The Career Driven Mama

If we have learned anything the past two years, it's to honor the season you are in. We are closing the current chapter on The Career Driven Mama podcast. We’re so proud of what we’ve built, the stories we’ve shared, and the community that has grown alongside us. Thank you to every listener, guest, and supporter who cheered us on, we couldn’t have done it without you. Here’s to carrying the le...

Join Alicen and Hillary as they do a follow-up on the March episode about burnout at home. At the time, Alicen was experiencing pretty significant burnout in motherhood. She was feeling totally depleted, helpless, and quite hopeless and she recognized she did not have the tools to course correct on her own. At that time, she started “putting in the work.” This included regular therapy, routine che...

This week Alicen and Hillary recount their experiences returning to work from maternity leave. From the easy decisions, like email on your phone wasn’t a thing yet, to the tough decisions, like calling in sick your first week back, they talk through the myriad of emotions they felt returning to work. Some of those emotions even included excitement! Alicen and Hillary share a few things their emplo...

Join Alicen and Hillary as they explore the world of hobby shame. They discuss complex questions like what is a hobby, do you have to have a hobby, and what if maybe you aren’t that into hobbies. Further - do you have to be good, extreme, or have some level of expertise to claim a hobby? During this laughter-filled journey they answer all these questions and more!

This week Alicen and Hillary play “Would You Rather - Home vs Work Edition!” In this episode, they debate ridiculous scenarios like bosses showing up at bedtime and toddlers showing up in board rooms and real-life scenarios like managing crucial conversations at work and curbing the pacifier habit at home. Which would you rather??

This week, Alicen and Hillary are celebrating the mom wins! With all the A+ personalities, it is easy to focus on the fails, and once that train is out of the station it can be hard to even recognize the wins as they are flying by. But if therapy and book club and hindsight has taught us anything - mom wins are real, you have them, and they deserve a clink! (Also - going to therapy - BIG mom win!)...

Alicen and Hillary are back to wrap up The Career Driven Mama’s inaugural book club series featuring The Power Pause by Neha Ruch. Once again, Part Three offers up numerous paradigm busters like the notion that stay at home parents are lonely too, motherhood can be a time to discover new skills and passions, and the term actually is “homing in.” The book concludes with great guidance and resources...

Welcome back to The Career Driven Mama’s book club featuring The Power Pause by Neha Ruch, Part Two! This week Alicen and Hillary dive into redefining success, creating a daily rhythm, and getting help without guilt. Through the chapters in Part Two, they learn about concepts like the North Star, time poverty, and the notion that outside help is not just for mom - but rather an investment for the...

Join Alicen and Hillary for the Career Driven Mama’s grand opening, debut, kick-off, first ever book club!! Alicen and Hillary are reading “The Power Pause: How to Plan a Career Break After Kids – and Come Back Stronger Than Ever,” by Neha Ruch, and are excited to discuss Part One with you. Part One, Permission to Pause, explores the identity shift that comes along with taking a pause and touches...

Maximizing return on investment, building systems, delegating, aligning values, and defining roles and responsibilities - we love doing all of this at work - and this week we learn how to apply these same principles at home. Alicen and Hillary talk with Courtney Cecil, mom, wife, working moms coach, host of The Life Management System for Working Moms podcast, Founder of Working Moms Movement, and...

Join Alicen and Hillary as they recount all the reasons they have been screamed at… this week. Was it because she peeled the banana, or didn’t peel it, or it broke in half? It’s probably all of the above! Listen in as they talk about fun screaming related topics including the toddler software update, the evolution from tots to teens, and why snack time really should be cancelled. And, Alicen share...

This week Alicen introduces Hillary to the Sunday Scaries! While the concept is all too familiar, the very cool millennial branding is new. They discuss the value proposition of preparing for the upcoming week while not giving away too much of the precious little time you have with your family. Regardless of the strategy, it is all about minimizing the mental load of the upcoming week. Be sure to...

This week Alicen and Hillary talk with mother (of multiples!), friend, and founder Hannah Chiaramonte. When her season of early motherhood intersected with a season of loss - Hannah turned her feelings of grief and loneliness into action. Listen in as Hannah talks about the importance of community, shares her journey to build a platform to help others find their faith-based community, and convince...

This week Alicen and Hillary take a walk down memory lane to remember some of the bosses who made an impact on their professional development. From the good stuff they adopted immediately, to the not so good stuff they avoided, to the amazing stuff they are still aspiring to - these bosses each wrote a chapter in the leadership playbooks Alicen and Hillary use to this day.

In this week’s episode, Alicen and Hillary listened and they judged. Join them as they confess all the things they swore they would NEVER do as pre-parents that they absolutely do now as actual parents. Once again, parenthood humbles them in all the best ways. They agree they will never say never again!

Mamas! Join Alicen and Hillary for this insightful, informative, and inspirational episode with Fierce, Not Fragile’s Amber Grimmet. Amber shares how her own pregnancy and postpartum experience became her passion and led her to build her own business focused on helping women through birth prep, pregnancy, and postpartum. Alicen and Hillary ask all the fitness questions they wish they could have as...

This week Alicen and Hillary discuss the timely challenge of leading through uncertainty. Whether uncertainty is brought on by changes in leadership, weather events, pandemics, executive orders, or a million other possible situations - it can cause emotions to run high and fear to take the reins. Alicen and Hillary share strategies that have helped them, consider the emotional responsibility of le...

Join Alicen and Hillary for a little Corporate Lingo Bingo! In addition to everyone’s favorite corporate lingo, they also laugh their way through popular email responses, strategies, and pet peeves. Alicen not-so-humble brags about her Outlook skills and low-key shames Hillary in the process, they mispronounce many common words, and have a surprise convo about clotted cream.

This week Alicen and Hillary discuss looming “return to work orders” and the impact on career-driven mamas. In a world where career-driven mamas face so many obstacles, working from home has been an invaluable tool and returning to the office certainly changes the cost benefit analysis.

Can career-driven mamas have it all? Who the heck knows!! Maybe?! Maybe not?! Also - who cares! What matters is deciding what “it all” means to you now for the season you are in. This week Alicen and Hillary talk about when they have and haven’t had it all. They also touch on magic meatloaf and the all so important five year plan.

Welcome to Part 2 of the Military Mamas mini series! This week Alicen and Hillary hear Haley’s journey of becoming a mama while in the military and her decision to end her military service. They both share examples of next-level decisions military mamas are faced with and how some things have improved over the past 28 years. There is so much love and admiration in this episode, a beautiful way to...

Mother and daughter, mentor and mentee, work friends turned forever friends, this week’s episode is truly special. Join Alicen and Hillary as they talk with the first A+ Alison in Hillary’s life and her remarkable daughter Haley. Both started their motherhood journeys in the military and continue to be career-driven mamas. Alison shares her story of joining the military, becoming a mom, and pursui...

Well, this podcast promised to be real, authentic, and vulnerable and this week you get all three. Alicen and Hillary talk about burnout at home, and in true podcast universe fashion - the topic has never been more relevant than right now. While career-driven mamas are usually striving for success, sometimes survival has to be good enough. One day at a time, mamas.

Hey Career Driven Mamas! Everyone is home from the ICU (thankful and grateful for all the support!), so we are back with a new episode. This week, Alicen and Hillary dive into the oh so familiar feeling of burnout at work. They talk about what being burned out means to them, factors that can contribute to burnout, and how they have navigated burnout - both as an employee and as a supervisor. And,...

In this weeks episode, Alicen talks about her experience with the twins in the ICU, the angels at Children's Hospital and a PSA about staff reviews.