Mary-Ann Anyikam, HP's Director of Global Resilience, talks about raising twins while navigating travel-heavy roles - and the moment a peer forced her to rethink her calendar.

In this episode, Mary-Ann talks about renegotiating the terms of a demanding career throughout her motherhood journey, tapering ambition without abandoning it, and why the boundaries you can't see for yourself can often be seen by those around you.

What you will learn:

• How to navigate a travel-filled career while raising children
• Adjusting roles without tapering your ambition
• How your "why" shapes key decisions - and isn't something you define once
• Finding a mentor who will name your limits for you, before you're in a crisis

We also get into the household system Mary-Ann and her husband still use to divide business travel, and why she now builds mentoring relationships with women years before they become mothers.

Mary-Ann Anyikam is a global executive, speaker, and board director with more than 25 years of experience in crisis leadership, risk, and organizational resilience. She currently serves as Director of Global Resilience at HP and is an Industry Expert-in-Residence at Tulane University's A.B. Freeman School of Business. Having raised twins while navigating a global and demanding career, she brings both lived experience and hindsight to conversations about motherhood, ambition, and what it actually takes to make it all work.

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Sarah Hofstetter, the co-founder of 37Arc and board director at Campbell's and Kenvue, talks about the parental leave policy that pushed her back to work six weeks after having each of her kids - and how that became the blueprint for everything she refused to replicate once she had the power to change it.

This episode is not a story about achieving balance. This is a conversation about psychological safety, radical candor, and why judging people on outcomes instead of hours is the key unlock for working parents.

What you will learn:

• How to build psychological safety in workplaces, so people tell you the truth
• Why "work-life balance" is the wrong standard to strive for - and what to pursue instead

• Why managing to outcomes instead of hours changes how much people are willing to give
• How to figure out what someone actually needs from you - a toolbox, a tissue box, or a garbage bin

They also get into modeling healthy boundaries: how Sarah's strict observance of the Sabbath taught her teams that shutting down and having a strong work ethic aren't opposites, and why hiding your enthusiasm for your job quietly teaches your team to hide theirs, too.

Sarah Hofstetter is co-founder at 37Arc, a board director at Campbell's and Kenvue, and a senior advisor at Boston Consulting Group. She's also co-host of the Brave Commerce podcast from Adweek and the mother of two adult kids who both followed her into the advertising industry. Her career spans decades of agency leadership during a period when the rules for working mothers were being written in real time - often badly - and she's spent her career since building something better as a multi-time CEO and co-founder.

Join the No Definition community:

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Kelly Hopping never believed the career-vs-family tradeoff was real - and she was raised that way from the start. In this episode, the CMO of 6sense and five-time CMO shares why she thinks "having it all" isn't a myth, it's a definition problem.

This episode is not a story about doing it all perfectly. This is a conversation about integration over balance and why the real work is deciding what "having it all" means to you.

What you will learn:

• Why trying to separate "work time" from "home time" creates more friction than blending them ever will
• How to ask for what you want without waiting for permission - flexible start dates, promotions, or a role built around your terms
• Why the right boss can protect your non-negotiables instead of asking you to abandon them
• How asking to be fired led to a six-month sabbatical, and a reset on what she actually wanted next

They also get into the practical mechanics of building a life that works: the color-coded shared calendar that keeps her family running, and the question she asks herself when she's chasing something big - what would you build if no one was watching?

Kelly Hopping is the Chief Marketing Officer at 6sense, a five-time CMO, an author, and a mother of three. She has built a career spanning some of the biggest names in B2B marketing without ever giving up the boundaries that matter most to her, proof that ambition and presence aren't mutually exclusive.

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Shanta Kohli built a career that looks more like a jungle gym, not a ladder. In this episode, she talks about the career move she made into a lower-titled role that looked like a step back on paper — and how that became the experience that prepared her for the C-suite.

This episode is not a story about having it all figured out. This is a conversation about redefining what career growth is allowed to look like — and why the moves that seem like steps back can end up being the ones that matter most.

What you will learn:

• Why a sideways career move can often create more long-term value than a straight climb up
• How to build a "shared strategy" with your spouse instead of two competing careers
• How to define non-negotiable boundaries - and why you're the only one who will enforce them
• Why structural and cultural changes from leadership are what actually keep working parents in the workforce

They also get into the practical mechanics of building a sustainable career: how Shanta defines non-negotiables and how she used her own boundaries to model something different for her team.

Shanta Kohli is the Chief Marketing Officer at WEKA, an AI data and memory infrastructure company. She has more than 15 years of marketing leadership experience, most recently serving as CMO at Sysdig. Throughout her career, she has intentionally traded title and trajectory for flexibility and depth, building both a successful leadership career and a full family life with her husband and two kids.

Join the No Definition community:

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Alison Lange Engel rose from early startup operator to VP of Global Marketing at LinkedIn, CMO of Stripe, venture capitalist, and now CEO. She did it while raising two daughters and helping care for aging parents. And she'll tell you the secret was never doing more.

This episode is not a productivity hack. Amanda sits down with Alison for an honest conversation about working motherhood. The birthday she came home to a quiet house. The school presentation she optimized her way into missing entirely. Why she went fully offline during a hyper-growth leadership role when her mother got sick, no apology included.

They also get into the practical mechanics of rejecting mom guilt altogether: how Alison defines her non-negotiables in advance, why she refuses to compete with other parents' invisible standards, and how she and her husband run their household.

This is a conversation about what happens when you stop trying to do it all, and start deciding what "all" actually means for you.

What you will learn:

• Why being a "multitasking hero" is a trap, not an achievement

• The difference between attention and intention, and why it changes everything

• How to define your non-negotiables in advance so guilt doesn't get the final word

• Why rejecting other people's standards is the real key to less mom guilt
  

Alison Lange Engel is the former CEO of Ceros and a Venture Partner at Greycroft. She was the first CMO at Stripe, now one of the most valuable technology companies in the world. Before Stripe, she spent six years as a Vice President of Marketing at LinkedIn during its meteoric rise and successful IPO. In addition to her ambitious career, she has a full family life with her husband and two daughters.

Join the No Definition community:

• Subscribe on Substack: https://www.nodefinition.com/
• Follow on LinkedIn: @NoDefinition
• Rate & review wherever you listen. It helps more women find the show.

No Definition is a podcast for women building ambitious careers and full family lives — and refusing to choose between them.

Each week, I sit down with women operating at the very top of their game — founders, chief executives, women you’d recognize — who are also building real, full lives at home. We break down what it actually looks like: the decision frameworks, the tradeoffs, and the support systems that empower ambition and motherhood coexist. Not perfectly, but sustainably.

More at: NoDefinition.com