Hi, I’m Coral.
After having two children and returning to work, I felt completely lost and directionless — my identity had shattered, and I didn't know who I was anymore. Over the years, I picked up the pieces and created a new vision for my life, identity, and purpose.
Now I'm on a mission to help moms and primary caregivers navigate their own journeys, for a more fulfilling and authentic path forward. In addition to supporting individuals, I help organizations implement practices that offer deeply needed support to moms and primary caregivers — because we can’t make these changes alone.
Expectations vs reality
Before having a baby, I had spent many years in New York City, climbing the ladder in the tech world. My career was a key part of my identity.
When I was pregnant, I figured I'd go away for 12 weeks to have the baby, maybe come back after eight weeks because I'd be bored, then restart work as the same person I always was — just being a mom before and after work, instead.
I assumed the company I worked at would do a good job of supporting me because they did a great job of supporting everyone. Plus, I knew several employees at the company had gone through pregnancies — there just hadn't had any birthparents who were also managers. I didn’t realize how significant that seemingly minor detail would become.
When I returned to work after using up my parental leave, I was surviving on a grueling four hours of sleep a night — and had been doing so for the 12 weeks leading up to my return. Both my husband and I were stretched to the breaking point, and I suffered from postpartum depression with suicidal thoughts.
The jarring transition left me feeling overwhelmed and under-supported — and my personal sense of self was completely shattered.
I knew I was a different person, but I didn’t understand my new identity, I didn’t know who I was anymore.
A personal struggle with a national problem
In the midst of the pandemic in 2020, 1 in 4 women considered leaving the workforce or downshifting their careers.
For many in the United States, the opportunity of having 12 weeks of paid maternity leave feels lucky. While I was fortunate in relative terms, the transition still left me reeling — and revealed to me it’s not even the bare minimum any birthparent deserves.
At a company with a typical philosophy of "as long as you get your work done, we don't care about your work schedule," I found that being a mother subjected me to a double standard. Suddenly, I constantly had to prove my worth as a manager as the expectations of my role had changed.
I came back to the office under scrutiny because I had “taken 12 weeks off” when I needed flexibility instead of the expectation to hit the ground running the second I returned.
My personal experience is part of a larger whole: A study by McKinsey found that during the pandemic, women were feeling more pressure at work than men — more exhausted, burned out, and disproportionately overburdened with labor at home.
A new vision for myself and others
Over the next few years, I became a vocal advocate for better parental leave policies and support at work — especially for birth parents and primary caregivers who carry tremendous responsibility.
By the time I became pregnant with my daughter a little over three years later, my work policy had changed to 16 weeks of paid leave plus two weeks of transitioning time back. We also had access to Maven, a virtual care platform for families.
While this was an improvement, it still wasn't enough. The company had no parental leave guidelines, no transition plans, and no support systems in place. The only way to change the policy was through taking action through advocacy with other mothers who were in the same boat.
Through this experience, I realized my mission: to empower parents through coaching, marketing consulting, internal organization policy and culture advocacy, and public policy advocacy.
The United States’ abysmal parental support statistics speak for themselves. My mission is to create environments that offer birth parents, mothers, and primary caregivers the ability to bring our full selves to work with comprehensive support. We deserve to be appreciated and truly supported as the powerhouses and assets that we are.
