Leadership, Motherhood, and Family: Perfect Together
By: Lisa Greenwald
05/06/2025
As I embraced the role of CEO, my daughter was only four years old – and we were all in the midst of a global pandemic. Day in and out, my husband and I faced the same challenges and annoyances most working parents did during that time, including constantly questioning whether my time and attention was in the right place. Working parenthood is hard, and a topic I welcome doing more research on because 1) I live it and 2) it’s far too often dismissed as “normal,” despite its immense impact on health and financial wellbeing.
I don’t know that I truly understood what it was like to be a business leader and a parent, until I too, had to juggle all the competing priorities. Sure, I had read all the research reports on the topic, but until you live it yourself, you don’t necessarily appreciate the importance of time management, spousal communication, delegation, and of course the feelings of “guilt.” The experience of being a working parent and its emotions were sometimes overwhelming. I wondered if I was the best mom I could be to our daughter and if I was the best CEO for the business.
I remember quite well though, a moment of parental fulfillment and professional clarity, when our daughter then in kindergarten filled out a worksheet that said: “A leader is…my mom.” To know my daughter is growing up with female leadership completely normalized made it all feel worth it. Greenwald operates in industries that have been historically dominated by men. There are amazing women in this industry who forged the way and succeeded before I was even out of school. And yet, when I entered the industry, I was often one of only a few women in the room. That my daughter so naturally and intuitively accepted that her mom was “boss” felt like a generational changing of the guard. A mom can be a leader in so many ways.
Being a working parent has ultimately been far more fulfilling than challenging (with a quick shout out to my husband for keeping the challenges to a dull roar and putting out a few fires). But I will eventually find myself in another common position – one that we do quite a bit of research on at Greenwald. I will be in the sandwich generation (not a generation but a life stage). In the years ahead, I will, in addition to having a school-aged child, become a caregiver to one of my parents, stepparent, or in-laws, and potentially to all of them, simultaneously. My husband and I are so fortunate to have all five parents/grandparents in our lives, but we know the future may not always be as it is now. And then we too, like so many others, will have to navigate being a caregiver to an aging loved one, while parenting a dependent child. Once again, all those studies I have read and produced will have new meaning.
Being a research professional who routinely discusses longevity risk, the burden of unpaid caregiving, and the implications of having a good versus non-existent end of life plan, you can imagine it’s a more comfortable conversation to have with my family. My father, Matt Greenwald, and I can be almost clinical. We know what the stats mean and the likely outcomes. Matt and I tend to be very fact-based when we have discussions and rarely emotional. (As you might imagine, the cold hard facts and research about the likelihood of living another 10 years or needing LTC don’t land quite as well with my in-laws.) But just like being a working parent, when I’m forced to live in those moments, all those stats and research aren’t going to help much when the hardest days come.
In many ways, however, my role and my research has helped prepare me, as I move through my multiple roles as a leader, mother, and an eventual caregiving daughter. I strive to do the best I can with all the different “hats” I wear. The learnings of research and family experiences have molded me into the researcher and leader I am today.
