Wendy Xiao Schadeck, who will graduate from Columbia Business School (CBS) next week, started her MBA program with a baby. “When I did it, basically people were kind of shocked,” she says. “They thought I was a little crazy because the actual time demands of an MBA are quite intense.”
Schadeck didn’t set out to start business school with a baby. “I was originally planning to have a baby in my second year, because I heard the first year would be a little insane,” she says. But then she learned she was pregnant just before getting into CBS. Originally scheduled to start in fall 2014, she postponed to January 2015 to take advantage of CBS’s J-term program, a 16-month accelerated program in which students skip the traditional summer internship. “It worked out really well,” she says. An entrepreneur, she didn’t need a summer internship the way some business school students do—although she ended up finding time for a couple of part-time internships during school anyway.
Wendy Xiao Schadeck (CBS MBA '16) with husband Rodrigo and son Tyler
Before J-term started, as she was getting the hang of being mom to Tyler, Schadeck met up with some friends who had started the MBA program in the fall. “They were like, ‘I literally don’t know how you are going to do it,’” she recalls. “Thanks. Thanks for the words of encouragement,” she thought.
Not only did she do it, she made the Dean’s List each semester, served in a leadership role for the Columbia Entrepreneurship Organization, served as community chair for her cluster and was a member of the Wine Society, the Retail/Luxury Goods Club, the PE/VC Club and the Real Estate Association. Oh, and she also co-founded her own startup—CoHatchery—a co-working space for parents in New York City.
Moms Having Babies at Business School Is Becoming a Thing
Now, before you dismiss Schadeck as a freak of nature, get this: Mothers having babies at business school is becoming a thing. “I would say yes, that is certainly the trend,” says Kerry Pace, associate dean for MBA programs at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business. Though the school doesn’t have statistics on how many students are choosing to become parents while in school, the number is definitely up. We spoke with three current McDonough women MBA students who all gave birth while in school—and between them they knew of at least five more.
In response to the growing number of nursing mothers, McDonough has now established a lactation room. There had been a room for women to pump breast milk on the Georgetown University campus, but it was halfway across campus from the business school. “It was an hour by the time you got there and back—just not realistic,” Pace says. She pushed hard for a nursing mom’s room within the business school, and it finally came through this past fall. “That was a big, big win,” she says. Keeper of the keys to the room, Pace gives each mom her own copy so she can come and go whenever she wants.
Brooke Carroll Raybould (MBA ’16) made frequent use of that room to nurse her son, Rhett, who will turn one on May 16th, the day before Raybould graduates. Raybould and her husband were married the July before she began school, but having a baby wasn’t on the immediate agenda. “I found out I was pregnant in opening term, and we weren’t necessarily planning on it,” she says. “Originally I thought I would do school and maybe work a few years and then start a family, but sometimes you’re just not in control of everything.”
“It ended up being the perfect scenario for me personally,” Raybould continues. She had a pretty easy pregnancy, despite some nausea and fatigue. “For the most part, it wasn’t a big deal at all to balance school with pregnancy,” she says. She also was lucky enough to deliver right after her first-year finals. She wasn’t able to do a summer internship, but instead she got to spend those three and a half months with her newborn son and then felt ready to dive back into classes when they started up again in the fall.
“Georgetown has been amazing,” Raybould says, noting the opening of the lactation room, the support provided by Dean Pace and the community of other mothers she found herself a part of. “There were quite a few of us going through the whole pumping thing, going through the challenges of having a new kiddo, balancing work and school,” she says. In her class alone she thinks there were seven new moms. “It was a crazy amount, and in total I think there were about 12 of us that I know expected new children during my time here. Everywhere you turned someone was getting pregnant.”
For Raybould’s classmate, Gabriela Prudencio, also Class of 2016, getting pregnant while in business school was very much according to plan. Having worked in the international development field, she had been traveling for a decade before business school, often in the developing world. “I am a little older—36—and business school for me presented a time when I was in the States, I had just gotten married and I didn’t want to wait any longer because of fertility reasons,” she says. “It was now or never.”
That said, she was under no illusion that having a baby during business school would be easy. “I knew that I was in a very rigorous program, but I just had to make choices,” she says. “This was more reasonable than being pregnant
in a foreign country, away from my family,” which is often where she found herself as a project manager for Mercy Corps.
Not Just an American Phenomenon
Having babies during business school in not just an American phenomenon. Eva Meeuwis, a second-year MBA student at London Business School (LBS), knows four other women who became moms during the program while she was there. Meeuwis, who is from the Netherlands, started at LBS with an eight-week-old daughter and then had a second daughter a year into the program, very much by design.
