The Mothers with Sara Brown

Amy Reinert’s career in tech marketing was on a clear trajectory – until motherhood, layoffs, and the realities of raising a family reshaped the path entirely. After being laid off while pregnant and navigating the realities of childcare, commuting, and workplace culture, Amy stepped away from the fast track she had been on - a quiet trade-off many mothers make to keep life working for everyone el...

More and more women are leaving powerful institutions to build businesses and careers on their own terms. But many of those “choices” were shaped long before they ever made them. C. Nicole Mason, PhD is the founder and president of Future Forward Women, a policy network working to build women’s political and economic power in the United States and globally. She previously served as President and C...

You built the career. You earned the title. You became, fully and completely, the thing you worked so hard to be. Then you got pregnant — and felt something no one warned you about. Grief. Dr. Pria Anand is a Yale and Stanford-trained neurologist practicing at Boston Medical Center, Assistant Professor at Boston University School of Medicine, and author of the award-winning The Mind Electric — a P...

Amber Coleman-Mortley is a Culture, Community & Equity Leader, former Senior Director at The Female Quotient, longtime civic engagement strategist, and mother of three. A three-sport NCAA athlete turned educator and workplace equity leader, Amber has built her career at the intersection of justice, community and institutional change. But this conversation isn’t about titles. It’s about steadin...

What happens when the psychologist becomes the patient? Dr. Emily Guarnotta is a licensed psychologist, perinatal mental health specialist, co-founder of Phoenix Health , and mother of two. Early in her career, she focused on anxiety, depression, and substance abuse. Maternal mental health wasn’t on her radar until she experienced postpartum depression herself and encountered just how hard it was...

What if the problem isn’t our ambition, resilience, or mindset, but a system rigged in ways mothers are taught to internalize as personal failure? Corinne Low, PhD – Wharton economics professor, author of Having It All , and mother of two – joins Sara to unpack how becoming a mother blew up the script she was following and exposed the gap between the lives women are promised and the ones they are...

Cindy Brown, CEO of the iconic Boston Duck Tours and Mother, joined the company more than 30 years ago after leaving a fast-track career in finance to take a chance on what she calls “the duck thing.”  She never looked back. In this conversation, Cindy reflects on building a deeply rooted, wildly successful business without chasing scale. And how designing her life around proximity, partnership, a...

Jennifer Breheny Wallace – NYT bestselling author of Never Enough and her new book Mattering (out today!), journalist, and Mother of three – joins The Mothers for a conversation about achievement, worth, identity, and what it really means to feel like you matter. Jennifer’s work explores a question many Mothers carry: how can we be doing essential, important, and meaningful work – at home, at the...

Kelly Hubbell – founder & CEO of Sage Haus and Mother of three – joins The Mothers to talk about the moment “doing it all” stopped working and how she turned her breaking point into a business. After baby #2, the math no longer worked. More than 22 hours a week of invisible labor sat alongside a demanding career – and the cost was showing up in her marriage, her energy, and her sense of self....

On this episode of The Mothers, Sara talks with Dr. Allison Mell – pediatric physical therapist, founder of Tots on Target , and Mother of four (including twins). Allison set out to build a career that could coexist with a big family. She studied art history, chose a “practical” path in healthcare, and assumed pediatric physical therapy would offer flexibility – until four kids in 5.5 years made t...

Amil Niazi is the writer (and Mother of three) behind The Cut’s parenting series “The Hard Part,” exploring the intersection of work and motherhood. Her writing has also appeared in The New York Times , The Guardian , and The Washington Post , and her new book LIFE AFTER AMBITION: A ‘GOOD ENOUGH’ MEMOIR is out now! In this episode, we talk about authenticity at work, the myth of meritocracy, mothe...

Laura Green, perhaps better known as @LauraMcGreen, joins Sara & Vee this week. And honestly thank goodness because it’s been a cold & dark few days in New England and we need some sunshine and levity! Laura is a comedic content creator in the run space, producing reels that make fun of herself as a lifelong runner and all the quirks that come with that. She loves writing and producing sho...

Pour a drink. Hide the wrapping paper. Lower your expectations. It’s The Mothers After Dark – an appropriately loopy, end-of-year episode about holiday overwhelm, cultural nonsense, and why the media still can’t figure out how to write parents like actual humans. Sara & Vee are joined by a very special guest: Lauren Battaglia, the original Mother who helped get The Mothers’ marketing off the g...

