Ever thought that the very thing you’re afraid to show at work—your vulnerability—might actually make you a stronger leader? In this episode, I’m talking with Melanie Rosenwasser, the Chief People Officer at Dropbox about how the messy, chaotic world of motherhood can actually boost your career in ways you never imagined.
Melanie’s chat is packed with real talk about how she’s managed to set up a remote work life that lets her be there for her kids while still advancing in her career. She opens up about the challenges of returning to work while dealing with postpartum struggles, and how she and her partner split the complicated responsibilities that come with 2 kids under 3 years old.
🎯 Juggling Work and Mom Life
One of the biggest challenges Melanie faces is switching from the high-stakes decisions of her executive role to the unpredictable demands of parenting. The mental and emotional shift required to transition between these two worlds is tough, and it’s something many working moms can relate to.
“I’ll go from providing direction and making tough strategic calls to my role as a mom where no one listens, and we’re just trying to get through the next 30 minutes without a meltdown.”
🛠️ Creating a Supportive Home Setup
Melanie and her husband made the decision that he would step back from his career to focus on being the at-home parent. This setup allows them to support each other’s professional and personal goals while ensuring their children are well cared for.
“He actually thinks of it more as stepping up—as a father and a caregiver. And he often says there's no more important job on earth than being there for our kids.”
🏡 The Perks of Remote Work
Dropbox’s shift to a remote-first policy has been a game-changer for Melanie, giving her the flexibility to be present for her children while still leading a major company. This balance has allowed her to fully engage with both her family and her career.
“The best part about working from home is access to my children, right? Like, I can see them during the day. It’s just such a wonderful gift to be able to step outside, see them, and then come back.”
💼 Taking Turns in Career and Family
Melanie and her husband consciously decide whose career takes the lead at different times. They understand that balancing two demanding careers and a family requires intentional planning and a willingness to shift priorities as needed.
“This decade is my career. Maybe the next one will be his. We can cross that bridge when we get there, but that informed the decision.”
🌱 The Power of Vulnerability in Leadership
Motherhood has made Melanie a more empathetic and focused leader. In a field where vulnerability isn’t always encouraged, she has found that embracing her own struggles has strengthened her leadership style.
“It’s given me a ton of empathy for other working parents that I just never had previously… My approach to work has changed in that I understand now that prioritization for working parents includes so much more than your work.”
🤹♀️ Keeping Up the Energy
With so much on her plate, Melanie has had to develop strategies to conserve her energy. By being deliberate about how she spends her time, she ensures she has enough left in the tank for her family at the end of the day.
“My tank is pretty empty at the end of the workday, so I often spend my last bits of energy on the kids’ nighttime routine. There’s very little energy left to do things like make dinner or tackle high-stakes topics.”
🚸 Moving Closer to Family
The decision to move closer to family after having her first child has had a profound impact on Melanie’s work and personal life. Being near family has provided much-needed support and has positively influenced her children’s upbringing.
“The proximity to friends and family has been a complete game changer for us. My parents come to stay with us at least every month for a week or two at a time, which has just been massively helpful.”
🧠 Dealing with Postpartum Struggles
Melanie bravely discusses her battle with postpartum anxiety and depression, and how it affected her work. By being open about her struggles, she found the support she needed to navigate this challenging time.
“I struggled with postpartum anxiety and depression, and I actually attribute a lot of this to how difficult it was for me to breastfeed… I set the expectation with my team that I knew I was a little slower and rustier and to bear with me.”
If you’re trying to figure out how to keep pushing forward in your career while navigating the realities of motherhood, Melanie’s insights are a must-hear.
