In this episode, Alexis Contos sits down with Patrice Meagher, a 20-year Commercial Real Estate veteran turned Founder and CEO of MilkMate. After spending two decades leasing millions of square feet in Manhattan , Patrice realized that while we can fly to space, the most "innovative" solution for pumping at work was still a storage closet or a bathroom stall.

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Most of us are told to chase the title, the house, the marriage that looks good from the outside. Keren Eldad had all of it, and it nearly broke her.

In this episode, executive coach and bestselling author Keren Eldad (Gilded, Gilt Free) sits down with Alexis to unpack what happens when your ambition outruns your actual self. Keren shares the exact moment her life "came crashing down" in the shower, why she believes overachievement is an addiction, and the difference between women with high standards and women trapped in perfectionism.

Keren Eldad is a leadership coach and the author of Gilded and Guilt Free. She has coached thousands of high achievers out of burnout and into what she calls a "gold" life. She joins the show to talk about the cage of overachievement and how to walk out of it.

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You're expected to work like you don't have kids and parent like you don't work.

Kelly Hubbell, founder of Sage Haus, looked at this impossible equation and decided to build the solution herself.In this episode, Kelly shares her journey from corporate tech sales to launching Sage Haus—a company that provides house managers and holistic family support for busy working parents. After her second child, Kelly found herself overwhelmed, creating a spreadsheet at 2am cataloging everything she was managing on top of her full-time job.

That breakdown moment became her breakthrough.

We dive into the reality of founder-motherhood, why the "mental load" conversation needs to shift from problem to solution, and how Kelly is building a business that reflects her values while showing her three kids what's possible when you refuse to choose between ambition and presence.

Kelly Hubbell is the founder of Sage Haus, a company that helps busy families find holistic, versatile support through house managers and family assistants. A former software sales professional who worked her way through Silicon Valley startups, Kelly made the leap from corporate America to entrepreneurship after realizing the support gap working parents face.Kelly lives in Portland with her husband (also an entrepreneur), three children (ages 7, 5, and 3), and a 7-year-old dog. She's on a mission to normalize household support and give families permission to get the help they need.

Find Kelly:Instagram: @mysagehaus

LinkedIn: Kelly Hubbell

Website: Sign up for informational calls about finding your house manager

Get $200 off your deposit by using this link: sagehaus.com/alexiscontos 

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#workingmom #mom #podcast #breadwinnermom #momentrepreneur #femalefounders , #worklifebalance #ambitiousmoms

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Postpartum is not a diagnosis. It's an experience every mother has, whatever form it takes. What determines whether you need support is severity and how long it lasts, and most of us were never taught the difference.

In this episode, Alexis sits down with Sonny Williams, a perinatal mental health certified counselor and clinician with BetterHelp, to break down the real spectrum of maternal mental health, from baby blues to postpartum anxiety, OCD, depression, and psychosis. This conversation is part of the launch of Courage to Confide, our campaign built on one belief: the courage to confide is the confidence to lead.

What you'll learn:

Sonny Williams is a licensed professional counselor and perinatal mental health certified counselor who works with mothers across the full spectrum of the perinatal journey, from fertility through the first year postpartum. She joins the show to give clinician-backed language to a conversation that too often only lives in headlines.

It's okay to have it all together and look polished and always be presentable. It's also okay to not be okay. #CourageToConfide

If any part of this piece feels close to home, we’ve partnered with BetterHelp to offer a free month to anyone who signs up through The Breadwinners.

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WeNatal co-founders Ronit Menashe and Vida Delrahim explain trimester zero: the three months before conception when both partners can improve egg and sperm quality through targeted nutrition, bioavailable supplements, and cutting alcohol, smoking, and vaping. Male factor influences roughly half of miscarriage and infertility outcomes, and men regenerate sperm continuously, which means the window to improve is real and short. On this episode of The Breadwinners, Ronit and Vida also share how they built a bootstrapped prenatal supplement company after two miscarriages a week apart, why the supplement industry runs on smoke and mirrors, and what burnout, a health crash, and losing a home in the Palisades fire taught them about time.

Ronit and Vida were best friends and Nike colleagues who lost pregnancies within a week of each other in spring 2020 and were told by their doctors that it just happens. They refused that answer, dug into the research, put their husbands on antioxidants for three months, and both went on to have healthy daughters. That experiment became WeNatal, which has now helped 30,000 people become parents. In this conversation, Alexis Contos talks with them about building a company while postpartum, growing for three years on nights and weekends and no salary, why they turned down the paid-ads playbook, and what their daughters see when they watch their mothers work.

