Before my first business trip as a mom, I made sure of one thing:
I took a photo with Eleanor before I left.
Laptop packed. Flight booked. Mom guilt fully loaded.
(She was completely unbothered. I was not.)
I just finished Driven by Susie Wolff. What stayed with me was not the Formula 1 milestones or the records she broke.
It was that she built a track for other women to drive on.
In the most competitive environment in the world, she used her position to create access for the generation after her. Not because it was easy or convenient. Because she understood that was the whole job.
I landed back home and held Eleanor for a long time.
Every woman in my family has widened the track for the one who came after her. My mom worked in real estate finance in the lead up to the savings and loans crisis in the 1980s. I am trying to widen it further.
Eleanor is two. Right now she is more interested in the chickens than my inbox. But I think about it on those early morning flights and long work days: what am I building that she can run on?
Not just the portfolio. The model of what's possible.
To every mom building something that outlasts the work:
Happy Mother's Day.