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[00:00:00] Barbara Mighdoll: You know, the dream of having it all a thriving career, an active social life, present time with your kids in adventures and travel, but how the F can we actually do it all? Welcome to the new modern mom podcast. I'm your host, Barbara Migdal, a former tech exec turned entrepreneur and mother of two. My superpower is creating order out of chaos, and I want to help ambitious moms feel enabled to do the same. [00:00:27] Barbara Mighdoll: In each episode, I'm interviewing VPs, C level executives, and founders to learn the real proven strategies they use to find work life fulfillment. Together, we're building the playbook for the new modern mom. [00:00:42] Hi everyone. Today, we have a very special guest. Melanie. Rosenwasser the chief people, officer of Dropbox. [00:00:50] I was excited to bring Melanie on here for a number of reasons. She spearheaded Dropbox's global move to be a remote first company and has so much advice on [00:01:00] how to make remote work work as a mother while continuing to advance in your own career. Plus she herself is a mom to two under three years old. [00:01:10] She has an infant and a toddler and is in such a relatable stage of motherhood. I think so many of us are in the thick of currently. So let's get to it. [00:01:21] Barbara Mighdoll: Welcome, Melanie. It is so good to have you here today. [00:01:24] Melanie Rosenwasser: Thanks, Barbara. Great to be here. [00:01:26] Barbara Mighdoll: So for our listeners, this is actually the first time Melanie and I have gotten the chance to chat live. We were introduced through a mutual friend who was like, you must meet Melanie when I was giving her the premise of this podcast. [00:01:40] Barbara Mighdoll: So Melanie, I'm excited to get to know you, not only on a more personal level today, but really to chat honestly about how you are navigating the chaos of balancing motherhood and your big career. And I want to know how you've taken your professional superpowers and applied them to your personal life. [00:01:58] Barbara Mighdoll: So let's get into it. [00:02:00] To begin, can you please give us your elevator pitch, both personally and professionally. [00:02:05] Melanie Rosenwasser: Sure, happy to. So Melanie Rosenwasser, Chief People Officer at Dropbox. I've been at Dropbox for nine years and previously was at Apple. I'm previous to that GE. Love the work that I do, which is sort of at the intersection of technology and talent. [00:02:22] Melanie Rosenwasser: I'm really passionate about the future of work and what innovation can look like, particularly in the HR function. Let's see. I grew up on the East coast, just North of Boston. So go Celtics. I met my husband, another East coast transplant in San Francisco. We actually eloped during the pandemic and moved back to the East coast. [00:02:40] Melanie Rosenwasser: Once we found out we were having a baby and that was back in 2021. So now we have two kids, Maya, who is two and a half and Kay, who is 10 months. We are currently living in Westchester County in Rye, New York. And I'm just really loving it. So you're a [00:02:55] Barbara Mighdoll: mom to two kids, both very young. Wow. Can you set the [00:03:00] stage for what life looks like at the present moment? [00:03:02] Barbara Mighdoll: The good, the bad, the ugly. [00:03:04] Melanie Rosenwasser: Yes, certainly. So I have a luxury of working for a virtual first company, which means that the majority of my time is spent working remotely. I still do fly to San Francisco and travel at least quarterly. For me, this can be up to six weeks. Every six weeks or so. So there is some travel involved. [00:03:23] Melanie Rosenwasser: My company is also West coast based. So even though we're virtual, most of the exec team actually sits on the West coast. So the good is obviously the flexibility that comes with remote work, but also because of sort of the West coast East coast thing, I have space and time to spend with my kids in the morning. [00:03:41] Melanie Rosenwasser: And I also, I get to see them during breaks in my day, give them a kiss, see what's going on. Let's see, I guess the bad and the ugly. I think one of the things that I experience pretty frequently is the, the difficulty of context switching. So going from a job where I feel pretty confident that I mostly know what I'm [00:04:00] doing to parenthood where sort of no one knows what they're doing. [00:04:03] Melanie Rosenwasser: So I'll go from the providing direction and making tough strategic calls to my role as a mom where no one listens. And we're just sort of trying to get through the next 30 minutes without a meltdown. So that's kind of the first thing that I think is, is tough. The second is. My tank is pretty empty at the end of the workday. [00:04:21] Melanie Rosenwasser: So I often spend my last bits of energy on the kids nighttime routine. And there's very little energy left to do things like make dinner or even tackle high stakes topics. Like where are we going to send the kids to preschool or how do we deal with whatever current, like. Health ailment they have at the time or even like logistics planning on vacation. [00:04:43] Melanie Rosenwasser: I just, I just don't have the mind space. And I feel I'm sometimes not holding up my end of the bargain on, on these sort of critical high stakes topics because I'm just so out of gas and I can't think straight. [00:04:54] Barbara Mighdoll: I resonate with that completely. I feel like by 8pm, I just can't, , the [00:05:00] last thing I want to do is have that mental load sitting on me, like I want to, I want to get through it, but I just can't think that strategically about those like bigger issues or challenges in life, so, yes, yes. [00:05:12] Barbara Mighdoll: I do want to back up. You mentioned that you. Just moved like a few years ago back to New York when you found out that you were having a baby. I want to dig into how and what pushed you to make that decision. What were the factors and kind of like your decision framework that led you to this big life change? [00:05:33] Melanie Rosenwasser: Yeah, so I think the first was Dropbox. Previous to the pandemic was 97 percent in the office. And then the