Tell us a little bit about yourself.

I'm Allison Mezzafante. Before starting my own business, I spent close to 20 years working in media and publishing. I started my career right out of college, working in magazine journalism. I studied journalism at NYU and always wanted to work in magazines. 

When digital media started coming around, I was in the right place at the right time to transition into digital editorial roles. Eventually, I entered general management, which was a pivot from where I started. I learned that I liked the business side because I liked understanding how things worked and why they performed. 

After close to 20 years, I became pregnant with our first and had a wake-up call of sorts—what am I doing? Do I like what I'm doing anymore? That was the impetus behind me leaving my full-time corporate job and starting my business. For these last six years, I’ve been passionate about building a career that I love and doing work that allows me to learn and grow while still being present at home and as a parent. 

Ultimately, that’s what I think I was most frightened of—being unable to do both. 

Ah, yes. And that is so hard. I still don't have it figured out.

Most people don't have it figured out. That's why it's so important that we're all talking about it. Everything is a trade-off. You can't do it all. Some people say you can, but it's not entirely true. It's not without sacrifices, and it's not without something being compromised to some degree.

Can you tell us about the Reykjavik Global Forum?

Absolutely. I have a business partner, Kerry, and our business is called the EQ. We primarily work with tech and media companies on their go-to-market and growth strategies. A lot of that involves marketplace visibility, presence, and positioning.

There’s an annual conference in November in Reykjavik, Iceland. The point of this community and this conference is to establish gender equality. They say they have one goal: to achieve and retain power for women. Kerry and I are helping them establish a stronger presence in the US marketplace. They have a big global presence but need more visibility in the US. 

There's certainly an appetite here for gender equality—and a long way to go. Iceland ranks number one year after year on the World Economic Forum Global Gender Gap Index. And just to give you an idea, the US ranks number 43 by comparison. So they're doing something right.

Of course, they're working with a much smaller country, and because of that, they can do things that a lot of bigger countries like the US struggle to do. Still, there's a lot to learn from a country like Iceland, which has gender parity. They are known globally for the way that gender is treated very equally, including parenting responsibilities. It's something that the US can aspire to be more like.

We had the opportunity to attend the conference in November. It was the most incredible experience. There were 500 attendees from 80 countries, and you have women working in politics, academia, and business and public sector NGOs. The list goes on and on of these really, really impressive, accomplished women who are making a difference in the world. And you get them all together, and you feel more hopeful. 

In 2023, they launched what they're calling their four E's, which is their big initiative. Those are equal pay, parental leave, equal representation, and ending gender-based violence. Being involved there has been a fantastic experience. 

We will work with them again this year and, hopefully, going forward. They have other activations going on throughout the year at other global conferences. 

What are your thoughts on United States parental leave policies? Are there benefits that other countries are seeing from having more equality?

There are plenty of data points out there that clearly indicate that it’s essential to have a support system that enables parents both to work and get their needs met in life—everything from sleep to self-care to being able to go to the doctor yourself because you have the time to prioritize yourself. 

In the first several years of my kids' lives, the only time I went to the doctor was to go to the OB. Here in the US, we're forced to pick and choose between us and our children. And in other countries, they're seeing that this type of support at a government level and embedded from a societal perspective has a really deep and positive impact on both parents. This isn't about men versus women or dads versus moms. And that's not even taking into account same-sex couples. Across the board, everybody is happier, more high-functioning, and healthier. 

It's depressing that here in the US, we have to choose between things constantly. Am I going to do a really good job at work today? Or can I pick my kids up and spend a little more time with them? I rarely feel like I can do both things in a day. 

When you're living it day to day, you see how the absence of that infrastructure and that support that exists in other countries causes a strain on parents and families, and kids feel it, too. 

My kids are not happy when my husband and I are stressed out. There's always going to be work. There's always going to be stress. I'm not saying that these people live in some sort of idyllic fantasyland in other countries, but there are other ways of doing things. 

I hope a place like the US can learn how to adopt some of those things because it's very hard. I don't know about you, but when I became a parent, it was the ultimate rude awakening. I had no idea. I had an executive-level job, ran a business, and worked 60-plus hours a week. I thought, “How could parenting be harder?”

