No woman should walk alone on her path to success. Share your experience

“So much of maternity leave policy is emerging and there are not institutionalized expectations from fund to fund.  It would be incredibly helpful for Kayo to poll its attendees and publish the findings as we try to increase the number of women in the field and level set expectations” – Elizabeth Chou, General Partner, New Markets Venture Partners

Imagine you work in investing, and you are pregnant with your first child.  You are juggling so many uncertainties. Will your deal close on time? Can your belly really get any larger? Can you really fit any more baby gear in your 1,000 square foot New York City apartment?  It’s almost a relief to head into the office every day where you can focus your mind on work, except during the mid-afternoon when a bout of fatigue hits you like a ton of bricks. (Luckily, you sneak down to the gym to nap in the ladies locker room.)

There are so many questions, and yet a big one is lurking…maternity leave.  You need to talk to your team, and you want to do the right thing by your family, your new baby and by yourself, without jeopardizing your career and advancement.  What is the best approach? Maybe there is a policy in place. Maybe there is none. Maybe you are even tasked with creating the policy yourself. 

Woman live these scenarios every day. Whether you are a general partner at a small private equity firm or at a larger asset manager, when it comes to negotiating maternity leave it can be difficult to know where to start. What are other firms doing? What are the expectations? Am I asking for too much? Or, more importantly, selling myself short? Where are the pitfalls?

With Kayo’s unique access to female general partners and finance investors we have the opportunity to learn from your experiences and level set expectations when it comes to maternity leave. By sharing information and pulling together the data, you’ll be helping women and yourself when it comes to future maternity leave negotiations.

Please complete this short questionnaire as a way to support your Kayo community and the women in your industry.  

TAKE THE SURVEY

WHY IT MATTERS

“In order to attract and retain top talent and benefit from a diverse environment, we recognized that we needed to update our family leave policies for both mothers and fathers.  I took it upon myself to research best practices and implement them at FCP, which included extending our paid family leave and creating a wellness room for nursing mothers. At such an exciting and stressful time, new parents should not have to worry about finances and should be able to fully focus on bonding with their child.” 

-Summer Haltli, SVP – Strategic Management & Sustainability, Federal Capital Partners

“So much of maternity leave policy is emerging and there are not institutionalized expectations from fund to fund. Personally I negotiated my leave policy with my firm based on a mere 12 data points gleaned from a fellow female investor’s friends. This could be a great opportunity for Kayo to poll its attendees and publish data and findings that would be incredibly helpful as we are trying to increase the number of women in the field and level set expectations” 

-Elizabeth Chou, General Partner, New Market Venture Partners