pandemic was sort of a catalyst to reimagine how and where we work. And we made the decision to be remote first. And this allowed employees the freedom to move where they wanted. And when we found out we were pregnant with our first baby, we wanted to move to be closer to our family. [00:05:58] Melanie Rosenwasser: So both of our [00:06:00] families are here. on the East Coast. So it was really those two things in tandem that that that prompted the move. [00:06:06] Barbara Mighdoll: And what do you feel like the impact has been at work and your family and just kind of like on the personal front from being able to be closer to family? [00:06:15] Melanie Rosenwasser: Yeah, I think the proximity to friends and family has been a complete boost. [00:06:19] Melanie Rosenwasser: game changer for us, right? We are driving distance from my husband Chuck's parents and my parents live in New Hampshire. They come to stay with us at least every month for a week or two at a time, which has just been massively helpful. It's great for our kids because their grandparents are such a huge part of their lives. [00:06:36] Melanie Rosenwasser: And I know for my parents specifically, having grandkids gives them so much joy to be able to spend time with our kids. And I swear it's like it's made them younger and more active and it's brought us a lot closer. So it's really been amazing all around. [00:06:50] Barbara Mighdoll: That's great to hear. So many of our listeners are juggling with this decision of do I move closer to home? [00:06:58] Barbara Mighdoll: I know personally, I [00:07:00] just had a very best friend of mine. Make that difficult decision. And I think, yeah, having that support around you is, is really, really critical. And on the topic of support, I'd love to chat a little bit about your household setup that you shared with me that your husband works part time and really acts as kind of that function of the at home parent. [00:07:21] Barbara Mighdoll: And so I'd love to hear a little bit more about that setup and what your experience has been like for him, for you, for your family. [00:07:29] Melanie Rosenwasser: Yeah. We're incredibly fortunate that my husband works part time and is able to spend a large part of his day caring for our kids. And it's really interesting because at first I thought this maybe would backfire, right? [00:07:41] Melanie Rosenwasser: He's very successful, mission driven, has multiple engineering degrees. And so, so I thought this would feel like a major step back for him. But he, he doesn't view it this way. He actually thinks of it more as like a stepping up. As a father and a caregiver. And he often says there's no more important job on [00:08:00] earth than being there for our kids. [00:08:01] Melanie Rosenwasser: And so I'm just so grateful. And not only is he an amazing caregiver for our kids, he's my personal biggest cheerleader. He's my sounding board, my executive coach. So that has been. I think uniquely wonderful, right, with our setup. [00:08:14] Barbara Mighdoll: . And what were some of those early conversations around that? [00:08:19] Barbara Mighdoll: Because, like you said, he's, he did have this big career behind him. [00:08:23] Melanie Rosenwasser: Yeah, I think we just realized that for me to fully invest in the role that I have, it was really going to require A substantial amount of time and energy and investment and travel. And to consider two people doing that at the same time, we just thought it, it would, might be detrimental. [00:08:40] Melanie Rosenwasser: And we wouldn't get to spend the time that we wanted to with our kids. And so it really came down to that, right? We're going to double down and this, maybe this decade is my career. Maybe the next one, it'll be his, we can cross that bridge, but that, that, that informed the decision. [00:08:55] Barbara Mighdoll: I think the idea of. Two working parents and their careers [00:09:00] ebbing and flowing and leaning in and leaning out has been a very common theme from some of the other guests that I've chatted with. [00:09:07] Barbara Mighdoll: I think there's, there's a lot that goes into raising one kid, let alone two. So I think a lot of women can, can learn from that experience that you've had of, of knowing that sometimes are going to be like you leaning in and sometimes are going to be leaning out. When you made the decision to go from one to two kids, were you concerned at all about expanding your family with all of your growing responsibilities in your role? [00:09:36] Barbara Mighdoll: Yeah, that's [00:09:37] Melanie Rosenwasser: a really good question. I, going from 1 to 2 is actually, was actually much easier than going from 0 to 1. Because you know what you're doing, and you know what to expect, and you can actually plan for the things that the first time around you had no idea that you had to plan for. So I actually feel like I was mentally much more equipped to do this. [00:09:57] Melanie Rosenwasser: The second time around, and also I had been [00:10:00] working remotely from New York at that point by the time we decided to have a second child for a couple of years. So I, I've, I've grown more accustomed to that and understand what to expect there. And so it went much better, I would say, the second time around. [00:10:13] Barbara Mighdoll: I had a very similar experience. I feel like this is actually a really hot debate, whether the transition is harder from zero to one or one to two. And there's two very different things. different opinions here, but I, I was of the same mindset where I think going zero to one just really rocked my world in terms of my own independence and being able to just focus on career or, or other areas of my life and then introducing this like really changed me and one to two was a lot easier for me as well. [00:10:41] Melanie Rosenwasser: You sort of go from a place of Especially if you have kids when you're older, which I did. I had my first child at 40. You've had many, many years of like complete independence and total control over how you spend your time and where. And so it is just such a shift and your world almost turns upside down when that is no [00:11:00] longer the case. [00:11:01] Melanie Rosenwasser: And so, yeah, it