When my son was born, even aside from all of the physical challenges and just being tired and all of that stuff, I realized, “Do I want to be commuting into Times Square five days a week and leaving my kid with a nanny or a daycare so I can do work that I'm not even sure that I like doing?” There have to be other options.

Did you leave your job before you went on maternity leave? How did that play out for you?

I was running a digital business for a media company in New York. I was the EVP of their US business. I thought I’d have my son and then come back and see what's next, right? In my mind, that was the springboard for me to go from one C-level job to the next until maybe I had a board position, and then, I don't know, I’d eventually retire. But when I went out on maternity leave, I had some time to think.  

And when you've worked in corporate America for nearly 20 years, it's like you step into this alternate world where you're like, wait a minute, who are all these people out in the middle of the day? Do they work? They look like they work. They look like they have themselves together. Surely, there is another way to make things work that doesn't involve me schlepping into Midtown Manhattan five days a week and doing something I don't like doing anymore.

And that was when it started. I remember it very vividly. I was out on a walk. We were living in Brooklyn, and I was looking at all these people in this coffee shop, thinking, what do you guys all do for a living? Can you tell me? Can I do that for a living? 

I thought, maybe it's hormones, right? Maybe it's a little postpartum. I decided to return to work when my leave was up and give myself three months to readjust. If I was still feeling this, I would do something about it. And that was what happened. 

I had to give a certain amount of notice. And so there was a bit of a buffer there in terms of timing, but ultimately, that was the thing that did it for me. If I was going to work and be away from my kid, I wanted it to be something I like to do. And I wanted it to be on my time. I wanted to have more agency over my time and my life. As soon as I returned to work as a full-time mother, I felt like my time was theirs, not my own. And that meant that my time was not for my children. 

Yeah, yeah. I was lucky that we were always remote. So, at the very least, I was home. 

I have an incredible respect for all the women I have worked for throughout my career who had no choice but to show up every day. That is one good thing that came out of the pandemic. Because even my husband doesn't go back into an office five days a week anymore, and that's a huge help. We're able to divvy up pick-up and drop-off responsibility. 

One of the big things that influenced this path for me was that I lost my mom when I was in my twenties. I approached motherhood through that lens. Nothing's a given, and things can get taken away from you prematurely and abruptly. I didn't want to look back and think that I could have done things differently or missed all this time with my kids.

I'm fortunate that I could do that. Not everybody can do that. 

I think about that all the time because if I couldn't command my time the way I do, I would feel a little bit helpless, especially as a working parent. Kids are just so demanding.

So what has that looked like for you, commanding your time and building your own business while being a mom?

I'd love to say that it's this perfect dream scenario. It comes with its own challenges. Part of the challenge with having command over your own time is that it's all on you. You have to motivate yourself. 

When you wake up in the morning on days like today, when my three-year-old daughter didn't want to sleep in the middle of the night, you don't have PTO to take. The upside is that, at the same time, on a day like today, when my son's school nurse calls me and says that he's sick and I need to pick him up, I'm home and can do that. 

I just had a conversation with my husband about this. If we were both in Midtown Manhattan working, either one of us would have to leave our jobs to go pick him up, or he'd have to tough it out and stay at school. That wouldn’t be the worst thing. We all did that. That's how most of us grew up. But now we have the flexibility.

Any thoughts or advice for moms?

I try to remind myself that we have to give ourselves grace. We're all doing the best we can do.

You're not a machine; you're a human with needs. If your needs are met, you'll be better at taking care of the ones who need you. That's easier said than done, right?

It was a huge learning curve for me to figure out how to make space for myself as a parent. There are only so many hours in the day, and you’re really tired. That means we do the stuff we have to do before all the other things we know would benefit us. I used to exercise religiously before I had children, and it has been a struggle to make that a priority. 

I have learned the hard way that if you ignore your needs long enough, eventually, they will catch up with you, whether that's physically, emotionally or mentally, or just sheer exhaustion. 

It's difficult to do, especially in the midst of the chaos of becoming a new mom, but try to find little ways to take care of yourself, whatever that looks like for you. 

Don't lose yourself entirely.

Don't wait till it's too late or too much time has passed. You know you're dehydrated when you've gotten to the point where you're thirsty. Don't get to the point where you're thirsty, right? Keep drinking water, even if it's just small steps.