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From Doing It All to Doing What Matters: Redefining Work-Life Balance in Working Motherhood - with Ashley Chang (part 1)
77 Plays16 days ago
In part 1 of this two-part conversation, Leanna sits down with Ashley Chang, Founder & CEO of Sundays and new mom, to explore how the experience of Ashley’s own mom inspired her mission to support working mothers. They reflect on how their similar upbringings, from being the eldest of three daughters to growing up with stay-at-home moms and entrepreneur dads, may have shaped their drive as high achievers. Long before becoming a mom herself, Ashley was already focused on the unique challenges working mothers face. As a former product leader in tech, Ashley is skilled at solving problems at scale, yet motherhood brought new questions around balance, capacity, and meaningful support. Leanna and Ashley discuss the challenges of living up to high expectations set by their parents, and Ashley reflects on how she's learning to set realistic goals, delegate effectively, and prioritize quality time with her baby while staying focused at work.
Learn more about Sundays and their mission to accelerate parents in their careers, while creating more quality family time, by following on LinkedIn and Instagram.
Don’t miss Part 2, available August 14, where Ashley shares more about her inspiring journey and the leadership lessons that shaped her.
Full transcript available here.
Connect with Leanna here.
If you're ready for deeper transformation, check out The Executive Mom Reset; Leanna’s six-month coaching program designed to help ambitious moms stop merely surviving and start thriving. Book a consult now!
Don’t forget to subscribe, rate, and review the show to help more women find these empowering stories!
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Transcript
Introduction to the Podcast and Host
00:00:04
Speaker
Welcome to the Executive Coach for Moms podcast, where we support women who are attempting to find balance and joy while simultaneously leading people at work and at home.
00:00:15
Speaker
I'm your host, Leanna Lasky-McGrath, former tech exec turned full-time mom, recovering perfectionist and workaholic, and certified executive coach.
00:00:27
Speaker
Hi, everyone. Welcome back to the show. Thank you so much for joining me today.
Introducing Guest Ashley Chang
00:00:32
Speaker
I am very excited to announce today's guest and introduce you to her.
00:00:38
Speaker
We are here for our summer series. So we are continuing where we are having two conversations with amazing and inspiring women. and Ashley Chang is here with us. Hi, Ashley. Hi, I'm so excited. So excited to have you on the podcast. Thank you so much for joining me. I can't wait to hear more about your story. I know we have some interesting similarities in our backgrounds.
00:01:04
Speaker
And I think we're both trying to solve problems for the same people in different ways. The executive moms who are tuning in are going to learn from you and potentially be able to work with you in ways to help them. So thank you so much for being here. Thank you. I yeah i think we have a very similar audience and hopefully we can talk about some great tips that I've worked for, we've worked with and I'm just at the very beginning of my journey. So I'm hoping to learn from you as well.
00:01:33
Speaker
Yes, congratulations. You have three-month-old, yes? Yeah, he'll be four months next week. oh Just at the very beginning of parenthood. Yeah, congratulations.
About Sundays and Support for Working Parents
00:01:43
Speaker
So if you could start off, maybe just tell us a little bit about yourself and your story, your background. Yeah, I'm Ashley Chang. I'm the co-founder and CEO of Sundays.
00:01:54
Speaker
ah Sundays is an executive assistant service for working parents. So we have an amazing team of executive assistants. They're almost all moms and they're based in the U.S. And then we support families and executives at home and at work. So at home, we'll do a lot of things like meal planning, planning summer camps, making sure you actually have your summer camp logistics ready for next week.
00:02:15
Speaker
And then we also do a lot of traditional EA work stuff for people who have gone out on their own and that to-do list really blends together. And then my background before this, I worked in the tech industry for a little bit over 10 years, mostly in product management
Ashley's Motivation and Tech Background
00:02:29
Speaker
roles. And most recently was at Carta where helped build their VC products basically from scratch and and got to stick with them through ah scaling through around 10 million in revenue, which was really fun. And then left that to explore starting my own thing and have always just cared really deeply about
00:02:46
Speaker
supporting women in the workforce and especially moms. And my impetus for Sunday specifically with my own mom, who the computer scientist in the eighty s and then when she had kids, felt like she couldn't balance both's family and work and there was no support to do it. And so she ended up staying home with us, which I'm super grateful for. But I know she missed out on a little bit of personal fulfillment outside of the home. And i think we all missed out on things that she and a lot of people in that generation could have contributed there had been more support for them to be active in other ways.
