Good morning! Former Meta director sues over toxic workplace, Kristi Noem wants to overhaul FEMA, and a new book redefines career breaks.
– Power pause. When Neha Ruch browsed bookstores, she saw tons of books about how to succeed at work or how to raise kids. As the founder of Mother Untitled, a community for women on career breaks, she noticed something was missing: a how-to book that spoke to women at the intersection of family life and ambition.
“There was nothing about how to walk through this unique stage of my life with a sense of financial dignity, confidence, intention, more support, and more tangible ways to grow my network and my creative opportunities on the other side,” Ruch remembers.
Her new book is The Power Pause, an argument that stay-at-home motherhood should be understood as an “enriching chapter” of life, one that can live side by side with career ambition. Ruch’s book makes that argument and also offers practical tips for moms who are out of the workforce right now—with advice ranging from how to answer the question “what do you do?” to reminders to call a friend when feeling overwhelmed by life with little kids to guides for getting back into the workforce or handling finances with a working partner.
Ruch’s interest in this topic dates back to when she began her own career break as a mom of two kids. She had worked for startups including Zola and suddenly found herself in the middle of an identity shift. When people asked her the “what do you do?” question, she was used to having a ready answer. “‘I run brand at a startup’ seemed to convey so much. It conveyed leadership capacity, it conveyed creativity, it conveyed being ahead of the curve in technology,” she remembers. “Then ‘stay-at-home mom’ just felt so flawed.”
In recent years, she’s seen powerful executives rebrand career breaks another way—as “sabbaticals” with nothing to do with caregiving. “As soon as you say ‘sabbatical,’ it has a different level of dignity and respect,” she says. “‘Stay-at-home mother’ is so laden with tropes…We’ve made it seem so ordinary, and we’ve dumbed it down to diapers and laundry, as opposed to recognizing it as an eye-opening, mind-expanding, network-expanding, creative time for for parents.”
Ruch believes that taking time out of the workforce can be its own form of ambition. “Ambition is this determination to do a great many things over the course of your life that you care about,” she says. “That can be elder care, that can be mental health. We want to get to a place where career pauses as a whole are considered an enriching chapter where, while we may have shifted priorities, we are still growing, we are still learning, we are still connecting.”
Emma Hinchliffe
emma.hinchliffe@fortune.com
The Most Powerful Women Daily newsletter is Fortune’s daily briefing for and about the women leading the business world. Today’s edition was curated by Nina Ajemian. Subscribe here.
ALSO IN THE HEADLINES
- Toxic tech. Former Meta director Kelly Stonelake sued the tech company, alleging a toxic workplace environment that silences women. The lawsuit details Stonelake’s allegations of Meta: retaliating after she raised concerns over a product, promoting male colleagues over her, and not taking action after she reported sexual harassment. Meta’s representatives declined to comment on the lawsuit. Fortune
- Farewell, FEMA. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) should not exist as it does now. Noem wants local officials to handle how disaster relief funding is deployed—although FEMA already does work with local governments following disasters. Axios
- Removing from reports. While some large companies are publicly announcing the end to their DEI efforts, others are making changes more quietly by removing references to DEI from their annual reports. General Motors, for example, no longer mentions “diversity” in its 2024 report, a change from the year before. NPR
- Congrats, coach. Autumn Lockwood became the first Black woman coach to win the Super Bowl, with the Philadelphia Eagles’ win against the Kansas City Chiefs on Sunday. Lockwood, an associate performance coach for the Eagles, previously made history in 2023 as the first Black woman to coach a Super Bowl game. Essence
MOVERS AND SHAKERS
Macy’s appointed Barbie Cameron as chief stores officer. Most recently, she was interim chief stores officer and SVP and regional director of stores, east region.
Ingenovis Health, which provides workforce solutions to the healthcare industry, named Jan Ross chief information officer. Ross most recently served as EVP of tech operations and security.
The Investment Company Institute, a regulated funds association, named Erica Elliott Richardson chief of staff. She was most recently chief strategic communications officer.
Octus, a credit data provider, appointed Megan A. Jones as general counsel. Most recently, she was deputy general counsel and corporate secretary at FactSet.
Citi appointed Titi Cole to its board of directors. She was formerly the bank’s head of legacy franchises.
GroundTruth, an advertising and campaign analysis platform, appointed Jeanine Percival Wright to its board of directors. Previously, she was COO and general manager of Wondery.
ON MY RADAR
Fei-Fei Li: Now more than ever, AI needs a governance framework Financial Times
The nuns trying to save the women on Texas’s death row New Yorker
How Calvin Klein worked its way back to the runway Vogue Business
PARTING WORDS
“The best thing that you can do for other women at work is talk about how much money you make.”
— Allison Venditti, CEO and founder of Canadian association Moms at Work, on succeeding at work as a woman