Jen Moncada wants kids and adults to pursue their interests and express themselves while learning, working and growing as a family. “It is very important to me that everyone is doing what they should be doing as far as their own personal fulfillment,” she says. “That is something that I’m preoccupied with whether it’s my friends, or my family, or my customer.” It’s one of the light bulbs that inspired Jen to create Preppy Prodigy as a means to help her son get excited about schoolwork. “I started making stuff to get him to do his homework,'” she recalls. “Back-to-school shopping for school sup ..read more

Talla Kuperman lived more life in her first five years as an Iranian refugee, and again when she lost her brother to cancer at age 30, than many do in a lifetime. And yet, she radiates joy and immediate warmth—both of which are propelling her entrepreneurial journey as the founder of Love Talla fine jewelry fingerprint pendants—as I’ve had the pleasure of getting to know as my first client, friend in my new neighborhood and fellow food allergy mama. “I was born into the war and the revolution had already been happening for so long, so that was normal life to me, you know,” she says. “I have me ..read more

Pamelyn Rocco wants to remind us that no matter how busy life gets, we can still carve out moments to feel grateful. “Instead of being annoyed at all of the driving that I have to do, we take it as a time to look outside at nature and be grateful,” she says about chauffeuring her girls between activities. “Tennessee is so beautiful right now, like the amount of colors coming off of these trees and plants, it’s just gorgeous.” “We’ll see how many colors we can count of flowers getting from here to the soccer field.” It’s just one of the ways Pamelyn taps into her surroundings to guide her famil ..read more

Cameca Bacchus doesn’t shy away from reinvention, having toggled between corporate roles, baking and motherhood. She takes inspiration from women like Sylvia Weinstock who achieved success much later in life. “I can crunch numbers well, but my passion really is baking,” she says. “When the subprime crisis happened, I remember walking to my office one day and seeing people leaving with all their stuff at the time, losing their jobs left and right,” she recalls. “I said, ‘it might be a matter of time before I’m one of those people, so maybe I should figure out what I really enjoy instead of what ..read more

While the world was in quarantine, Abigail Nawrocki worked 12-hour shifts with her team to keep online orders humming, moved across the country, and had a baby. “When everything shut down last year, everybody started ordering more from home and relying on more distribution companies to get them the goods that they wanted,” she says. “In the beginning it was scary because we were all still going to work and there were so many unknowns with COVID, but I think now everybody’s got really good corporate policies around it, there’s a lot of structure and safety so we’re just enjoying it and riding t ..read more

Every day Lesley Osei answers the call to help others, beyond her five children under four and her six siblings, across fifteen acres where she and her husband are building a church in Connecticut, with the thousands of followers she motivates on Instagram, all the way to Ghana where she’s bringing basic comforts to rural mothers-to-be. “We actually stumbled upon a village where you can’t even take a car or bus there,” she recalls. “Once a month, they have to go and fetch water–it’s like a big thing–and so what we’re doing now is we’re getting developers to go and dig a well so that it will be ..read more

April Beach grew up tumbling around the waves of California and Hawaii long before she established the rhythm of entrepreneurial life as a mom of three boys. “I learned how to stay calm in really scary situations,” she says, a skill which helped propel the growth of her companies while her kids were still babies. “Frankly, then it was like survival,” April recalls. “I would literally have 20 minutes to work and then I would have to go breastfeed, and then 15 minutes to work and then break up a fight, or three minutes to work and somebody fell down the stairs.” Fire drill scenarios are never ou ..read more

Gladys Simen is known as the “motivation whisperer” among friends and colleagues–something we could all use right now. She’s recognized her own courage to propel forward through any circumstances, whether that’s starting over in five different countries or navigating the compounding responsibilities of working motherhood. “I came to a country that was not originally mine with no support system and it stretched me and I didn’t break,” she recalls. For Gladys, it took a pandemic and racial tension reaching a tipping point to finally recognize her superpowers: being brave and “super acutely aware ..read more

Lisa Herrington emerged from the most unfathomable experience a parent can have by choosing connection over confinement, ultimately helping others do the same. “I was pretty quiet for like those first six or seven months because I didn’t know if I was going to survive it,” she says. “You suddenly feel like you’re completely alone and nobody understands what you’re going through, and I was so scared of the emotions that I was feeling.” The life that Lisa and her husband had envisioned before they went to the hospital to deliver twins looked tragically different as they cradled one of their babi ..read more

On Mother’s Day, after a discouraging attempt to make Neiman Marcus’ chocolate chip cookies inspired by memories of mother-daughter shopping trips, Julie Barrier faced a heart wrenching question. “Do you want to see your mom?” read the text from her mother’s caregiver as Julie was pulling up with flowers and groceries. It had been 10 weeks since their visits had gone virtual, just before LA’s lockdown. “That was a very, very emotional moment for me during all of this because what am I supposed to answer?” she recalls in the moments leading up to their masked reunion in the building’s lobby. “I ..read more