The 43 Percent

In this episode, Stephanie Kramer and I spoke with Ali Stagnitta. Ali Stagnitta is a digital news reporter and on-air host who has covered breaking news and major red-carpet events. She is passionate about helping to tell people's stories, acting as a vessel between game-changers and trailblazers with the rest of the world. In Carry Strong, she shared how a co-worker's experience with pregnancy in the workplace shifted her own perspective on career pathways and opened up the possibilities that allyship and community can foster.

This week Stephanie Kramer and I had an opportunity to speak with Kimberly Seals Allers. In this episode, we learned about Kimberly's powerful work and experience and dove into some of the core principles from Stephanie's book, Carry Strong, that are crucial to supporting women as they navigate pregnancy and work.

Kimberly is the founder of Irth, an app where you can find prenatal, birthing, postpartum, and pediatric reviews of care from other Black and brown women. She designed it to be the #1 “Yelp-like” platform for the pregnancy and new motherhood journey, made by and for people of color.

Kimberly is a veteran journalist and five-time author turned maternal and infant health advocate and femtech founder. A former senior editor at ESSENCE and writer at FORTUNE magazine, she created Irth, as the first-of-its kind, doctor and hospital review & rating platform just for Black and brown women and birthing people. She leveraged decades of media experience and a passion for mothering into a vision and platform to use technology to amplify community voices to address racism and bias in Black maternal and infant care. Irth is a non-profit project of her 501C3, Narrative Nation, which also produces the Birthright podcast, where she shares positive Black birthing stories as a direct counter to the doom and gloom narrative too common in mainstream media coverage of Black maternal health. I

This week, Claudia introduces Stephanie Kramer, this season’s co-host and the author of Carry Strong, a new book that seeks to not only normalize the journey to working motherhood but to celebrate it. Stephanie is also the Chief Human Resources Officer at L’Oreal USA, an adjunct professor at the Fashion Institute of Technology, and a mom of two young boys.

In this episode, we get to know Stephanie as she shares her own experiences as a mom and busy professional. She helps to shed new light on the impact that the earliest moments in the journey to motherhood can have on work. With Carry Strong, Stephanie is encouraging a new discourse to reframe career conversations for individuals and organizations with a bold desire for progress.

Introducing WMN's new parenting show, Moments with Candace Parker! Each week, Candace Parker chats with friends you might recognize, from Allyson Felix to Chris & Adrienne Bosh, about stories you've never heard before. Moments with Candace Parker is a podcast that celebrates parenthood to the fullest -- the smallest victories, the messiest failures and the bravest decisions. You can listen and follow Moments with Candace Parker wherever you listen to podcasts.

This is our final episode of this season of The 43 Percent. This week, Claudia speaks with Sabrina Tucker-Barrett, the CEO of Girls for Technology, a Connecticut-based non-profit that supports Black and brown girls and women in STEM.

In quarantine, her business has flourished. Girls and women across the country have joined Sabrina’s online courses that cover everything from building pitch decks to handling microaggressions in the office. And in uplifting these girls and women, in giving them a space to learn, and a platform to share their experiences, Sabrina teaches them: You are enough. You are valuable. And you will make a difference.

A few weeks ago, severe storms rolled through Philadelphia. They came on the heels of George Floyd’s murder, which came amid a global pandemic. And Natalie Nixon, Ph.D., a creativity consultant and author of the new book, "The Creativity Leap," felt the universe saying, “Pause.”

So this week, Natalie shares what we can learn from a pause. How taking a step back and looking around can help us see creativity as a problem solver. How we can find power in our own stories. And how, if we pause long enough, we can find optimism in the future.

Sarah Joyce is an IT healthcare executive and president of the Boston chapter for Lean In. Sarah grew up blind to the gender gap in the workplace. And then, she entered corporate America. This week, Sarah talks to Claudia from her new office -- the kitchen island -- about being the only woman at the proverbial (and sometimes literal) table, and rethinking what leadership looks like, both as a boss and a parent.

When it comes to changing the system, there are always the voices that say, "It's too complicated. It's too idealistic." But what Nina Vaca, CEO of Pinnacle Group, hears is a lack of imagination. A refusal to re-think possibility.

On the way to being a mother of four, and head of a company that is 66% women and 48% BIPOC, Nina laid out her own path. So today, Claudia and Nina talk about steps forward. How those in leadership can build lasting change and support into their infrastructure. And how mothers can thrive within a system that was not built for them.

This show, The 43 Percent, is supposed to be a show about opportunity -- in parenting, in career, in life. But the reality is that while motherhood is a universal experience, and talent is evenly distributed across society, opportunity and safety are not.

So this week, we’re not publishing a new episode. Instead, I wanted to share some resources that benefit Black mothers and families. They are listed and linked in our episode notes.

But representation beyond this week is also important. As we look to the future of this show, we are dedicating ourselves to being a platform that raises up a diverse set of experiences. Motherhood is universal. And we want to show that, fully.

Minda Brusse is a person of action. But then COVID-19 hit. Under lockdown, she was suddenly at a loss. How could she help all these families suddenly weathering a financial crisis? So Minda, co-founder of venture firm First Row Partners, got to work. Over the last six weeks -- yes, six weeks -- she has co-founded and launched The $1K Project. Along with investor Alex Iskold, Minda has matched hundreds of families in need with peers willing to provide a thousand dollars of assistance, for three months. This week, Claudia and Minda talk about stepping up and stepping in - even when it feels messy, even when it feels like a drop in the bucket.