This post is part of my subseries on how organizations can transform leadership development for women, as described through the eyes of experts as well as women’s lived experiences, and where gaps remain. Each of the posts from these subseries is pulled together from interviews. Direct quotes are notated in italics. There was no conflict of interest to disclose with this interview. The author of this post did not receive any financial benefit or compensation for conducting or writing this interview.

In this interview, I explore the different needs women have along their personal journeys that may impact their professional careers through the eyes of Addie Swartz. Addie is an award-winning serial entrepreneur who founded three gender-centric businesses at the intersection of media, technology, and education.

Addie’s journey began with her personal experiences as a working mother frustrated by the lack of flexibility in the workplace. She shared,

“My companies have followed the [gender] gaps I saw along the way in my own journey. The first gap I saw was in the lack of flexibility. When I was on maternity leave with my oldest daughter, I saw women at home raising their families who also wanted to progress professionally. They didn’t want to go all in career-wise and couldn’t find many flexible options to leverage their know-how and drive.”

As a result of her experiences, she founded BrightIdeas, a company focused on helping stay-at-home mothers become a part-time, tech-enabled salesforce for children’s educational software (eventually acquired by Pearson Education). “Moms, who typically took primary responsibility for developing their young children, were a natural for explaining the benefits of educational software,” added Swartz.

Her next company was a book series and media brand called The Beacon Street Girls, which came from her frustration as a mother trying to find positive role models and healthier messages for ’tween girls (the book series was licensed to Simon & Schuster after selling 1.5M books).

She learned that young girls often lose confidence and self-esteem around the age of 10 and that early interventions help in combating gendered messages and promoting healthy self-identity in girls.

“As professionals, women sometimes end up feeling less confident, less sure of themselves. We don't know what our voice is. We instead think we need to fit into the male constructs served up to us in the workplace. So, I really felt it important for my daughters—and everyone’s daughters—to provide healthier messages, better role models early, so they were better prepared for the world that lay ahead.”

Addie embedded advice from experts into the young adult fiction genre. She partnered with Duke Medical Center on a longitudinal, randomized, controlled trial following 81 girls ages 9 through 13 who were at risk of Type 2 diabetes and evaluated the impact of one of the book’s stories focused on healthy eating. The study, published in the American Association of Pediatrics, demonstrated preliminary evidence that reading the book had a positive impact on healthy eating, attitudes towards self, exercise, and behavior, with a significantly greater reduction in BMI percentile than those who did not receive a book.

Addie remarked, “It was exciting to see that storytelling could really change attitudes and impact behaviors towards oneself and how we thought about the world.”

Addie’s third company, reacHIRE, resulted from a car accident that forced her to step out of the workforce temporarily to take care of her daughter. During this time, she observed other women struggling to re-enter the workforce after taking breaks for various reasons:

“As I was taking my daughter to medical appointments and to school for two hours at a time, I looked around and saw talented women who were struggling—who’d been out of work longer, and who just couldn't get back to work. These women had invested five or 10 years in a career, and had stepped away to raise a family or perhaps due to health reasons, and they just couldn't get back. Women were often organizing a complex set of home activities, or helping non-profits make great strides, but the world is very unforgiving of resume gaps.”

Addie realized the need to address the challenges faced by women trying to return to work after career gaps: “If you’ve taken time off, you shouldn’t be penalized. You should be able to get back, build new skills, and build on the skills you have.”

With reacHIRE, she created a systematic cohort-based approach to help women regain their work confidence, refresh their skills, and return to work, with participants supporting each other through their return-to-work journey and receiving needed mentorship.

After five years of doing this work, Addie recognized that some of the same approaches to community building and support could also be applied to help women more effectively advance their careers in what are typically male-dominated company cultures. In particular, women leave STEM fields at higher rates than men do, and the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated this problem. In order to minimize the gender gap in STEM leadership, Addie developed Aurora, a cohort-based women’s leadership development program, with a unique aspect: Cohort members have the opportunity to learn from experienced female executives while also developing their leadership skill set.

In a research partnership with Stanford University on retaining women in STEM during the pandemic, they found that programs like Aurora are low-cost, scalable ways to help recruit and retain more women in STEM. More specifically, the study found that supporting early-career women in STEM with soft skills led to an increase in their confidence as well as the manager-assessed performance of their abilities, which were associated with greater odds of retention.

Addie’s work targeting different phases of girls’ and women’s lived experiences and leadership journeys all address several critical concerns we have discussed in this blog series:

Women have insufficient support systems that directly impact their career trajectories.
Those insufficient support systems are related to both gender disparities in caregiving in the U.S. and gender biases related to what characteristics are considered “promotable.”
Women’s self-esteem and identity are shaped very early and perpetuated throughout their lives, which has a significant additional impact on career barriers.

As organizations strive to support women in leadership, Addie Swartz’s experiences and insights offer several valuable takeaways for organizations seeking to retain and engage talented, high-performing women.

Awareness: Recognize and acknowledge the unique challenges women face, including gender biases and systemic barriers.
Training: Invest proactively in programs known to significantly impact their success and advancement within the company, including on-the-job re-entry training. This is especially critical for women who have had to take significant career breaks due to disparities in caregiving expectations for women.
Community: Create and offer a community of peers that can offer support and validation of shared experiences.
Flexibility: Embrace flexible work arrangements, such as remote work options. The pandemic has highlighted the importance of work-life balance and the need for more flexible work environments, allowing women to juggle their professional and personal responsibilities effectively.

As Addie aptly puts it, “Recognizing potential, ensuring people bring their best selves, and supporting them with community, connections, curriculum, and coaching are the keys to unlocking the potential of women in leadership.”

Mira Brancu is co-author of the Millennials’ Guide to Workplace Politics, which includes tips like those above and more.