Dirk Doebler is NOT a Mom: Why He Founded Parento Anyway
Dirk Doebler, Parento Founder & CEO
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.
Later in his career, Doebler became the CFO/COO at Dame Products (a women-founded consumer wellness company), where he helped grow the business 10x in revenue over two years and achieve profitability without raising a ton of external (and risky!) capital.
From Finance to Family Advocacy
Dirk’s professional background is rooted in business and finance. He spent years in consulting and private equity, helping companies streamline operations and manage risk.
Maybe it’s unfair to state that “most” men don’t experience the cavernous gap in parental support, but most of the founders we profile are working mothers.
Like many other men and women, it wasn’t until he started paying attention to the challenges facing his colleagues and friends with young children that Dirk realized a glaring deficiency in the American workplace. Most companies didn’t offer meaningful parental leave. The few that did often struggled to do it right.
What Dirk noticed was simple but powerful. Even companies that wanted to support working parents didn’t have a blueprint to work with. They were held back by cost, compliance complexity, and the fear of disruption. Meanwhile, new parents were being forced into impossible choices between their careers and their families.
The problem wasn’t a lack of will. It was a lack of infrastructure. And that’s what Dirk set out to build with Parento.
The Birth of Parento
In 2020, Dirk founded Parento, the first and only paid parental leave insurance company in the United States.
The concept was innovative. As Dirk explains, “This is a program that did not exist. No one had paid parental leave insurance. We had to create it from the ground up.”
Instead of asking companies to self-fund costly leave programs or navigate a confusing patchwork of laws, Parento allows them to purchase insurance that covers employee leave. This model is similar to how businesses manage health benefits or workers’ compensation. It’s a solution that de-risks leave for employers while guaranteeing income and job security for parents!
Parento is designed with intention, equity, and scalability in mind. It provides fully managed leave administration, compliance support, and real-time reporting, all while ensuring that parents get the time they need to bond with their new child—without financial strain or career penalty.
Why It Matters
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, only 24% of U.S. private sector workers have access to paid family leave. For low- and middle-income workers, that number drops dramatically. And even among companies that offer it, leave is often inconsistent, underutilized, or poorly managed.
For many parents, while parental leave might be “available”, actually taking it felt more like signing your own resignation letter.
Dirk knew that if parental leave was ever going to be the norm, it needed to be easy to offer and financially sustainable for businesses of all sizes. That’s where Parento comes in.
By making leave both affordable and accessible, Parento empowers companies to retain top talent, reduce burnout, and demonstrate real commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion. It’s not just a perk—it’s smart business.
Centering Working Parents
Parento isn’t just an insurance provider. It’s an advocate for working families. Under Dirk’s leadership, the company offers more than just paid leave coverage. It includes:
Personalized coaching to support parents before, during, and after leave
Compliance expertise that helps companies stay aligned with evolving state and federal laws
Integrated return-to-work planning, helping parents re-enter the workforce with confidence
Dirk often emphasizes that how a company supports employees through life transitions speaks volumes about its values.
And we all know that research backs him up: companies that invest in parental leave see improved employee retention, increased productivity, and stronger workplace morale.
Leading a Culture Shift
Dirk Doebler’s work with Parento is helping shift the national conversation around parental leave. Parento is built on the belief that every family should have access to affordable and easy-to-use paid parental leave, no matter where they work. Furthermore, parents should feel empowered to “take” their leave without feeling the guilt of being a “cost” to their employer.
By solving the logistical and financial barriers, he’s making it possible for employers to do what’s right and what’s smart.
The result? A future where new parents don’t have to choose between family and financial stability. Even better? Companies don’t have to choose between doing good and staying competitive.
We’d also be remiss to gloss over the fact that Dirk Doebler is not a mom. While men can sometimes rake in accolades from something women do everyday (ahem, “babysitting” their children), having everyone involved in the work is important. That’s why we’re so thrilled that Dirk Doebler is the first male founder we’re profiling here at Carter House Copy. We hope he is the first of many.
Parento, under Dirk’s leadership, is proof that innovation doesn’t always mean disruption. Sometimes, it means building the system that should have existed all along.