00:03:19
Speaker
And when I entered the tech industry, saw very similar things still happening, even though it's 30 years later and everything on my desk today was invented in that time. still have really very limited support for our parents at work. And so let's just try to see we can do to solve that problem.
00:03:36
Speaker
Yeah. I love that. So your mom was a stay-at-home mom, mine too. She was a computer scientist and then you decided to follow in her footsteps sort of?
Career Transition and Personal Influences
00:03:49
Speaker
A little bit. Yeah. It's funny. So I think I was telling you before I have two sisters. I'm i'm one of three three girls. I'm the oldest and I am actually the only non-engineer in my family, technically. So everybody else studied some form of engineering.
00:04:01
Speaker
I studied genetics in college, actually, but then leaving college felt like I liked genetics for the science aspect of it, but I wanted something that I could have more impact on people more quickly. And I found tech through a little startup nonprofit called WOTC and was just so excited about being able to scale the same experimental mindset, but more quickly software.
00:04:22
Speaker
Yeah. Why genetics? When you went to college, what did you want to be when you grew up? What did you want to do with that? I don't know that I had a, this is what I want to be when I grow up. It was more just like curiosity. Like I wanted to understand more about like how people work and what, how do like the, our systems work at the most basic level, which is kind of interesting because that as I've gotten more into the technology world, there is very similar building blocks of like code in in the world I work in today and genetic code for how humans work too. But the human part is a lot more complicated and a lot more mystery to it still, I think.
00:04:59
Speaker
Yeah, for sure. It's interesting because I went to college to be a math teacher. Then I ended up majoring in psychology similarly because I was like, I just want to learn how people work in a different way. I don't think I would have thought about genetics because I was so interested in like the behaviors and the why do people do the things that they do and also the oldest of three girls as well. So there's something about that.
00:05:23
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah, it was really interesting. I was in this like honors program in college and they might have been the way they selected people, but every single person was the oldest child. ah Interesting. It was very interesting. It was like there must have been some shared characteristic of being an older child that showed through in their application process.
00:05:45
Speaker
Yeah, well, I think, I mean, the oldest child is usually like, tends to be more people pleasing, tends to be more achievement oriented. And I don't know if you felt this, but i always felt like I need to like carry the torch for my sisters and my family. And, you know, like I'm representing our family name, like I got to do this right.
00:06:05
Speaker
Yeah, definitely felt some of that. And then I also think that you just get used to being in uncertain situations. Like you don't know what's coming, right? Like you're the first one to do everything. And I didn't have any older cousins or anything like that either. So I was always like, okay, well, I have no idea what middle school is like. So I guess I'm just going to show up and see how it goes. And my sisters have benefited a little bit of having some foresight into what things were like after my experiences. But I think that's been helpful in the rest of my life where I got a little bit used to just like jumping into the unknown and and trying to figure it out.
00:06:41
Speaker
Yeah, that's probably really helpful in entrepreneurship. Yeah, I think so. It's a helpful practice. And i reflect on that a lot that I feel lucky to have had that experience earlier on my life.
00:06:52
Speaker
Yeah, for sure.
Innovation in Work-Life Support with Sundays
00:06:53
Speaker
and We'll talk more about Sundays in our second episode, and I can't wait to hear all about it and how you created it and how you came up with the idea for it. But it is really uncharted territory, right? It's a newer concept, I think. I mean, I haven't heard of other companies that are doing this. And so...
00:07:11
Speaker
maybe having that experience your whole life of going first and jumping into uncharted territory has really kind of set you up perfectly to do something like this. Yeah. When I think about it, it's like somewhere in the middle. It's not like a moonshot VC-backed company where you're like, will this work or won't it work? But it is kind of a new take on a type of company that I've seen before, but really focusing on combined family and work together, which I think is more of just very relevant to like how we're living our lives today. And I think especially after COVID, lot of that has blended even more together for a lot of people.
