How Being a Mother Has Made Us Better Consultants

There is no shortage of narratives about how hard it is to be a working mom. The pressure, tradeoffs and the very real discrimination many women face in the workplace are all part of the story. But they are not the whole story.  

What gets talked about far less is how becoming a mother can also sharpen your perspective in ways that make you more effective in your work. One of us is in the thick of new motherhood, learning in real time. The other is watching her kids step into adulthood and wondering how it went so fast. Different seasons, different perspectives, but when we compare notes, what strikes us is how much the same lessons show up.  

This Mother's Day, we wanted to share four of those lessons and what they've taught us about being better consultants, better leaders and better advocates for the communities we serve. 

#1 I've Been That Mom

Tawnia: When I adopted my two children as a single mom at ages two and four, I got a crash course in what "family friendly" actually costs. Childcare alone consumed more than a third of my take-home pay. The most affordable preschool option required two hours of driving each day. There was no paid leave to ease the transition, and I showed up sick more times than I should have because I had already used my limited PTO caring for my kids.  

Those years of barely making it work made me a sharper, more empathetic consultant and a more intentional employer. I know firsthand what it costs women to show up fully when the system isn't built to support them. That's why supporting working mothers and caregivers isn't a talking point for me, it's a design principle. Our firm offers flexible scheduling, generous PTO, paid family leave and mental health supports. We recently added a policy to cover childcare costs when a work obligation falls outside normal hours.  

When I work alongside clients who are navigating these same tensions of being stretched thin, resource-constrained and trying to serve their communities while raising their families, I see them clearly because I've been them. I know that my experience, as hard as it was, came with advantages many women don't have. That only makes me a fiercer advocate for building real, structural solutions for the moms with even less margin. 

Heather: Becoming a mom in the past year gave me a much deeper understanding of what capacity really looks like. I have always worked with colleagues and clients navigating limited time and resources, but now I feel that strain on a new level. Nothing ever feels “done”, at home or at work, and the mental strain of that alone makes everything heavier.  

When I’m with my son, he needs everything from me and I can’t push through or multitask my way out of it. While that creates frustration at times at work, it has also connected me to our clients on a different level.   

It has made me a stronger advocate for them, especially those who are caregivers. I think more intentionally of what is asked of nonprofit leaders and staff, what is actually realistic and where systems are causing unnecessary barriers.  

Navigating childcare has also heightened my awareness of how broken the system is and has made supporting innovation in this space a much higher priority for us as a company.  

#2 Motherhood Made the Mission Personal

Tawnia: Becoming a mother deepened my sense of urgency around the work we do, because it cracked me open in ways that made it more personal. I already understood, from my own life, how quickly families can find themselves navigating broken systems from mental health crises to housing instability, and how few real safety nets exist when things unravel.  

My experiences as a mother refined my understanding of what it feels like to be a family in crisis, and they continue to influence the kinds of organizations we choose to work with. Today, we partner with two of the largest mental health service providers in Dallas County, and deliberately seek out clients serving people that systems have too often written off.  

Motherhood taught me that people don't need to be saved. They need to be seen. As an adoptive mom, I've experienced the way people project a “rescue” narrative onto my family. It's always jarring, because it's not true and it erases something essential. My relationship with my children is mutual. They needed a mom and I needed to be theirs.  

Saviorism is an insidious poison in the nonprofit sector for the same reason, because it distorts authentic motivation, it centers the wrong person and the people on the receiving end of it can feel it. My commitment to this work is rooted in the belief that all people have inherent worth — not worth that has to be earned or demonstrated, not compassion contingent on a clean record or the right circumstances. That's why we push against saviorism in our practice and in our clients' work, and why we are drawn to nonprofit leaders who are showing up for their communities because of their own experiences and their own stake in the outcome. The best solutions are built with communities, not for them. 

Heather: I have always cared deeply about making the world a better place, but over the past year I have had a growing sense of responsibility for the future my son will grow up in. I see that responsibility both through my own lens and through his. 

I think about feeding him while navigating rising costs, about the education system he will experience, about healthcare, safety and the communities he will have access to as he grows. These systems feel much more urgent and personal.  