definitely is for me, a major transition zero to one. [00:11:06] Barbara Mighdoll: Absolutely. And speaking of how you, how Spend your time. How, how do you and your husband find time just for the two of you? [00:11:15] Melanie Rosenwasser: It's hard. It's very hard. We, but we do, we try to do date nights like every week or two. And on the weeks that we can't actually leave the house, we plan for like movie nights. [00:11:24] Melanie Rosenwasser: It doesn't really matter where it is or when it is or what it is. But I think the other thing that's really important, it's supporting each other and the ways that we need. So I guess there are two things I would share. The first is. We build some of the basics into our daily routine. So here's an example. [00:11:41] Melanie Rosenwasser: We manage our kid coverage in the morning so that each of us has time to exercise and, or do basic maintenance stuff like doctor's appointments, getting haircuts, that type of thing. And the second piece is we. Enthusiastically encourage the other to invest in things like friendships and hobbies and trips. [00:11:58] Melanie Rosenwasser: And I think the key word there [00:12:00] is enthusiastically. It's not, my husband will come to me and say, Hey, I'd like to go for a golf weekend. Is that okay? It's, it's actually met with, yes, please. Awesome. So excited for you. And it, and we do it for each other. So there's never any guilt and we really truly feel like we can take that time to be present with our friends or our hobbies or whatever we need to do because we know the other one has it and is excited for us. [00:12:21] Melanie Rosenwasser: That's actually something that we found has been incredibly helpful for our relationship, but also just like for our family. [00:12:27] Barbara Mighdoll: . I think having those moments for yourself, first of all, just like the little times, like the mornings, we do the same thing, we call it the early shift or the late shift and how we split the mornings before our childcare starts. [00:12:39] Barbara Mighdoll: And before we start our days, that made such a monumental difference. And I think our mental health and how we were treating each other in the morning, just knowing that we had that time and space for ourselves before we kind of got thrown into. whatever the day was going to bring us. And also the trips. [00:12:54] Barbara Mighdoll: I think a lot of times we, especially women, feel guilty asking to [00:13:00] go somewhere for an evening or a weekend. And I love that if you both are kind of bringing that same positive energy to the table and you're both excited for each other to take those weekends away, it just makes everybody happier all around. [00:13:17] Barbara Mighdoll: A hundred percent. Yes. As the person who really spearheaded your entire company's movement to be remote first, you must have the working from home set up down to a science. So can you tell us what that looks like for you? [00:13:32] Melanie Rosenwasser: Yeah. So I actually have a very comfortable space. It's really bright, ergo friendly, you've got plants in here, I have my own refrigerator, my husband actually soundproofed our room up here. [00:13:42] Melanie Rosenwasser: So it's really, really helpful. But honestly, the best part about working from home is like access to my children, right? Like I can see them during the day. It's just such a wonderful sort of gift to be able to like step outside, see them and then come back. And it's also good, I think, for remote work in general, that you give your brain a little [00:14:00] bit of a break. [00:14:00] Melanie Rosenwasser: Stand up, move around, go talk to somebody, even honestly like unloading the dishwasher, just getting your brain to have a break. In the office, we had these breaks through, Oh, your meeting has ended. Now you have to walk to the other side of the building to your next meeting. It gives your brain a minute to prepare and reset. [00:14:15] Melanie Rosenwasser: And I think you have to build these rituals in when you're working from home as well. I mean, it's completely transformed my life, the ability to have this level of flexibility. [00:14:24] Barbara Mighdoll: You mentioned that you have soundproofing. Are there any other kind of setups that you have, whether that's like how you've replaced your commute time or anything like that, that have really made your life run smoothly with young kids in the home? [00:14:40] Melanie Rosenwasser: Yeah, I think we're very structured. Our days here are very, very structured. And so the kids know what to expect, but the older one understands like when mom is going to work, it's, I'm just, I'm not up here like watching television and she just barges in, so she understands. And we have those boundaries. So I think it's just part, part of it is just like around expectation [00:15:00] settings, so everybody understands kind of what happens when the day starts and then when the day ends in terms of no longer having commuting time. [00:15:07] Melanie Rosenwasser: It's important to me to really leverage that time for something that's valuable. So not just, Oh, I get to read emails now for another 90 minutes instead of commuting. It's like actually thinking about how do I add the most value? Where's my impact? Or it could be something like I'm going to take my kids swimming. [00:15:27] Melanie Rosenwasser: So instead of that commute, I'll do something like that. But it's like really using that time intentionally, I think has been a really helpful way to think about taking back that commute time. [00:15:35] Barbara Mighdoll: . Reflecting on some of the conversations I've had with our other guests, there's been a clear theme that there's often before having kids, a lot of kind of behind the scenes conversations. [00:15:47] Barbara Mighdoll: There's this mental load and negotiation with your partner on when is the right time to have a child and what's going to change and the compromises that you're going to need to make in our careers and our lifestyle. And [00:16:00] you are at the height of your career. This is. arguably the biggest role you've ever held, and I'd love to touch on Making the jump to a C suite position and then deciding to have kids, what were some of the factors