I Didn’t Know Who I Was Outside of Google with Sara Holcomb

You're Not as Stuck as You Think with Dr. Robyn Riseberg

Dr. Robyn Riseberg didn't set out to become an entrepreneur. She set out to become a pediatrician. But after years caring for children and families across Boston, she found herself increasingly frustrated by the limitations of the healthcare system around her. So frustrated, in fact, that her daughters eventually told her to stop complaining and build something better. That challenge led Dr. Riseberg to start Boston Community Pediatrics [https://www.bostoncommunitypediatrics.org/] – the first nonprofit pediatric private practice in Massachusetts – with a mission to expand equity in pediatric healthcare by removing barriers and building a more integrated support system for families often failed by traditional models of medicine. Her work has earned recognition from organizations including The Women’s Edge, the Massachusetts Commission on the Status of Women, and the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce. Boston Community Pediatrics was recently named one of the Boston Business Journal’s Best Places to Work. In this conversation, we talk about the decisions that feel permanent until they aren't: leaving opportunities that no longer fit, stepping into leadership before you feel ready, taking risks without certainty, and learning that many of life's biggest choices are more reversible than they seem. We get into: – Why she left a prestigious fellowship after becoming a mother – The leadership role she initially didn't want – and how it changed the trajectory of her career – What her daughters taught her about complaining versus building – Why so many career decisions feel more permanent than they actually are – The emotional weight of asking people to believe in your vision financially – The moment she realized, "I love the work. I just shouldn't have to hate the rest of it." A conversation about leadership, motherhood, conviction, and the surprising freedom that comes from realizing you're not as stuck as you think. ******* ⭐️ Follow The Mothers and leave a 5-star review if this resonated 💬 Share this episode with someone who needs to hear it 📱 Join The Mothers on Instagram @themotherspod [https://www.instagram.com/themotherspod] ✍️ Subscribe to ⁠⁠Sara’s Substack [https://sarasedgwickbrown.substack.com/]⁠⁠ for reflections on life, work, meaning & motherhood 💼 Find Sara on ⁠LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarasedgwickbrown/] The Mothers is a production of Backline Media.

What Do You Actually Want? Work, Motherhood & Reinvention with Trish Walker

For decades, Trish Walker operated at the highest levels of corporate America – first rising to Senior Managing Director at Accenture, then as President of Home & Services at Best Buy. But beneath the executive titles was a more personal set of questions: What kind of life actually feels sustainable? How do you know when something is no longer working? And how do you separate what you truly want from what you’ve simply been taught to want? In this episode, Sara and Trish talk about the hidden architecture behind ambitious lives: infertility, miscarriages, marriage negotiations, work travel, grief, caregiving, identity shifts, boundaries, and the difficult conversations most people avoid for far too long. They also discuss: – Raising children while traveling four days a week – Having a stay-at-home dad before that arrangement became culturally common – Why women are often exhausted from defending their decisions – The pressure of “having it all” – Why personal growth often feels uncomfortable – Learning to let go of perfectionism and external expectations Today, Trish is the founder of My Daily Dash [https://www.mydaily-dash.com/], where she works as an executive coach and speaker helping leaders stress less, find clarity, and lead with purpose. A thoughtful conversation about ambition, honesty, reinvention, and the many ways a meaningful life can take shape. Learn more about Trish and her work at www.mydaily-dash.com [http://www.mydaily-dash.com] ******* ⭐️ Follow The Mothers and leave a 5-star review if this resonated 💬 Share this episode with someone who needs to hear it 📱 Join The Mothers on Instagram @themotherspod [https://www.instagram.com/themotherspod] ✍️ Subscribe to ⁠⁠Sara’s Substack [https://sarasedgwickbrown.substack.com/]⁠⁠ for reflections on life, work, meaning & motherhood 💼 Find Sara on ⁠LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarasedgwickbrown/] The Mothers is a production of Backline Media.

Highly Competent. Deeply Overwhelmed. with Emily Greenberg

Many high-achieving women believe that if they prepare well enough, work hard enough, and become competent enough, they can prevent things from falling apart. Then they become mothers. Emily Greenberg spent her career working across nearly every layer of the modern childhood ecosystem – from teaching sixth grade to building parenting products and family platforms at companies including Lovevery, AltSchool, Wonderschool, and Higher Ground Education. She also holds a masters in education from New York University. And yet even she found herself overwhelmed by the transition into parenthood – navigating postpartum depression and unsettled by how difficult it was to maintain a sense of confidence and control inside early motherhood.  That experience ultimately led her to co-found Joy Parenting Club [https://joy.co/], an AI-enabled parenting support platform for families with young children, where she serves as president. Emily speaks candidly about postpartum depression, the transition into working motherhood, and the reality that modern parenting often functions as an invisible infrastructure problem carried privately by families – and disproportionately by women. We talk about: – why motherhood can fundamentally reshape identity for high-achieving women – the hidden operational labor required to run a modern family – why parenting support remains overwhelmingly reactive instead of preventative – how AI may function as cognitive support for overwhelmed parents – and how founders navigate ambition, uncertainty, and selfhood while raising young children This is a conversation about what happens when highly capable women encounter systems that were never actually built to support them – and what we might build instead. ****** The Boston Alliance for LGBTQ Youth [https://www.bagly.org/] (BAGLY) is hosting its annual Heels for Hope [http://bagly.org/heels] fundraiser on May 29 in Boston. BAGLY provides free support and services – from health screenings to therapy to basic necessities – for LGBTQ youth across Greater Boston. 👉 Visit BAGLY.org/heels [http://bagly.org/heels] to donate or get tickets to attend Heels for Hope ******* ⭐️ Follow The Mothers and leave a 5-star review if this resonated 💬 Share this episode with someone who needs to hear it 📱 Join The Mothers on Instagram @themotherspod [https://www.instagram.com/themotherspod] ✍️ Subscribe to ⁠⁠Sara’s Substack [https://sarasedgwickbrown.substack.com/]⁠⁠ for reflections on life, work, meaning & motherhood 💼 Find Sara on ⁠LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarasedgwickbrown/] The Mothers is a production of Backline Media.

