Featured
Jane Son is an architect who became a free agent soon after giving birth and made easy sacrifices so she could afford to find more magic hours with her new babe. Let’s be clear though—she still gets courted to work on major commercial and residential projects and now she’s launching CASSON Hardware, which will bring ultra-modern fixtures to minimalist design buffs. Here’s how she manages to keep her head in the game while her heart is at home.
Newly separated soon after giving birth, Alicia McNamara was forced to adapt to a fresh reality quickly. “All of a sudden I was single and I was eager to reinvent myself and find a career that fit,” she says. Today she’s the on-set stylist for ET Canada where she feels at home and happy to be juggling motherhood and work at once.
What does a former club DJ, VJ and news anchor do when she has a gaggle of littles? Well, Monika Deol quit her on-air career to become a full-time mom to four. She’s most widely known as the host of CityTV’s Electric Circus, a live TV dance show that still gets mad props from headlining stars (Champagne Papi, for example, paid homage by wearing a tee with the show’s logo just last summer). It’s been more than 10 years since her on-air life and she’s coming into the spotlight with the launch of her newest baby, Stellar makeup.
Joanna Track has launched big and exciting digital ventures during her career and now she’s got The Bullet, a daily newsletter that runs down the top news of the day which she personally curates for busy moms like us. With this biz, she’s redefining her journey of entrepreneurship as a single parent and allowing motherhood to inspire her business plan.
When you meet Simone Otis (she’s prepped the faces of Rachel McAdams, Sarah Rafferty and Kendall Jenner) one of the first things you notice is that she has ah-mazing skin. She’s mastered the model-off-duty-makeup look (that’s pretty and minimal), thanks to her stylish intuition and her career cred (Simone’s handiwork has graced the pages of Vogue, Vanity Fair and ELLE Canada). We convinced her to tell us what’s in her personal beauty routine so we can get glowing just like her.
A little over a year ago, Micah Cameron was the women’s wear fashion director for a major department store, then she made the bold decision to recharge her career while she was pregnant. Today we’re at her mews-style home with her son Marlon Wolf and catching up about her other love child, Frankie’s Surf Club, a lifestyle and online shop that’s just a few months older than her babe.
Katherine Hamilton has two sons, Harry, 16, and Toby, 13, who have witnessed her evolution as an entrepreneur while nurturing her level-headedness. “Being a single mom and an entrepreneur has been stressful. My kids are the ones who motivated me to be my best and figure it all out,” she says. “Before it really was about survival and I’m happy now that it’s more about thriving.”
Roxana Esmailji paid her dues before breaking out on her own two years ago and launching Barcelona Shoe Company (and her shoes have already made well-heeled appearances on Cityline and on our own happy feet during our recent trip to Mexico). However, a nagging feeling to be more creative and a longtime vision of having her own company finally usurped her life of uncomfortable high heels and a corporate salary that was fuelling her bank account but not her dream.
Hannah Sung is a video and podcast producer at The Globe and Mail and a privilege of her gig was producing a podcast series about race in Canada called Colour Code that shot to the top of the Apple Podcast chart last year. We asked Hannah what she learned on this aural journey for herself, for her kids and for us, too.
Heather Reier’s bath, hair and body business, Cake Beauty, was well established once she started a family and she says she didn’t freak out aside from the usual new mom jitters. With both Hudson, 7, and Graeme, 4, she cut her mat leave short and went back to work while the boys were each only a few months old. She didn’t sweat the transition too much because she says her personal experience as a mom has to do with finding joy and success in every part of her life.
Debra Goldblatt Sadowski’s PR business is 25-people strong with Adidas, the Juno Awards, Etsy and Club Med as clients and accolades such as spots in the Canadian Business Top 100 Female Entrepreneurs in Canada, and one of the fastest growing companies in the country according to Profit 500. Here she shares positive self-talk that will help make every diaper change, client meeting and any grown-up decision feel like it’s truly meant to be.
Amid the hoopla of changing time zones from New Zealand to Canada with her family in tow, Anna Church has accelerated her career. Her work has made the rounds at the Affordable Art Fair in New York and Art Basel Miami and are available at galleries around the globe. She’s packed in a lot of major life leaps into a few short years and as you’ll see, she’s done it with loads of style and a willingness to embrace change.
Jennifer Brodeur, the brains behind the new Peoni skincare line, is not only a skincare guru but a career whisperer too. We asked her to tell us what work lessons she’s learned from Oprah and what she’s also learned about working with her business partner—and husband.
