“If I give myself a vision of where I want to get to and then only identify the next step... I actually end up going to places that I hoped to get to but that seemed like a wild dream.”
Summer Edwards is a Life and Leadership Coach, and the founder of Lead Mama Lead, a social enterprise that empowers working mothers to drive change in the workplace. With a background in community development programs, working in Indigenous Affairs and internationally in developing countries, she has a strong interest in gender empowerment work, inclusive economies and social enterprise development. After becoming a mother, Summer transitioned from employment into a freelance career in community development and the social innovation sector, working with social enterprises and NGOs to capture and learn from the social impact of their work. Still, she found herself called to do something more with her experiences and challenges with work and motherhood. The Lead Mama Lead community (based around a website and a Facebook group) was born, because engaged motherhood and an engaged career should not be mutually exclusive.
“I quickly found that a job that I’d loved and was so challenging, and gave me so much variety and opportunity, became very routine and pigeonholed as I returned to the office 3 days a week… I felt really dissatisfied and trapped.”
“The solution cannot be for everyone to haemorrhage from existing institutions, corporations, public service agencies. We need to keep mums in these roles, we need their perspectives on policies and product decisions, and every facet of our economy, so we can’t have everyone [become a freelancer].”
“Mums should be able to have a meaningful and engaged career, and have the time that they want for their family and to take care of themselves.”
“If I give myself a vision of where I want to get to and then only identify the next step... I actually end up going to places that I hoped to get to but that seemed like a wild dream.”
“We can’t transform our work overnight but can we can do little 1% changes that will move us closer to where we want to go.”
“We [need to] transform our workplaces so that they recognise that life outside of work is there and it matters and it doesn’t get in the way of being a good, productive employee.”
“We should never forget that great change often seems impossible before it happens and we just have to trust that every little thing we do to stand up for ourselves is going to contribute to the tipping point that will normalise a different view of mums and flexible workers in the workplace.”
“Women are expected to work like nothing’s changed in their life after they’ve become a mum, but they’re also expected to be a Mum as if they don’t have a job. And we internalise those expectations of ourselves and think that we are failing if we’re not performing. We need to let go of unrealistic expectations that we have about ourselves.”
We mention some resources in this episode, including ways to work with Summer:
The Lead Mama Lead Website
The Lead Mama Lead Facebook Group
Summer’s Overcoming Overwhelm course
We also mentioned authors Brené Brown and Annabel Crabb, who you can find on Twitter.