As a mom, I feel a responsibility to contribute to improving those systems. As a consultant at WISE, I can do that in a tangible way. It has connected my work and my personal mission in life even more closely than before. 

#3 It's Not About Time. It's About Presence.

Tawnia: Motherhood taught me what work-life balance actually means. It's not about equal hours or perfect scheduling. It's about being fully present wherever you are. When I'm at work, I'm at work. When I'm with my kids, I'm with my kids. This isn’t as simple as it sounds. 

Women are pulled in ten directions at any given moment. The mental load and constant context switching don’t just affect productivity, they affect presence. And presence, I've learned, is everything. It's not the amount of time you spend with your kids that matters most, it's whether you're actually with them when you're there.  

Learning to protect that presence at home forced me to build the same muscle at work. I had to learn to leave work behind when I clocked out, which meant I also had to learn to show up fully when I clocked back in. That discipline protects me from the slow drain of chronic distraction and the burnout that follows. At WISE, we take this seriously both as a personal practice and as an organizational value. We maintain strong boundaries that protect work-life balance, and we invest in Positive Intelligence training to build the actual skill of presence for ourselves and for our team. The result is that when I am on the clock for a client, they are getting my full self.  

Heather: Every day with a baby brings something new. Right now, my son is learning to walk and recently took his first step on his own. Watching him process the movement and take that step was a moment that couldn’t be recreated. I felt so full of pride and awe. It hit me how easily I could have missed it if I had been distracted. 

That experience has influenced how I show up at work. In conversations with clients, small shifts matter. Tone changes, a passing comment or a moment of hesitation can all signal something essential that could be easily missed if I’m not paying attention.  

I have become more intentional about following those threads, even when it feels uncomfortable or delays another goal. That is often where the most important insights come from. It has also changed how I recognize progress. The metaphorical baby steps, the small wins, the moments where something finally clicks after weeks or months or even years of work, are easy to overlook if you are not present. Those moments are valuable, and deeply gratifying if I’m present to catch them.  

#4 Advising Starts with Understanding

Tawnia: Before I became a mom, I thought what most people probably think: that children are shaped almost entirely by the environment you create for them. Motherhood corrected that assumption quickly. My kids came to me as fully formed little people, with their own temperaments, their own ways of seeing the world, their own things that made them light up or shut down. My role wasn't to mold them, but to understand them. A one-size-fits-all approach doesn't just fall short, it fails.  

This lesson carried directly into my work. As a mom, I had to learn to adapt how I communicate, listen and respond based on what each person actually needs. 

At WISE, we use two powerful frameworks, Enneagram and Positive Intelligence, to do professionally what motherhood taught me personally. They help us understand that every person is operating from their own internal system, shaped by their own experiences, fears and motivations. When you genuinely internalize that, it changes everything about how you communicate, how you listen and how you lead. It replaces assumption with curiosity and allows us to meet teammates and clients where they are. 

Heather: Sleep has become a bit unpredictable in this season of my life. Just this week, my son suddenly stopped going to sleep at his usual bedtime. For two nights in a row, I went through our normal bedtime routine, rocking him for over an hour, trying everything that had worked before. I could feel myself getting more frustrated, wanting him to just comply! 

The next day, we tried just putting him down an hour later. He fell asleep almost immediately. 

It was a simple moment, but speaks to this larger truth. I can read every book and follow every recommendation, but if I’m not paying attention to what he is actually telling me, it won’t work. 

That lesson shows up clearly in consulting. We bring expertise and best practices to our clients, but the starting point always has to be listening and exploration. Every organization has its own strengths, challenges and context. The most effective strategies are built around that reality, not applied from a template. 

Being a working mom is often framed around what it takes away: time, energy, focus. Those challenges are real, but what gets talked about less is what it builds. It builds empathy, presence, adaptability and deeper understandings of systems and people. It naturally prioritizes and connects our work view more to our life view. 

At WISE, those lessons shape how we operate as a team and how we serve our clients. While being a working mom is challenging, it is also a perspective that makes us better at what we do.