“After I went through my divorce, I fell in love with my kitchen again,” says Anastasia Bogner. “I started going to farmer’s markets and really started taking an interest in what I’m putting in my body. When you’re a mom, you have to look after yourself and when I became a single mom, I became even more mindful of being healthy and full of energy for my daughter.” Here’s how she’s making clean eating an every day joy.
Every week we bring you a new mom to meet of every age and stage of parenting. And while today’s profile, Adrienne Shoom, has 3 kids all in their 20s (Sam, Jack and Edie), there’s so much to learn from how she has thrived. “Learning to be a team player is part of life at the office and at home where everyone has to work together to live happily after under one roof.”
After a first career minding major athletes and rap stars (including a stint with Kanye West and surviving the Taylor Swift hooplah by his side), Nova Browning Rutherford is now a personal development coach and speaker. She’s carved out a career that’s better suited to her desire to help others, however she admits her three-year-old twins can often test her own well-honed life skills. Here’s her road-tested self-care advice for working moms.
Bernadette Morra has a long-standing love affair with her work. Her career as a fashion editor and reporter has spanned over 25 years with an impressive tenure at The Star followed by 7 years as the editor-in-chief of FASHION magazine. Quitting her profession was never in her vocabulary after she had her twin sons who are now 18-years old. Her secret? Stop questioning work-life balance and simply accept it with grace and style.
When we sat down to talk with creative agency owner Kathi Z, she was refreshingly unedited about being a momboss and how there’s no shame to find help to make it work. “I want to see Ivanka Trump show us her support staff. It’s bullshit that she’s makes it look like she’s doing it all on her own. And why is everyone bashing Sophie Trudeau for having a nanny? She’s busy. She needs help and WTF is wrong with that.”
Christine Russell is the co-founder of 889 Yoga in Toronto and was fresh from a week-long retreat when we had a chance to talk about her life as a mom. With her mind and spirit cracked open from her week of self-discovery, Christine is fearless and frank about what’s in her heart for herself and the community of mamas she’s come to know since having her own girls, Waverley, 2-years old, and Winslowe, 9 months old.
After speaking to over 40 moms, of every age and phase of parenting, I have learned so much about the modern state of working motherhood since launching Love, Emoem 8 months ago. I’ve learned more than any self-help book could teach me. As 2017 kicks off, here are lessons that we heard from the moms we’ve featured that will help you get more out of your career and motherhood at once.
Manicurist doesn’t seem enough to describe nail pro Gina Edwards. She’s buffed and polished Taylor Swift and Nicole Kidman and worked on set with high profile glossies like Elle and Harper’s Bazaar. After years of hard work, she’s enjoying her well-earned success and most importantly, she’s reached a point in her career where she can prioritize her life away from work.
Audrey Hyams Romoff is a public relations personality that’s enjoyed a long career with clients such as Estée Lauder, Shoppers Drug Mart, David Yurman, Victoria’s Secret and Crate and Barrel. Her drive and commitment to her work is something she never let go of and she says it was difficult being a Type-A career woman with a growing family along for the ride. And FYI: She’s not ashamed to admit that life got messy.
Liv Judd Soye recently moved to a new home that has the wiggle room to accommodate her career as a freelance style and media personality (you’ll see her share her chic know-how on shows like ET Canada and The Morning Show). “The very top floor of the house was an attic space that was converted into a sitting area, however as soon as I walked in, all I could see was closet space and a work area where I could style my shoots and store my wardrobe.” Here’s how she made the most of it.
Jen McNeely is the brains behind She Does the City, a website for vibrant women in Toronto that are never afraid to speak up. She admits within the first few months of being a mom, she was ready to pack it all up. “I thought I would pull the plug on it. I couldn’t figure out how to reconcile my business about bustling city life with motherhood. It seemed impossible,” she says. Her little is 2-years old and oh how things have changed.
This time around we’re getting beauty truths from Carlene Higgins, a Toronto-based freelance style writer and editor. After 13 years jet-setting around the globe and producing glossy editorials for FLARE magazine as its Beauty and Fashion Director, this mom of two littles knows what it takes to keep up with ever-changing—and let’s admit, tiring—trends.
Tamara Robbins Griffith is a former stylist and editor with a career mojo that has helped her leap from one desirable industry to another. Today’s she’s a PR and Social Media manager at TJX Canada (think HomeSense, WINNERS and Marshalls) where she gets to exercise her creative and strategic muscles every day. A mom to two littles who are 1 and 5 years old, she says freelance life isn’t the more desirable path for her right now because she’s lucky to be in a position that allows both her career and family to flourish.