What you will hear:

Timestamps: 

00:00 Why WeNatal chose podcasts over paid ads 

02:23 The club of women told they were too old 

04:09 Two miscarriages a week apart 

09:18 Trimester zero: what they put their husbands on 

13:16 How men show up in the fertility conversation 

18:20 Supplement industry smoke and mirrors: third-party testing and bioavailability 

25:05 Building the company while postpartum 

30:35 Burnout, and why balance is a hoax 

36:32 The Palisades fire and the wake-up call 

38:20 Don't wait for rock bottom 

43:09 What their daughters see 

48:29 Bootstrapping and the cost of patience 

55:34 The legacy question 

56:38 Breadwinner Artifacts: the Bestie Co Google Doc 

59:31 Letters to your future self and trusting your gut 

62:39 Breadwinner Bites 

72:06 Where to find WeNatal

Start your WeNatal routine today by going to wenatal.com/BREADWINNERS and receive a free Rest+Digest Magnesium supplement ($30 value) with your first prenatal subscription.

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Rate and review wherever you listen. It helps more women find this show.

#breadwinner #fertility #trimesterzero #womeninbusiness #femalefounders #prenatal #motherhood #entrepreneurship

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*This is a replayed episode from earlier in Season 1*

The first man to sit at the Breadwinners table. We're bringing back this conversation with Nick Firchau, host of the Paternal podcast, because the questions it raises haven't gone anywhere.

Nick has interviewed more than 130 men about fatherhood, and this episode gets into what those conversations reveal: men parenting without a model, the friendships they don't know how to build, and the load they carry but rarely name. Alexis and Nick also take on the topics that tend to get avoided, from the respect-versus-love dynamic in marriages to whether lifting up mothers has left fathers out of the conversation.

In this episode:

Nick Firchau is a longtime journalist and podcast producer, and the creator and host of Paternal, a show about the brotherhood of fatherhood. Since launching in 2017, Paternal has featured Super Bowl winners, Pulitzer Prize winning journalists, and award-winning authors, and has been named a best podcast for fathers by Apple Podcasts and Lifehacker. Nick lives outside Boulder, Colorado with his wife and two kids.

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Melanie Kaplan is the founder and CEO of oPPal, a peer support platform for postpartum moms that matches new and expecting mothers, called Little oPPals, with trained, experienced mothers, called Big oPPals. She built it after her own experience with severe postpartum depression and anxiety, and she joined host Alexis Contos the same week oPPal launched nationally in May 2026.

In this conversation, Melanie shares the full story for the first time in this much depth. Four months after her first daughter was born, a weaning hormone crash collided with a birth control error, and Melanie left home for four nights, driving toward the ocean because she needed to see something bigger than what was happening inside her. Two years later, she found a video she had recorded for her daughter during those days, posted it on Instagram, and woke up to hundreds of messages from women sharing their own postpartum stories. That morning changed her career.

Melanie and Alexis talk about the early warning signs of postpartum anxiety that get dismissed as normal new mom worry, why the standard six week screening misses the gray area where most struggling mothers actually live, and the hole in American postpartum care where a woman goes from weekly appointments during pregnancy to almost nothing after birth. Melanie explains how she validated oPPal before writing a single line of it: a survey that drew over 300 responses in 48 hours, with more than 80 percent of moms saying they would mentor a new mother, and a beta that proved matches work best with someone outside your inner circle. She walks through the Big oPPal training, including the platform's central rule that every check-in starts with the mom, not the baby, and how oPPal's partnership with Phoenix Health creates a path to therapists trained in maternal mental health when peer support isn't enough. The episode closes with the legacy conversation, the story behind the logo drawn from her grandmother's handwriting, and what Melanie's daughter says her mommy does all day.

This episode is for anyone navigating postpartum, supporting someone who is, or building a company from lived experience.

Find oPPal: www.myoppal.com

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If you are struggling with postpartum depression or anxiety, Postpartum Support International is at postpartum.net.

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This is a replay of an earlier episode.

Alexis reunites with Julie Cordua, CEO of Thorn, the organization building technology to defend children from online sexual exploitation. The two worked together 15 years ago on Thorn's launch, and Alexis has watched Julie turn that early mission into her life's work while raising three kids of her own.

**Content warning: This episode discusses child sexual abuse and exploitation. We don't include graphic details, but the subject matter is inherently difficult.**

This conversation explores what it means to be a Breadwinner when your currency goes beyond the financial - measured instead in children identified, abuse content removed, and platforms made safer. Julie breaks down how AI has changed the landscape of child exploitation, what actually happens on the dark web, where tech companies must do better, and what parents can do right now to protect their children online.

What you'll learn in this episode:

Whether you're navigating your child's digital life or want to understand how to make a difference, this conversation will leave you informed and equipped.

Resources:

Thorn

Thorn on Instagram

Julie's TED Talk

Thorn Parent Guide

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Jaclyn Johnson built Create and Cultivate from a blog into a multi-million dollar company, sold it, watched it fall apart under new ownership, and bought it back.

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In this episode, Alexis Contos sits down with Morgan Zanotti, the founder behind Waay and former leader at Primal Kitchen, to discuss what it really takes to build wellness brands while being a breadwinner mother.

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