Eva Meeuwis (LBS MBA '16) with daughters Faye (6 months) and Kate (22 months)
“Basically, I had been working for a while already and my partner and I both wanted to have children,” she says. “I didn’t want to become a stay-at-home mom, but I wanted babies and personally, I would rather have them when I am younger,” says the 31-year-old. “A lot of professional women put their career first and then are older before they start having babies.”
Recognizing that business school is an intense period, Meeuwis nonetheless felt that having babies while there would, in fact, mean that she would have more time with them in their earliest years than if she were working. “If I had continued working, I wouldn’t have seen my babies this much—I maybe wouldn’t have seen them that many times a week at all,” she says. In the Netherlands, standard maternity leave is 12 weeks, four weeks of which you are mandated to take before giving birth. “That time period is super, super small,” she says. “You don’t want to leave them and go back to work that quickly.”
Now that she is interviewing for a range of positions post-graduation, Meeuwis is even more convinced she made the right choice. “I love being a mom—I have had two, and I really wanted a second one, so I think that says enough,” she says. “But I am also very, very much looking forward to going back to work now. Because I have had more time with my children, I think I am even more motivated and ready to go back, knowing that I haven’t missed the initial first years.”
An Opportune Time to Fit in Motherhood
Back in the States, Lindsey Auriemma also saw the MBA as an opportune time to fit in motherhood. “I actually had a bit of a plan going into things,” says the McDonough second-year. “I have always been a pretty driven person in terms of my career goals and aspirations for myself, but at the same time wanted to have a family. I want to have my cake and eat it, too.”
As she thought through the next steps of her career in the pharmaceutical industry, she realized that advancement would require some level of graduate education. Faced with decisions between school, work and family, she decided that she could probably juggle two but not three. “I decided to put my career on hold and focus on school and family life and come back to working at a later date after I finished getting my MBA,” she says. Now, with her MBA all but complete and her 15-month-old son, Blake, thriving, she’s got a great job waiting for her as the project manager for a global product launch at a pharmaceutical company. “I was able get a great career jump after graduation, and I’m pretty excited about that,” she says.
Choices, Juggling and Sacrifice
Make no mistake. Every mom we spoke to conceded that there are sacrifices that come with having a baby in business school. “You absolutely have to sacrifice—you only have that many hours in a day or a week,” Meeuwis says. “If you have a young baby, you don’t necessarily party every night—I sacrificed going to a club every night of the week, but I am not sorry about that,” she says. “I really enjoyed my time, I went to the parties I wanted to go to and I made the friends I wanted to make.”
Gabriela Prudencio (McDonough MBA' 16) with her baby
McDonough’s Prudencio, too, gave up things as a result of choosing to have her baby while in school. “The main sacrifice was that I really wanted to have an internship—that was part of why I opted to do a full-time MBA program,” she says. But when she realized her baby would be due during the summer, she chose not to seek out a full-time internship. Fortunately, though, she found a McDonough professor who was organizing part-time internships for students who for one reason or another couldn’t pursue full-time opportunities. “So I was lucky to get to do a part-time internship in consulting that let me fill that gap,” she says. It will also help her in goal of changing careers—she’s looking to move from heavily field-based international development work to a role with an NGO or perhaps in consulting.
For Raybould, one of the biggest challenges has been being fully present wherever she is. “When I get home, it’s still hard for me to turn off,” she says, acknowledging that in a world of smartphones people expect you to be responsive around the clock. “At the same time, when you have a little kid it’s the best time of their lives and they require so much attention,” she says. “I will catch myself on my phone when I’m with my son—I try not to do it but I also want to be competitive with my peers and involved and responsive.”
She also finds she has far less patience for frivolous chit chat at school. “For me it has definitely been different having a kid because it costs money to have a babysitter,” she says. “People might be having an idle conversation about something social, and my mind would be racing,” she says. “I am kind of on the clock right now, my nanny is getting paid and if we’re not working on school stuff I might as well go home,” she’d find herself thinking. “In the beginning, I became a little bit bossy,” she concedes. “But when you have kids, you learn to respect time.”
CBS’s Schadeck concurs. “People who are both new moms and MBA students are literally the hardest people to track down,” she says. “We need to find pieces of time here and there, and we’ve gotten very good at squeezing more into a day than you think is possible.” She is friends with another mom also in J-term, but finding time to get together with their babies can be a challenge for this reason.
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