00:07:48
Speaker
Yeah. And now you are in California. are you in the Bay Area? Yeah, I am in the Bay Area. I was in San Francisco until January and then moved to Oakland now just before having the baby.
00:08:01
Speaker
And I also grew up in California. so i grew up a little bit south of San Francisco in a town called Belmont by the airport and was there most of my life and then went to college and and came back to this area. I always imagined I was going to move away, but kept finding jobs around here. So I stayed there.
00:08:18
Speaker
Yeah. Well, I spent two years in the Bay Area when studied at San Jose State for grad school. And was interesting because it was like, I mean, I grew up in Pennsylvania. i went to undergrad in West Virginia. So like those were the two experiences I'd had thus far.
00:08:33
Speaker
And I just felt like there was just a different vibe there of like everyone was thinking about what company can I start or like what problem can I solve? And i wonder how do you attribute your desire for entrepreneurship and starting your own thing as part of where you grew up and like the culture there?
00:08:55
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's really interesting. It's hard to say because I've been in this place for so long. I have some good friends who just have lived in like every, not every city, but like us and in New York and a bunch of different places. And they just came back to San Francisco because they were like the mentality in San Francisco is really different around creativity and and feeling like you can start things.
00:09:14
Speaker
Yeah, I do think that's true. My dad also was an entrepreneur growing up. So he makes medical devices very different than what we do. But you too? Yes. Oh my gosh.
00:09:25
Speaker
I know. My dad is also is an entrepreneur in the medical device industry. Yes. Yeah, that is crazy. So all through my childhood, my dad started out working at a bigger company and then he mostly has made heart valve replacements. And then now he's doing like something in the eye space. But Saw him go through ah bunch of different companies that he started and ah medical devices are really capital intensive. And so they, in contrast to what I'm doing now, it's much more up and down where like, if you can fundraise, then you have the money to go really pursue this crazy new device that might be life changing for so many people. And then if you can't fundraise, then like that's kind of the end of the company. So saw him go through that experience
00:10:04
Speaker
A few times and some of them worked and some of them didn't work. And I think just saw like the resiliency that he had and ah in approaching that. And fortunately, like my family was always okay. So I think that he took like a fairly like cautious mindset to it where he was able to do that, but also support all of us at the same time too.
00:10:23
Speaker
Yeah, that's so fun. So entrepreneur dad, stay at home mom, oldest of three girls. I know this lifestyle. yeah Opposite coast. so like I'm talking to myself. Yeah.
00:10:35
Speaker
Tell me more about, you mentioned your mom's influence on what inspired you to start Sundays and thinking about you're a new mom, but you started this company before you became a mom.
00:10:49
Speaker
Two years ago. Yeah. So tell me more about like your mom's impact and what you experienced of her growing up that kind of has inspired you to take your career in this direction.
00:11:02
Speaker
Yeah. My mom is super interesting. I think like she, um the one hand, she was like, by being a stay-at-home mom, she was like super dependable. She's always able to be there for like everything. And and she still does that now. Like if she says she's going to do something, you like guaranteed she's going to do it, which is amazing and ah quality I really want to have as a parent.
00:11:20
Speaker
But then my mom also is, because she came from a computer science background, she's like always the most technologically advanced in my family. And most people are like, I have to help my parents set up their Wi-Fi. My mom's like,
00:11:32
Speaker
I have the Wi-Fi and the extenders and we have cameras that run like when it snows outside, we'll see that, see the snow or something like that. So super advanced. So my mom, I think as I was growing up kind of during technology, like at a time that technology was changing really quickly and My mom, I would say and in a lot of ways, like taught me how to use that technology and take advantage of it. And then, yeah, I think that she was always like building projects too on the side. Even though she was mostly watching us, she was like learning how to code apps. And I've actually built some apps with her. While I was working full-time, I was wanting to kind of we experiment with different areas. and And we would build apps together before i started Sundays.
00:12:14
Speaker
That's so fun. Yeah, just like learned a lot of just... how to build things from her, which is probably unique to my situation, having this specific mom that I had. Yeah. That's had a big
Motherhood, Entrepreneurship, and Support Network
00:12:26
Speaker
impact on me. And then you've just transitioned to motherhood. So, i mean, you obviously, I'm sure had lots of like hypotheses about what it's like having started a company, having talked to a lot of parents.