Michelle Heath didn’t just build a career – she pioneered a new model of leadership. As CEO and Founder of Growth Street, Michelle’s sought-after business advice is the culmination of three decades spent under the hood of hundreds of companies, from early-stage startups to Fortune 500 giants. Her track record includes senior brand, marketing, and customer experience leadership roles at household n...

Allison Bates Wannop did everything “right.” Harvard athlete. Big Law. Prestige. Validation. And then it stopped making sense. In this episode of The Mothers, Allison shares how she walked away from a high-status legal career – not toward a perfectly mapped plan, but toward her inner knowing. What followed was a purpose-driven life and career built around alignment instead of achievement, and a re...

Fresh off Thanksgiving and sliding into the holiday sprint, Sara is joined by Lynn Harris — writer, comedian, activist, founder of GOLD Comedy AND Mother — for a conversation about motherhood, identity, and the cultural power of humor. If you’re a Mother, a creator, a person trying to reclaim your voice, or someone who’s ever wondered if comedy can change the world… this one’s for you. You’ll walk...

Welcome to a guilty-pleasure episode about guilty pleasures, power, parenting, and giving yourself permission to not make progress on Thanksgiving. Sara & Vee are back on the mic to talk Motherhood in The Hunting Wives & Wayward (spoilers!), the male gaze, ambition, guilt, identity…and somehow also poop pictures. If you need a moment to reset and remember you’re not crazy, this one’s for y...

What does it mean to live through grief and uncertainty, and still choose joy? This week, Sara sits down with Marisa Renee Lee – author, advocate, entrepreneur, grief expert, and the brilliant mind behind Grief Is Love and her upcoming book Waiting for Dawn . From Wall Street to the Obama White House, from profound personal loss to becoming a Mother through persistence and heartbreak, Marisa has b...

Ruthie Ackerman always knew she wanted to be a writer, but wasn't so sure about becoming a Mother. Her breakout memoir The Mother Code captures the ambivalence so many women feel but rarely say out loud. In this conversation, Ruthie shares how she unpretzeled herself from others’ expectations, navigated fertility and heartbreak, used a donor egg to have her daughter, and ultimately discovered...

Yvonne Wassenaar has led billion-dollar companies, sat on world-class boards, and raised three kids — all while navigating immense personal loss. After losing her partner to cancer, she chose to have their children anyway and built a career that would redefine leadership in Silicon Valley. In this episode, Yvonne opens up about the traumas that shaped her, how she learned to turn fear into fuel, a...

Cait Scudder, Founder & CEO of The Millionaire Mother , joins Sara on the pod this week — and she’s a FORCE. A champion for the AND of it all, Cait’s mission (dare we say, destiny) is to help mothers tap into their true power — finding fulfillment, joy, strength, and yes, wealth — in building both a family and a career. If you’ve ever found yourself in the in-between — knowing you’re meant for...

In this episode, Sara Brown speaks with Gish Jen — award-winning author of The Resisters and the bestselling story collection Thank You, Mr. Nixon — about family, forgiveness, and the art of finding meaning in even our most complicated relationships. All of which come to a head in her new autobiographical novel ⁠ Bad Bad Girl ⁠ tracing a tumultuous mother-daughter relationship inspired by the rela...

Doula HeHe Stewart, M.S., ( @tranquilitybyhehe ) is one of those people who makes you believe you can do anything. As the Founder of Tranquility by HeHe Maternity Concierge , creator of The Birth Lounge , and host of The Birth Lounge Podcast, HeHe has helped hundreds of women move from their “pre-baby” selves into the Mothers they were meant to become. And now, as she prepares to welcome her own f...

Sara is joined by Sophia Popova, a Partner at Summit Partners , mother of two, and proof that ambition and gratitude can coexist beautifully. Born in Bulgaria as the Berlin Wall was falling, Sophia’s childhood unfolded in a family shaped by socialism (her father literally studied economics at the Karl Marx Institute where supply & demand were never mentioned). When they moved to Waco, Texas, s...

Former First Lady of Massachusetts Lauren Baker joins The Mothers this week. Today, she’s also the Founder & CEO of The Wonderfund , a nonprofit enriching the lives of 30,000 kids engaged with the Massachusetts Department of Children and Families (DCF). Lauren’s journey has taken her from an MBA at Northwestern and a career in advertising at Hill Holliday, to becoming First Lady alongside her...