that led you to decide like, now was the right time to start your family? [00:16:18] Melanie Rosenwasser: Well, I wish that I could say that I had tons of control over the timing, but really the timing is around, like it's, you have to find the right partner. For some people they're blessed with finding that person really early in adulthood and others it takes a little bit longer. And so honestly, because I was older when, when I got married and we started to consider having children, that really was the catalyst get moving quickly. [00:16:41] Melanie Rosenwasser: So there wasn't a ton of time to say, well what year, the next five years would be the right time? It's that it kind of needs to be now. Right, right. The goal is, and if we wanna have multiple children, the sooner the better. And so I think, I think biology honestly was the driving factor in, in the decision there. [00:16:56] Barbara Mighdoll: As it is, I think for a lot of career driven women [00:17:00] and on the topic of making that jump from VP to C level, that's a really hard jump to make, and it's not common, especially for women. What do you think were some of those critical skills or projects that really earned you that ability to make that big career jump? [00:17:17] Melanie Rosenwasser: Yeah, this is a great question. I think promotions in general. or into exec roles are really like byproducts of having impact and creating value at the end of the day. So asking how do I get promoted is not necessarily the right question, but it's what skills or experiences do I need to acquire in order to have that impact and create that value? [00:17:39] Melanie Rosenwasser: And for me, this looked like taking on a Lots and lots of lateral roles and responsibilities in order to prepare me for the role that I'm in today. So I'll, I'll tell you a funny story. When I was leading the HR business partner team at Dropbox, that was my first job at the company. And at the time we had a learning and development [00:18:00] head of like open role. [00:18:02] Melanie Rosenwasser: And my manager at the time said, I think you can lead this function too. And I was like, Oh, let me think about it. I went home. I wrote up a document with all of the pros and cons of putting me in this job. Mostly cons. Like reasons why I was not qualified and I brought it back into her the next day and I like slid it across the desk and she barely glanced at it. [00:18:21] Melanie Rosenwasser: And she said, I don't know what you want me to do with this. You can do this job now, get out of my office and go figure it out. And so I did, and I eventually hired an amazing head of learning and development who is still at the company and working for me. I want to say seven years later. And so. That really showed me, one, not to be my own worst enemy, but also, taking on more scope, even if you do not have the subject matter expertise. [00:18:46] Melanie Rosenwasser: Is possible right and it's really more about like pattern matching and knowing what you don't know So I didn't have to be An industry luminary in learning in order to successfully lead that team as long as I understood [00:19:00] that I could hire subject matter experts and do things like Uh, removing roadblocks or being a catalyst for career growth, things that you can do as a leader where it doesn't really even matter what the team exactly is doing. [00:19:12] Melanie Rosenwasser: Anyway, so I just, I adopted this sort of play of when other leaders would leave HR functions, I would offer to be the interim leader or be the temp leader until we hired somebody else, I would offer to hire those people and then over time I ran enough of those teams that by the my former manager left. [00:19:31] Melanie Rosenwasser: It was much easier for me to take on the role because I had had so much breadth and experience. [00:19:36] Barbara Mighdoll: I think what you're referring to with this list of cons or reasons why you shouldn't take, take the role is, is so much of this idea of imposter syndrome, right? Which I think many of us, regardless of if it's in motherhood or at your career, are struggling with. [00:19:53] Barbara Mighdoll: And when you were dealing with kind of taking on these other projects, did you ever feel like [00:20:00] You really had to prove yourself to other people around you or in your seniority? [00:20:07] Melanie Rosenwasser: That's a really good question. I sort of felt like I have a few things in my toolkit that I have done well, like a couple of skills that I've honed over time, and one of them is problem solving. [00:20:21] Melanie Rosenwasser: And a lot of our work, it's not necessarily just about HR work, but it's about solving problems. And so if you have that mindset of being able to kind of dive in and unblocking yourself and not waiting for direction from anyone, but really just like solving a core problem. What I found is over time, as you kind of show the results of that problem solving, you start to gain trust. [00:20:44] Melanie Rosenwasser: So it doesn't matter how experienced you are or what your resume looked like, or. Any of that you're producing, right? And it's getting noticed. And because that is happening, you're, you're earning the trust and credibility. So where someone Maybe previously would come to you for something small or tactical. [00:20:59] Melanie Rosenwasser: If you [00:21:00] over deliver, they're going to start coming to you for more strategic, thornier problems. They want to brainstorm with you. They want to innovate with you, but it is a process and there is a bit of a, you got to prove yourself and I think that's normal and healthy. [00:21:13] Barbara Mighdoll: Definitely. And, and I'm curious how. [00:21:17] Barbara Mighdoll: You are balancing like what you're just describing, right? That, that is adding pressure to yourself, right? To always be delivering or over delivering, proving and showing results. How are you managing the pressure that comes along with a big role alongside also being a mom and being present? [00:21:35] Melanie Rosenwasser: So there are two things that I think help. [00:21:38] Melanie Rosenwasser: The first is I am really, really deliberate about how and where I spend my time and energy so that I am focused on the