the right of my personal views, and I think one thing that’s wonderful about Chairman Mom is that same alienation on other social networks around politics doesn’t play a big role here.   Read more...

Today’s intro is from our contributor Amanda Munday, who’s the founder and CEO of The Workaround and author of Day Nine: A Postpartum Depression Memoir.

Being an entrepreneur is hard at the best of times. In the midst of month five or 50 of global pandemic? As my Italian relatives say…fugedaboudit. The loss of self can be hard to reconcile when the public messaging is to be all in this together. I thought I had my identity finally sorted. I am many things to many people, and I worked hard to get comfortable with who I am. I consider myself well-versed in all things identity. Especially the loss of it. And yet the pandemic has made me feel as though I’m losing the identity I worked so hard to shape. Read more...

In my book, I wrote that dismantling the patriarchy would take a combination of large actions and small, daily, constant, and ongoing actions. It’s the same with white supremacy. 

Here’s one small daily action that I did today, because it spoke to my heart. 

I took prenatal and postnatal yoga classes from the phenomenal Jane Austin. She transformed how I thought about motherhood and so many other things. She greatly reduced my stress during pregnancy, and my doctors told me prenatal yoga was the reason I didn’t have to have a C-section. (Eli had one of the biggest heads in CPMC history.)  Read more...

Recently, we hosted an online event about female ambition. (Timely, don’t you think?)

It was a two-and-a-half-hour, wide-ranging conversation about politics at times and about incredibly vulnerable and personal topics at others. One woman joined us who had just left her job after being told to “wait” for her shot over and over again. 

“Wait, it’s not your time yet…” 

“Your time will come…” 

Just about everyone in that call reacted visibly to the story. I never realized how triggering the word “wait” is for ambitious women. “Wait” is a way to pacify women. To talk over them. To take credit for their work. To continue to co-opt their talent, to keep their support, to promise them something that you may never pay them in the future without taking the actual risk of funding them, supporting them, promoting them, or letting them lead.  Read more...

Today’s intro comes from CM contributor Adimika Arthur, a public health expert, hospital executive, and founder of Health Tech for Medicaid (HT4M). It’s adapted from her Instagram post about Kamala Harris’ vice presidential announcement with permission.

Beautiful strong black women
this is our time
We know who we are
We know who we want to be
This is our time

Beautiful strong black women
This is our time
We know where we are going
We know what we can learn
This is our time

Beautiful strong black women
This is our time
We know we are fierce
We know what we can do
This is our time Read more...