Why a former SoftBank partner is tackling mid-career drop-off for working mothers

– Inflection point. As Kirthiga Reddy advanced in her career, becoming managing director for Facebook India and then the first female investing partner at SoftBank Vision Fund manager SoftBank Investment Advisors, she came up with a years-long strategy to balance her work and home lives.

“I decided early on that I was going to work really, really hard when my children were young,” she reflects now. “To be in a place to have more flexibility when they were teenagers.”

The strategy was a “personal choice,” says Reddy, whose children are now 16 and 19. And she watched women around her make different decisions. The experience has been on her mind as Reddy, who is now president of the women-led SPAC Athena Technology II, launches her next endeavor. The executive is the co-founder of Laddrr, a platform launching today that aims to prevent mid-career drop-off for working mothers, Coins2Day is the first to report.

Courtesy of Laddrr

Reddy, 50, cofounded the platform with Eightfold.ai CEO Ashutosh Garg, who came up with the idea after watching the career struggles his wife, engineer Shilpi Agarwal, encountered, like seeing interest from a hiring company dissipate when interviewers realized she was pregnant. Laddrr cites research from the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, which found that a year without employment can result in 39% lower pay for women; the think tank ThirdWay, meanwhile, found that pay for fathers increases by 6% with each additional child—a gap often referred to as the “motherhood penalty.”

Targeting women and managers in the U.S., Europe, and India, Laddrr aims to be an educational tool for women looking for support maintaining momentum in their careers or returning to the workforce after time spent as caregivers. To start, that will take the form of educational content about topics like how to talk to your manager about your parental leave and ways to stay up-to-date on skills during time away from a formal job. The website will also aim to reach companies and encourage organizations to do more to support mid-career employees who have children—not with at-home support as some platforms like Cleo offer, but with career development guidance tailored to their stage of life.

Reddy’s own experience is one example of the kind of role modeling the platform aims to offer. While her choice to prioritize work while her children were young with an anticipated family payoff down the road may not appeal to all parents, she thinks they should know it’s an option. “I’ve shared this with some younger moms as an alternate approach. They say, ‘That seems interesting. That resonates with me,'” she says. “And there might be a different model that resonates with other young moms, or a third one.”

Ultimately, Reddy and Garg’s goal is to share information with women at a critical point in their careers. As Reddy describes the informal information-gathering many women do when they have kids or seek to return to work: “It should not be a black box of discovery every single time.”

Emma Hinchliffe
[email protected]
@_emmahinchliffe

The Broadsheet is Coins2Day’s newsletter for and about the world’s most powerful women. Today’s edition was curated by Paige McGlauflin. Subscribe here.

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- Cover star. First Lady Jill Biden was profiled by Harper's Bazaar, sharing how she balances her personal life, job as a community college professor, and role as the first lady. "Things change so fast. You have to be flexible, or else you won’t survive the job," Biden said. She also opened up about getting divorced in her mid-20s and how she and the president settle arguments over text, which they call "fexting." Harper's Bazaar

- SCOTUS search. Supreme Court officials are intensifying efforts to find the source of the leaked draft opinion overturning Roe v. Wade. The investigation has been unfruitful, and law clerks may now be forced to provide cell phone records and sign affidavits. Clerks, alarmed by the requests to hand over private cell phone data, are now considering hiring outside counsel. CNN

- At the Open. At the French Open on Monday, Chinese player Zheng Qinwen lost to Polish player Iga Swiatek after taking a medical break due to menstrual pain. “I really wish I can be (a) man (so) that I don't have to suffer from this,” Zheng told reporters after the match. Coco Gauff, the 18-year-old American tennis player, advanced to the semifinals after defeating athlete Sloane Stephens. Gauff will face Italian player Martina Trevisan on Thursday. 

- Celebration schedule. The Platinum Jubilee, celebrating the 70th anniversary of Queen Elizabeth II’s reign, begins tomorrow in the U.K. The three-day bank holiday will kick off with Trooping the Color, an annual parade celebrating the Queen’s birthday on Thursday. Other events in the weekend-long celebration include a derby on Saturday and a concert at Buckingham Palace on Sunday. For a visualization of just how long the Queen has been on the throne, check out this Washington Post  timeline, chronicling her ascension at age 25 in 1952, working relationships with 14 prime ministers, and meetings with 13 U.S. Presidents. 

MOVERS AND SHAKERS: Former Squarespace vice president of engineering Natasha Krasnov has joined Wirecutter as vice president of engineering. The Libra Group has appointed Arguiró Elefteriu as chief sustainability officer. Sue McKinney, former senior vice president of cloud platform engineering and development transformation at Anaplan, has joined Cisco AppDynamics as vice president of engineering.

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT

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- Necessary reforms. The Canadian military has failed to implement reforms for handling sexual misconduct, according to a report from former Canadian Supreme Court Justice Louise Arbor. The country's military is "not ready to fully embrace the paradigm shift required to produce these changes" after a 2015 report found that a quarter of Canadian servicewomen have been assaulted during their military careers. But Arbour provided 48 recommendations for the military to follow, including hiring external monitors for implementation and issuing regular public reports. New York Times

- Not so far far away. Moses Ingram, who stars as antagonist Reva Sevander in the new Star Wars series Obi-Wan Kenobi, shared that she’s been subjected to hundreds of racist messages from Star Wars fans on social media since the show’s release last Friday. Fellow Star Wars actors John Boyega and Kelly Marie Tran have reported receiving racist harassment online after joining the franchise, and both Tran and Daisy Ridley left social media because of the harassment. In a tweet, the official Star Wars account defended Ingram, writing, "there are more than 20 million sentient species in the Star Wars galaxy, don’t choose to be a racist." Variety

ON MY RADAR

‘He needs to be stopped’: Sources say No Time to Die director Cary Fukunaga ‘abused his power’ to pursue young women on set Rolling Stone

Why fangirls scream Atlantic

Angel Olsen sees your pain New Yorker 

Grace Faison, the 97-year-old Brooklyn Heights fixture, housed women seeking illegal abortions in the late '60s The Cut

PARTING WORDS

"This is what I say to the younger people in Congress—do you want to make a point or do you want to make a difference?"

- Rep. Karen Bass, Los Angeles mayoral candidate, on her shift from activism to pragmatism as an elected official.