highest impact things. Like my assistant and I look at my calendar every month and we look at how my time is allocated. And then we take a look at what are the most important initiatives I want to be working on. [00:21:56] Melanie Rosenwasser: And we want to see that alignment and where that's not there, we need to make some changes. So [00:22:00] there are some structural things that can be done to make sure your energy allocation is correct. Okay. But then I think the other thing is, the best leaders hire the best leaders. And so in order to really be able to spend time on the most impactful things and not feel super overwhelmed, you have to have an amazing team. [00:22:19] Melanie Rosenwasser: And everyone that works for me is so much stronger than me in so many different areas. And so I think this notion of like hire. better than how you could do this job is, is really, really important. [00:22:33] Barbara Mighdoll: So I think being a leader and having a team, whether that's one person or 20 people, I think a lot of people still find some intimidation in giving and receiving feedback. [00:22:49] Barbara Mighdoll: And I think that's just something it's a learned skill. I would imagine working in a fully remote environment, like this can actually be really tricky, right? It's a different [00:23:00] skill than giving feedback in person. And I'd love to talk through some best practices with you that you've implemented or seen implemented on other teams. [00:23:09] Barbara Mighdoll: How do you think the best way is to deliver feedback in a remote world? [00:23:14] Melanie Rosenwasser: It's a great question. In terms of delivering feedback, it's really best received and easier to be given if there is trust between the two parties involved. And oftentimes the way that you gain trust is through vulnerability. And so, for example, in my role, I have found that over time, as my scope has increased and my organizations have grown, Less and less people feel comfortable giving me feedback. [00:23:42] Melanie Rosenwasser: And I think that's the nature of sort of hierarchy. But it's bad, it's bad for me. Because if no one is pushing back on me, then I am missing out on growth, right? And we're probably missing out on better decisions. And so, the way that I try to pull this out of people is I will share with them the things that I am working on. [00:23:59] Melanie Rosenwasser: Like, [00:24:00] outright, my development areas. But this, I think, lays the groundwork for, oh, okay, this person is interested in learning. They're interested in developing. They are being vulnerable. They know they have gaps. Um, and I think that's helped kind of open the door for people to then provide me feedback. I think if you're just giving feedback to a colleague, I think the best way to do it is through example and to do it quickly. [00:24:22] Melanie Rosenwasser: So we were just in a meeting, maybe something happened. Slack the person. Hey, can you just do a five minute chat with me? Here's how that landed, et cetera. I think that is a way that makes it feel a little bit more in the moment and natural, but it's tough to do. Honestly, even when we were in an office, it was tough to give and receive feedback. [00:24:40] Barbara Mighdoll: It's a hard skill. I love what you just said. Here's how that landed. I love that phrase. I'm going to use that on the topic of vulnerability though. How do you think becoming a mom has changed you as a leader and kind of your management style? [00:24:56] Melanie Rosenwasser: It's given me a ton of empathy for other working parents that I just [00:25:00] never had previously. [00:25:02] Melanie Rosenwasser: So I think that's the first. I think the other is the notion of prioritization becomes so important. And I've always been a big advocate of you have to prioritize your health and your family above all else. Work is always going to be here and my teammates and I, we sort of all share that same mantra and we cover for each other and we support each other and again, this is very much embedded in our culture. [00:25:28] Melanie Rosenwasser: And so I think my approach to work has changed in that I understand now that prioritization for working parents includes so much more than your work. It sure does. [00:25:41] Barbara Mighdoll: With your travel for work, speaking of priorities, Yes. Got it. You mentioned you're traveling sometimes every six weeks. What are three things that you kind of put in place ahead of travel to make sure that your house, your family, your husband, the kids are all kind of mentally and [00:26:00] physically prepared for you not to be there? [00:26:02] Melanie Rosenwasser: Yeah, that's a great question. Well, first, my mom will come and stay with us and stay with my husband every time I travel. And so there's just another set of hands. So there's like a support structure there that's incredibly helpful. I think the second thing is we just talk. We talk about what's going on, what the priorities are for the week. [00:26:17] Melanie Rosenwasser: game plan ahead of time to kind of take the thinking in the moment out of it. Right? So when there's a plan, things seem to be a lot easier. And then I'm transparent with how I'm going to be spending my time when I might have breaks to be able to do FaceTime and other things, just so that we can be coordinated, but it's tough. [00:26:34] Melanie Rosenwasser: So the last time I traveled, one of my kids contracted hand, foot and mouth disease from a pool. And so this was like a wrench in the whole thing. And so then, then both our kids had to be quarantined from one another because it's really contagious. And so sometimes things just get thrown in there and you just have to navigate them. [00:26:50] Barbara Mighdoll: Hands down one of the worst things to contract. Yeah, my son got it when my daughter was 10 days old, and we had to leave and go to my parents house for a [00:27:00] week when she was 10 days old by myself. Awful. When you are away, though, what are there like certain things that you do to really make sure you're making the most of your time? [00:27:09] Barbara Mighdoll: Not just for work, but. It is a time away just for you. [00:27:13] Melanie Rosenwasser: Yeah. So when I first started traveling