I Didn’t Know Who I Was Outside of Google with Sara Holcomb

Sara Holcomb spent 16 years inside Google before leaving for senior roles at Dentsu and Criteo, where she's now SVP of Strategy. But the more interesting story isn't the resume – it's what happens when the thing you've built your entire identity around is suddenly gone. And then, on top of that: her younger son August started losing his hearing. We talk about the months-long diagnostic journey that led to his diagnosis of congenital CMV – the leading non-genetic cause of childhood hearing loss – and how that experience cracked Sara open in ways that a 16-year career never did. In this episode, Sara takes us from Atlanta to Cambridge, from the phone-lines of AdWords to senior leadership at Criteo and into the much harder, more human story underneath all of it: – Why high-achieving women confuse institutional success with identity – The slow, uncomfortable process of detaching your sense of self from a company – How stability at work becomes a coping mechanism when life gets hard at home – What chronic vigilance looks like for parents of medically complex children – Why Sara is fighting for universal newborn cCMV screening in Massachusetts If you live in Massachusetts, you can help support legislation requiring newborn cCMV screening. Click this link to VoterVoice [https://www.votervoice.net/mobile/NationalCMV/Campaigns/134843/Respond] for an email tailored to your local representative. The bill, with Sara’s help, is up for voting this summer. Every email counts: https://www.votervoice.net/mobile/NationalCMV/Campaigns/134843/Respond ****** The Boston Alliance for LGBTQ Youth [https://www.bagly.org/] (BAGLY) is hosting its annual Heels for Hope [http://bagly.org/heels] fundraiser on May 29 in Boston. BAGLY provides free support and services – from health screenings to therapy to basic necessities – for LGBTQ youth across Greater Boston. 👉 Visit BAGLY.org/heels [http://bagly.org/heels] to donate or get tickets to attend Heels for Hope ******* ⭐️ Follow The Mothers and leave a 5-star review if this resonated 💬 Share this episode with someone who needs to hear it 📱 Join The Mothers on Instagram @themotherspod [https://www.instagram.com/themotherspod] ✍️ Subscribe to ⁠⁠Sara’s Substack [https://sarasedgwickbrown.substack.com/]⁠⁠ for reflections on life, work, meaning & motherhood 💼 Find Sara on ⁠LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarasedgwickbrown/] The Mothers is a production of Backline Media.

Are You an Artist or an Entrepreneur? with Miki Agrawal

Miki Agrawal [https://mikiagrawal.com/] has built four companies. She has disrupted pizza, periods, bathrooms, and diapers. She has written two books, raised millions, and scaled brands that changed how people think about the most intimate parts of daily life. And she has no interest in building that way again. Miki is the founder of WILD [https://wildrestaurantnyc.com/], THINX [https://www.thinx.com/], TUSHY [https://hellotushy.com/] and most recently HIRO Technologies [https://hirodiapers.com/]. She is a serial entrepreneur who sees herself, first and foremost, as an artist.  What's striking about this moment in her life is not what she's built. It's the questions she's asking now:  What if building didn't have to come from pressure?  What if a company could grow the way nature grows – not by force, but by flourishing? In this conversation, we get underneath the resume and into the shift beneath it – the difference between building from urgency and building from alignment, what it took to dismantle the version of herself that "worked," and why she's investing as much in her inner landscape as her outer one. We also talk about motherhood and the particular kind of cracking open that happened when her son Hiro was born. How unconditional love rearranged something in her. How creativity and parenthood feed each other. And what it looks like to hold both a live-wire creative identity and the quiet dailiness of raising a child. This is a conversation about ambition. But more than that, it's about what happens when someone who has already proven everything turns inward – and starts asking what it would mean to build a life, and a company, from that place instead. Mentioned in this episode: - https://mikiagrawal.com/ [https://mikiagrawal.com/] - https://www.thinx.com/ [https://www.thinx.com/] - https://hellotushy.com/ [https://hellotushy.com/] - https://hirodiapers.com/ [https://hirodiapers.com/] - https://wildrestaurantnyc.com/ [https://wildrestaurantnyc.com/] - Miki’s recent TEDx talk “How Fungi Can Eat Plastic” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uud-93UQquI [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uud-93UQquI] ******* ⭐️ Follow The Mothers and leave a 5-star review if this resonated 💬 Share this episode with someone who would love it 📱 Join The Mothers on Instagram @themotherspod [https://www.instagram.com/themotherspod] ✍️ Subscribe to ⁠⁠Sara’s Substack [https://sarasedgwickbrown.substack.com/]⁠⁠ for reflections on life, work, meaning & motherhood 💼 Find Sara on ⁠LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarasedgwickbrown/] The Mothers is a production of Backline Media.