Neha Kumar, COO of Full Glass Wine.
Photo provided by jbc PR
In December 2020, Neha Kumar was in the middle of a due diligence call for the acquisition of Create & Cultivate when she discovered she was in early labor with her daughter. As the business’s CFO and COO, she didn’t want to do anything that could jeopardize the deal and decided to stay quiet.
Kumar pulled over a nightstand for her laptop and sat on the floor to finish the call with her legs outstretched. “The way to expedite labor is to move around and stand up, so I thought, if I sit down and my legs are on the floor I can finish this call.”
Just two years prior, she joined the media and events company intending to create the infrastructure required to sell it. Now, in the midst of the pandemic, two deals had already fallen through, and Kumar wasn’t prepared to let it happen again.
Her daughter was born the following evening, on December 24th, after Kumar spent the day working at the hospital. She shares that Friday was Christmas day, which meant no one was working, allowing her to keep the news to herself. “The 25th, I went home, and I had a minute on Saturday and Sunday. On Monday morning 9:00 a.m. I was back on the disclosure schedules call.”
Because her daughter was born during the pandemic, Kumar was working from home and could nurse her baby even when on Zoom calls without anyone noticing, simply by angling her camera. For eight days, not even Kumar’s closest colleagues knew she’d had a baby.
The deal was finalized in March 2021 for $23 million.
Kumar has no regrets
While Kumar acknowledges the extreme nature of her story and doesn’t recommend that other women follow in her footsteps, she doesn’t regret it. “It was one of the harder things I’ve done, but I also felt victorious. I got to do something that was really important to me in my life.”
Kumar is sharing her stories to normalize the struggles women face and show women they can have a career and be a mother, and do it on their own terms. She sees how many things aren’t talked about openly, such as dealing with a miscarriage or postpartum depression—both of which Kumar has experienced personally—and believes normalizing these events will help women to know they aren’t alone and reduce the bias working mothers experience.
Kumar is referring to a bias known as the motherhood penalty. According to an NIH review, “mothers face a motherhood penalty, where they are perceived as being unfit for leadership roles, are evaluated as less competent and less committed to their careers, receive lower salaries, and are denied advancement opportunities.”
The rules changed when she became a mother
She first noticed the impact of motherhood on her own career when she decided to join Create & Cultivate at the end of 2018 and her first child was just 7 weeks old. She shares that some people weren’t supportive, asking why she would join a start-up when her son was so young. She realized the assumption was that things would change for her following children; the expectation was that she would be focused on motherhood and not her career.
These new rules confused her. “Our generation was told to be ambitious, to go out and do everything, achieve what you want. Then as soon as you have a child you’re told, ‘be the best mom, take care of your kid first.’”
A survey quoted in the BBC shows that Kumar isn’t alone in wanting to be back at work. In the survey, 27% of women said they did not enjoy maternity leave as much as they thought they would, 47% felt lonely, 40% missed being at work, and 20% wished they had gone back earlier.
In Kumar’s case, returning to work helped her get over her postpartum depression. Following the birth of her son, she spent most of her days crying and unsure how to bounce back, realizing that this was not something she could “just push through.”
But just two days after starting at Create & Cultivate, Kumar stopped crying. “I realized that by taking care of myself, I was able to be a better mother.” Looking back, Kumar advises women to have a strong support system in place before their first child is born.
Balancing motherhood and a big career
Six years later, Kumar continues to focus on her career while raising two young children. In addition to being a professor at UCLA, she is co-founder and COO of Full Glass Wine, a company projected to generate $125 million in revenue this year, less than two years after being founded.
When asked about balancing motherhood and career, Kumar shares that, “You don’t have to do it all; you have to find ways to get things done.” To her, that means ranking and prioritizing the things she wants to accomplish, such as ensuring her kids feel loved and cared for, attending their doctor’s appointments, and spending quality time with them.
For many women in demanding jobs, understanding that there are times when work will take priority and others when we can take a step back helps to create the right balance.
Kumar shares an example of what this looks like for her. Not long ago, although Full Glass Wine was in the midst of acquiring another company, she was able to take her son out of school on a Wednesday, put her phone or airplane mode, and have a special day with him.
As for the daughter whose birth was initially kept secret, Kumar smiles as she shares that she’ll be turning 4 in December. She adds how meaningful it is that her daughter will be surrounded by powerful women as she grows up. “She’s going to grow up in a world where she’s never going to know anything different.”
Kumar wants women who are feeling overwhelmed with motherhood and career to know, “It’s all temporary, you’re going to be okay.” But perhaps most of all her advice to women is “not to give up your ambitions or lose who you are.”