after having kids, I just sort of felt like I was always in this funk or felt really guilty and wanted to cry every day because I missed my family. But now I think if there's one thing I would say it's, it's not to feel ashamed or guilty for experiencing joy. [00:27:31] Melanie Rosenwasser: And that also applies to if you happen to be on a work trip. So on my most recent work trip, I arrived a few years ago. Hours earlier than when we were kicking off. So I booked a massage and that's something I don't do when I'm home because I never have time. And so I think that would be my tip. It's like, it's okay to do the things that you wouldn't normally be able to do and take advantage of the time that you have. [00:27:51] Barbara Mighdoll: It's all about priorities, right? You prioritize yourself while you're gone. One of the biggest challenges I wasn't prepared for when I went back to [00:28:00] work after having kids was figuring out how to keep up with just. work and all of the things that come with having an infant at home. I knew to time block, right, for pumping or for feeding. [00:28:14] Barbara Mighdoll: With my second child, I didn't realize that with my first, but I still found it so difficult to keep up with certain things. A meeting ran over or if I just had too much work to do. And so I'm curious, how have you either done yourself or coach people on your team to manage breastfeeding or pumping while going back to work? [00:28:35] Melanie Rosenwasser: Yeah, that's a great question. So I had a lot of struggle With my first child, I struggled with postpartum anxiety and depression, and I actually attribute a lot of this to how difficult it was for me to breastfeed. I also had preeclampsia with my first child, so I ended up delivering five weeks early. So then, you know, this thing sets in where you're like, I can't carry [00:29:00] this baby to term. [00:29:01] Melanie Rosenwasser: I can't feed her properly. Am I even a mother? Who am I kind of thing, right? And so I have a ton of empathy for just how much it takes, how much it takes out of you physically and mentally and emotionally, and so for the mothers on my team, people block off time in their schedule whenever they need to. [00:29:18] Melanie Rosenwasser: They actually create their own schedules around these things. And so, again, this is something that's very much embedded in our culture. It's flexibility and agency over how and where you're spending your time, and it's a little bit less awkward to not be in an office, to be able to do things like this. [00:29:32] Melanie Rosenwasser: With postpartum [00:29:34] Barbara Mighdoll: mental fog, whether it's just really, truly feeling foggy, or if you're dealing with anxiety or depression, like, that's a very real thing, and a lot of women have to go back to work when they're still kind of dealing with this. How has being postpartum because you still are, right? You have a 10 and a half month old. [00:29:52] Barbara Mighdoll: How has that impacted you on the work front? [00:29:55] Melanie Rosenwasser: Yeah. So this is a real thing, right? This notion of postpartum [00:30:00] fog, you've got hormones, you've got stress, you're multitasking, you're sleep deprived, and this all obviously leads to, to cognitive impairment. And again, this impacted me a lot in my first few months post childbirth. [00:30:12] Melanie Rosenwasser: I remember my husband and I would be like trying to watch a show when I was pumping and he would make some comment about something that had just happened and I would have no idea what he's talking about. Like I'm watching the screen, I'm watching people's mouths move, but I'm actually not listening. I have no idea what's going on. [00:30:28] Melanie Rosenwasser: And that very much described my, my first like three to four months after giving birth to my daughter. And it was hard because I'm used to being on top of it and sharper, but this is a real thing. And I think going back to work. After parental leave is very, very rough. And so for me, I set the expectation with my team and my colleagues that I knew I was a little slower and a little rustier and to bear with me and continue to give me feedback, but know that this is an adjustment period for me. [00:30:57] Melanie Rosenwasser: And I think just saying it, I actually got more [00:31:00] support than I needed. Like I, I didn't want to be like tiptoed around or babied or any of that stuff, but I thought it was really important to bring people along with me just so that they knew what to expect. [00:31:09] Barbara Mighdoll: Goes back to that. Vulnerability piece you mentioned right kind of bringing your full self to work, which personally I didn't realize until I had kids that I wasn't being my full authentic self at work. [00:31:22] Barbara Mighdoll: And I think becoming a mom really showed that I can be and I'm confident in that, but it does take a large. level of vulnerability that you maybe are not used to. [00:31:35] Melanie Rosenwasser: 100%. And, and also there's this term around like work life balance that we're always talking about and hearing about. And something that I've, um, embraced is really the notion that work life balance is actually not, that's not a reasonable term. [00:31:53] Melanie Rosenwasser: There's no world in which work is 50 percent and then life is the other 50%. And so I've adopted this [00:32:00] notion of work life harmony, which is this like peaceful blending of how you spend, um, your time in your career with your life, there are always going to be ebbs and flows, there are going to be times where one is sacrificed for the other as all normal to try to keep it at a balance. [00:32:16] Melanie Rosenwasser: Always is impossible. And so I do like to think of it more as like it's harmony. That fluidity has been a much more manageable way of being. [00:32:25] Barbara Mighdoll: It's about setting the right expectations that I completely agree. I think this whole like work life balance thing is such a hoax. And personally for me, it's I want to feel fulfilled. [00:32:34] Barbara Mighdoll: That's the end goal, not balance. And so how am I prioritizing the things in my life that are going to make me feel fulfilled in my career, which is still very important to