The day I became a mom, it was as if the universe picked me up, moved me over an inch, and dropped me back to Earth. Everything around me was the same but I felt just a little bit different about the world around me.

Some parts of motherhood came easily to me, from my ninja diapering skills to the deep, unwavering love I developed for my son. Other parts were not so easy: the lack of sleep, the extra worrying, the fact that it took me 40 minutes to get out the door to make a Target run.

But the hardest part of all was where to put the career I loved and nurtured for more
than a decade. If my son was my true north, where did my trusty old true north – the one that wore pinstriped pant suits – where did she go?

I went back to work after a fleeting maternity leave. I needed to work financially and I needed to work because I was not sure who I was without the career that had become an integral part of my being.

My husband and I tripled our brood within two years, adding twin daughters to the mix. I went on to spend a year as a stay-at-home mom (I was kind of lousy at it), spend three years as a part-time executive director (I ended up working double my contracted hours), and eventually landed as a consultant to nonprofits, taking interesting gigs that could fit into our frenetic, three-kid-and-two-career household.

The whole time I was going through these ups and downs, these opt-ins and scale-backs, I wondered why it couldn’t be easier. Why wasn’t there a better network for me to lean on when I was figuring out how to be the kind of mom and kind of professional I wanted to be? Why weren’t we talking about this conundrum that so many of us face? And, more than anything, why did being a working mom feel like an all-or-nothing deal?

The seeds for MotherBoard were planted during one of these late night musings, likely between a midnight infant feeding and a crack-of-dawn toddler wakeup. It would take me half a decade to first write down the MotherBoard concept, sheepishly sharing the idea with my husband and a few girlfriends.

I submitted it to a local civic pitch competition, never expecting to hear back.

But I did. And people loved it. And they related to it. And suddenly, I became the first MotherBoarder and the founder of something I believe can be transformational.

Fast forward a few months and we are here. Launching MotherBoard. Building a community that doesn’t just admire the challenges of being a working mom but actually empowers women to create the work-life balance they want and deserve. And brings employers along for the ride, introducing them to smart, educated, professional women who want to contribute to their organizations and businesses. We are helping businesses and organizations work smarter with the support of some of the world’s most capable multitaskers: moms.

I am working with a few other amazing moms and some of my favorite mentors to bring MotherBoard to life. This blog chronicles our journey. Click here to meet the team.

MotherBoard will be up and running later this year and we will go big with our full launch in early 2017. Subscribe to our blog updates and follow us on social media for the latest. Share your comments and feedback – we are building this for you!