When Abbey Donnell and Jules Lairson launched Work& in 2017, they weren’t just creating another workplace perk. 

This wasn’t about having 12 different types of milk in the office kitchen, unlimited kombucha on tap, or other nice (but ultimately inconsequential) perks in the workplace. 

If you’ve been around here long enough, you know that this is a hill we’ll die on: Workplaces were not built with working parents in mind, especially not working mothers. 

For most parents, it comes as no surprise that caregiving is one of the biggest drivers of turnover, burnout, and underutilized benefits. So, why are leaders still ignoring the loud, persistent call for change?

In corporate America, leadership training often focuses on hard skills. Skills like strategic planning, financial acumen, or managing performance are in high demand. 

During her years inside Fortune 500 and biotech organizations, Jess Ringgenberg started focusing on what was missing from all leadership training. 

When two founders combine lived experience with technical expertise, the result is usually pretty impressive. This combination yields a product or service that feels both intuitive and indispensable. 

When Carly Buxton and Michelle Cunningham launched Parentswarm, we wondered how we lived without it? 

Let’s start off with a quick scenario. 

Every parent has been there. The regular sitter canceled. The must-attend dinner that you swore was scheduled for Friday is actually….tonight. 

Whether the reason, you need childcare — and you need it now. You text Lily, but she’s booked. So you text Kaylee, but she is busy until 8pm. She has a friend named Madison who babysat for you once. Then, you reach out to Rachel, but she doesn’t text back right away. Did you try Kaylee? What about Cindy? Who is Madison, anyway? 

If you’ve ever been caught in a scheduling Maelstrom like this, we see you — and so do the two founders of Parentswarm. 

In an era where technology has redefined how families work, learn, and even grocery shop, healthcare has often lagged behind. 

Want to schedule a future checkup at your local pediatrician? Get ready to wait on hold. Hope you like the music! Does every doctor use the same hold music? 

Parents can order diapers at midnight with the tap of a button. But when your child spikes a 103-degree fever at 2 am, good luck. Do you wait it out and worry or drag a miserable kid to the emergency room? 

How hasn’t anybody fixed this problem? 

That’s the problem Dr. Sara Dumond wanted to solve with Pediatric Housecalls. By bringing high-quality pediatric care directly into families’ homes, even at the most conventionally inconvenient times, she’s created a healthcare model that feels less like an appointment and more like an ally.

On the PHC website, one of the tenets of their mission reads, “nothing replaces a good old-fashioned face-to-face, person-to-person connection.”

No parent wants to imagine their baby being born premature, needing lifelong medical support, or facing a disability that reshapes what you imagined your family to be. 

But for many families, that “what if” scenario becomes reality overnight. When it does, the emotional toll is only one part of the story. There’s also the financial end. 

That’s where Juno, founded by Dr. Snaebjörn (Snae) Gunnsteinsson and Jordan Epstein, comes in. 

Whenever we set out to write a profile like this, we have this next portion of the story that we might as well recycle with a fill-in-the-blanks. This is where we tell you how parents created a solution that (somehow, appallingly) hadn’t existed. Here it goes! 

Juno is the first company in the United States to offer child disability insurance, a protection that didn’t exist here until they built it. 

Their mission is simple but profound: to make sure parents have support when they need it most, and to help children with disabilities or chronic illnesses reach their full potential.

Dirk Doebler didn’t set out to become a parental leave pioneer. 

Like many entrepreneurs, his path to founding Parento began with firsthand experience of a broken system and a bold idea for how to fix it. Does this story sound familiar? Well, the origins are a little different. 

Dirk Doebler’s career began on Wall Street, where he worked at Barclays Capital as a Global Research Analyst focused on consumer and household goods. 

When Lauren Gage became a mother, she experienced the beauty of new parenthood alongside something else decidedly… less joyful. 

While she knew that her return to work would be a struggle, the actual experience was tenfold. 

Despite her impressive credentials (including an MBA from Duke, a resume that included Goldman Sachs and McKinsey, and deep experience in strategy and leadership) Lauren was suddenly on the frontlines of the emotional and logistical chaos of pregnancy, postpartum recovery, and new parenthood. Suddenly, all of her credentials and previous accomplishments felt useless. 

Lauren quickly discovered what so many parents already know: support for parents is scarce. 

For too many working parents, burnout is an almost guaranteed side effect of holding (at least) two demanding jobs. 

We’re all familiar with the struggles. Companies are reversing their flexible WFH policies, childcare is expensive, and even the best-laid plans fail; especially during flu season. 

Enter Taylor and Casey Capuano, the twin sister duo who founded Cakes Body, a viral nipple cover brand. 

Parents have been screaming about the lack of support at work for decades. While many organizations are content to sit around doing nothing (or close to it), the twins pulled a proverbial “hold my beer”, and rewrote the script for how companies can support their employees, especially women and parents. 

Cakes Body has quickly gone from a side hustle to a viral success story, but TikTok success is not the headline here. 

About fifteen years ago, Stephanie Fornaro learned some of the most formative business lessons from an unlikely place, a steakhouse. 

You learn a ton of lessons from working in hospitality. You learn about patience, empathy, multi-tasking, and de-escalating tense (often hanger-induced) situations. However, Stephanie Fornaro’s biggest takeaway didn’t come from the customers, from the back of house, or from the long hours. It came, unexpectedly, from her employers. 

In the world of entrepreneurship, timing is everything. Sometimes, what seems like the worst possible timing can be turned into a happy outcome. Just ask April Johnson, the founder of Happied.

Johnson’s virtual events company, Happied, was born from a passion for hospitality and fostering real human connection. Her launch (and her “relaunch” in 2020) became a shining example of how adversity can be the launchpad for innovation and success.