me and being present with my kids. I think a lot of our listeners, they're pregnant and they're thinking through what does that path to harmony or fulfillment look like? [00:32:54] Barbara Mighdoll: And I think a lot of women come back from maternity leave and they're like, this isn't it, [00:33:00] right? They're like, I need to find something else. And so what would you advise some of our listeners if they're starting to think about that next job or, or maybe even. Staying in their current job, but making some adjustments so that work. [00:33:15] Barbara Mighdoll: And life can live in harmony. [00:33:18] Melanie Rosenwasser: I think it's about being intentional on your decisions, because if you're intentional, there will not be a wrong decision and you do not have to justify those decisions to anyone. Your priorities are your priorities. This looks different for every single person, no explanation needed, and just stay true to yourself and the things that are important and the rest will take care of itself. [00:33:39] Melanie Rosenwasser: Of course, that's much easier said than done. But I do think that. If you have principles and you have things that are important to you in your life, go for it. There are no wrong turns. Career journeys are very, very long. And so we have a lot of time to prioritize the right things. And I think now more than ever, this notion of flexibility, [00:34:00] even in your career journey is expected. [00:34:02] Melanie Rosenwasser: It used to be if there were a gap in a resume, that would be an actual question in an interview. Now it isn't. And now I think when people take time to prioritize the things in life. Whether it's you're a working parent, so you want to spend time with your kids, or you're not, and you want to travel, or you want to write a book, or you want to go back to school. [00:34:21] Melanie Rosenwasser: It's you do you, right? And I think, I think it's really important to embrace that, and know that it's not going to actually hamper your job prospects in the future, because it's so commonplace now, that I actually think that employers, They like to hear those types of stories. They want to know what you're passionate about and what you care about, right? [00:34:42] Melanie Rosenwasser: And so capitalize on this time because it's quite different than what it looked like 10 years ago. [00:34:47] Barbara Mighdoll: Absolutely. I think it is really interesting to see the evolution and even just the last few years of this notion that having a few months off between jobs Totally normal. And in [00:35:00] fact, to your point, it actually adds a lot of interest to your story. [00:35:03] Barbara Mighdoll: And so now is the time to, to have those introspective thoughts, take the time off, go on that trip with, with your kids when they're still young. I [00:35:14] Melanie Rosenwasser: absolutely agree. I run HR. So more often than not, when we are making offers to people, their start dates are like months later because they say I need to take a break. [00:35:25] Melanie Rosenwasser: Like I need a couple of months off and it's like a problem. Let us know when you want to start. So that is just, it's become so commonplace, which is great. [00:35:33] Barbara Mighdoll: That's great to hear. And for all of our listeners, just normalize that and do it. Take the time. . Melanie, what would you say is your professional superpower and how have you seen it show up in your personal and family life? [00:35:46] Melanie Rosenwasser: So I think some of the things are transferable and some are not. So I think the first is I love developing teams and helping others realize their potential. This probably will be more applicable to my personal life as my kids kind of [00:36:00] get older. One thing that probably is applicable, I'm a task master. I can get an incredible amount of things done in relatively little time with surprisingly decent quality. [00:36:11] Melanie Rosenwasser: I've always been that way. So that's been very helpful, but everything is balanced. So even your superpowers can become like an Achilles heel if they're overused. Right? So if I overuse this muscle, it comes across as like frenetic or frantic energy, which is sort of the opposite of the environment I want for my kids. [00:36:29] Melanie Rosenwasser: And so I'm always looking for a way to make sure that I'm not overdoing it. And I think that's true again, of any superpower. [00:36:37] Barbara Mighdoll: I love that perspective. I've never thought of it that way, but it's true. I, I very much lean on my ability to create order out of chaos. But if I over lean into it, I just get to a point where I don't even want to leverage that. [00:36:51] Barbara Mighdoll: I'm like, I don't want to do anything that has to do with organization. So that's a really interesting perspective. Thanks for sharing. How can listeners connect with you beyond this [00:37:00] episode? [00:37:01] Melanie Rosenwasser: Yeah. So I think LinkedIn is probably the [00:37:03] Barbara Mighdoll: best [00:37:04] Melanie Rosenwasser: way. Yeah. I tend to actually be pretty responsive and active on there. [00:37:08] Melanie Rosenwasser: So, so that'd be best. [00:37:09] Barbara Mighdoll: That's perfect. I I'm sure some of our listeners will want to reach out to you. Melanie, thank you so much for being a guest today. I have thoroughly enjoyed our conversation. [00:37:18] Melanie Rosenwasser: Thanks so much, Barbara. It's been great. I really appreciate it. [00:37:21] Barbara Mighdoll: Thanks for listening to this episode of the new modern mom podcast. I hope you can use the story shared today to simplify the chaos of career and motherhood. If you like what you heard, don't forget to subscribe to this podcast. Give us a five star rating and leave a review. Please connect with me on LinkedIn and follow new modern mom on Instagram. [00:37:41] Barbara Mighdoll: I know you're busy and I so appreciate your support for my mission to help more moms find work life fulfillment. And I have good news. The playbook doesn't end here. To get bonus strategies, tools, and takeaways from this guest, sign up for my newsletter at NewModernMom. com backslash subscribe. I [00:38:00] promise you'll be filing this under a must read.Author
