Lauren’s story
From the minute I started my first role in planning, I loved media. I love the energy, the creativity, being a part of a dynamic environment and the way that no one day was the same.
Two years into my media career, I received some horrible personal news. Medical experts told me that it would be very difficult, near impossible, to bear children. I was shattered, I knew at some stage in my life I wanted to have children and it wasn’t until I was told that maybe I couldn’t that I realised how much I had wanted a family.
I moved overseas and threw myself into work. When I returned home three years later, I was faced with a slew of announcements- babies, weddings and engagements. These announcements, while happy for those around me, compounded my own grief. To cope, I continued to double down on work. Work fulfilled me in a way that nothing else in my life did; and I had accepted that this was going to be a core focus for me in the absence of family.
I was promoted and took on extracurricular work outside of my day to day role- developing initiatives that would better the organisation I was working in. I am proud to have been a part of the team that developed market leading maternity and paternity leave policies for GroupM - which I have been told raised the bar for other media agencies. We were also the first agency group to shut its doors for a day and enable the entire workforce to work from home- a novel concept in 2015. Proving to the industry, and our clients, that work would still get done if we facilitated flexible working arrangements.
During this time, in my personal life, I had found my great love and at the end of 2015 we married. Right after our honeymoon we started preparing for what we anticipated would be a long and possibly unsuccessful IVF journey. Then the unexpected happened, I fell pregnant. I became that miracle story, like the many that had been shared with me in prior years as a source of comfort.
The lead up to my maternity leave was a struggle. I tried and failed to operate at the high functioning capacity that was my norm. That was the start of the change that parenthood would bring. I had to adjust, reassess and work out a new operating rhythm. It’s still vivid in my mind – my last day before maternity leave, I sat in the foyer of the workplace that felt like ‘home’ for the five years and sobbed. I thought that was the end, that I couldn’t facilitate my two great loves - work and being a mother.
I returned to work after six and a half months. Whilst I adored being a mother, I was bored. I had a desire to tap into a little bit of my old self. We were also in a fortunate position that my husband had three months parental leave he could use, so it was right for us. The journey to assimilate back into work was tougher than I had anticipated. I felt that had forgotten everything, all the acronyms were lost on me, the landscape had changed, and I had the challenge of starting on a brand new client. All of this coupled with a sadness that I was missing out on my child’s life. But I powered on, as every working parent does, and soon it felt like second nature again.
When I had my second child, I knew it was time for a change. The commute was a key reason, so after 8.5 years at GroupM, I moved companies to the Central based, UM.
Starting at UM during a pandemic was an experience that I don’t think many working parents have gone through. I was finding my feet in a new role, with a new client, meeting new people and my new team via a screen – often off camera. As I was trying to build these relationships remotely, I also learnt that no one in my team had kids. I was lonely.
As 2021 began to bring some ‘normalcy’ back to our lives, I had an idea. What if I could match parents returning to work with ‘seasoned’ parents to help new parents navigate those first challenging 12 months. What if I could create a community that met on a regular basis to discuss what it was like being a working parent at UM. So, armed with a PowerPoint presentation I approached my CEO, Anathea Ruys, with a pitch. A pitch I wasn’t even halfway through before she was on board.
The work I was doing leading UM’s working parents committee was extremely fulfilling. But, in the back of my mind I always wanted to do more for our industry. I was tired of seeing talented colleagues leave the industry as it just seemed too hard to do the working parent juggle.
When I met Lou, we clicked. We shared our stories, discussed our visions and finally, committed to building The Village together. The Village is a tangible place where parents, and parents to be, can connect and mentor each other to thrive in their media career and at home, as a parent. I can’t wait to see our community grow and come together to achieve positive outcomes that empower parents in the media industry. The Village was formed to make a lasting change on our industry, so it is considered the right industry for parents to have a long, successful, and fulfilling career.
Working from home during COVID.
Trying to adjust to a new role as a working parent in a world where we were all learning a new way of working
The joy and the love of being a parent is unlike anything I have ever known