By: Kristen Koh Goldstein, HireAthena CEO
Reinventing Work – What Will It Take To Bring A Million Moms Back To Work?
Today, we are launching HireAthena, the accounting and HR labor marketplace that combines the best of BackOps service and Scalus software. We are grateful to our many partners that support the HireAthena marketplace for work-from-home moms (and dads)! We’ve dedicated the past two years to building technology that enables remote, flexible work for stay-at-home parents.
Our mission is to bring one million moms back to work. At HireAthena, we provide the flexibility to work around school schedules, then finish each day’s workload after the kids go to bed. Our team has always been full-time employees with benefits. We believe passionately that the most scalable and sustainable way to support our children is to enable their moms to be empowered financially at home without giving up their critical caretaking role.
Mission Impossible to Possible – Why Are We Doing This?
To initiate real change in our society, we need options for moms (and dads) to flexibly work while their children are young and need attention at home after school. Today moms often leave the workforce just as they hit their professional stride. This creates an impossible tradeoff: to stay current and relevant in your career or to focus on your family. Professional identity is an important part of self worth — and being a great mom is not something anyone should have to compromise. When we set moms up to to fail, we set up their children to fail as well. That’s not acceptable.
My daughter Athena inspires me each day, to fight another day to prove that we don’t have to set up girls and women on a course to failure when trying to juggle it all. On good days like today, anything seems possible! On bad days, when the exhaustion of leading an early stage startup overtakes me, I look at the hope in Athena’s eyes and will myself and the team to conquer another day with relentless urgency to change the future path for women everywhere.
Athena at work with mom, Kristen Koh Goldstein, at a technology investor conference
As we launch HireAthena.com, I am personally grateful to the strong network of female founders who look out for one another. HireAthena would not have been possible without this not-so-secret society of female leaders in Silicon Valley. I was reminded of this at dinner the other night when I realized that every woman at the table was a customer, investor, and/or advisor of HireAthena (formerly BackOps). Among the four of us, we have 12 children, ages 5 weeks to 11 years.
(Left to Right):
Alison Gelb Pincus – Co-founder, OneKingsLane & Hello Mazel
Kristen Koh Goldstein – Co-founder, HireAthena, Efficient Capacity, & LoyaltyLab
Heidi Zak Spector – Co-founder, ThirdLove
Jennifer Siebel Newsom – Founder, The Representation Project
How You Can Help – Who Is Your Athena?
Thank you for supporting HireAthena! Please share this news with anyone who may want to HireAthena or is a superstar professional looking for a work-from-home position.
With every three new customers we add, we can bring another mom back to work.