00:12:38
Speaker
And so what's it been like? Like, what has your experience been like so far being a working mom? I mean, okay, so i'm I'm very much in the thick of it. This was our first day with our nanny this morning. So I literally was like, I gave the baby to the nanny and then I was like, okay, well, I have a call. So I'm not going to have to save the emotions for later, but i think he's doing well.
00:12:57
Speaker
I think something I feel very fortunate about in starting Sundays is that I got to do all of this research with families. And by talking those families, I just heard that it's hard for everyone and Even the smartest people I know were like, yeah, this is really hard. it's You're ah learning something new all the time and there's so much that goes into it. And so I think that that has been a really beneficial mindset to just know that it's hard and have that be what my expectations are and know that.
00:13:24
Speaker
other people are also having similar experiences. So that's been really helpful. And I think I was literally like somewhat in denial that it was like actually going to happen. I know I was i was like pregnant for nine months, but I think I was just trying to not be as attached. I was like,
00:13:39
Speaker
anything could go wrong. like We don't know what's going to happen. So then when I actually had the baby, I was kind of like shocked that it was happening. And I was like, oh my God, now there's an actual baby here. So it's been really fun to get to experience what it's like to actually have the baby. And I took two months fully off and then have been ramping out part-time and figuring out like what's the right balance and what feels good for me. And I'm lucky to be able to have that flexibility. but I think that it seems like it's just always going to be kind of a process of figuring out what's working at the moment and what we need to change and what feels good.
00:14:15
Speaker
Yeah. Well, thank you for talking to us on your first day with your nanny. I remember that day well. And also what I was thinking about when you were talking is I remember something that was really hard for me was that i felt like I had this amazing mom who was like full-time dedicated to us.
00:14:36
Speaker
So I held myself to that expectation of like how great of a mom she was. And then I had this entrepreneurial like dad who was, you know, yeah kicking ass in business. And so I like also held myself to that expectation of myself. And I remember...
00:14:55
Speaker
It was probably about a year and a half in when I started therapy and coaching. And i was talking to my coach and I was telling her about this. And she said, it sounds like you're trying to be two people.
00:15:07
Speaker
Yeah. But you are one person. So it's like hard to reconcile because I think we want to hold ourselves to this high, you know, expectation because that's what we saw. Like we want to be better. Like we want to be good as or better.
00:15:22
Speaker
And that can be really challenging. And honestly, almost every woman i coach, whenever we kind of break it down, what they really want is a clone of themselves so that they can be in two places at once. And, yeah you know, not having to split their time between two things that they really love, like two of their life's passions.
00:15:43
Speaker
Yeah, I think that makes a ton of sense. And I already feel like that. I'm like, it'd be nice if I could watch the baby, but also say want to go talk to him. It's really hard. And I agree with you that there are these different standards. But I also remember like my dad, when I was young, like he would, we would always eat dinner together as a family, but sometimes he wouldn't get home until like 8 p.m. So like we'd have really late dinners. And like, I think there were a lot of trade-offs there and like that we were really dependent on my mom for for being able to like care for the household.
00:16:11
Speaker
yeah My husband is also an entrepreneur who started his own company a couple years ago. So okay we are trying to balance that between the two of us. So I think that requires both of us to, ah hopefully have like a plan that makes sense. but But like be cognizant of like, what are the home things that we have going on? And how are we going have enough time for all of the work stuff that we have?
00:16:33
Speaker
But I love what you're saying about just like setting your expectations for like, what is it actually possible for one human to accomplish? And I've been trying really hard to prioritize at work what is like most important that actually needs my my like brain power on it versus like what can someone else do and and then try to give them feedback to get it up to what I would have want it to be. And then I think it's really interesting because at work, I'm so on. I'm like, okay, let me...
00:16:58
Speaker
I'm so focused for these hours. And then I have a four-month-old, so like he can't really do too much. And then I'm like, okay, let me just try to go be present, like watching the baby roll around or slot at things. And it's a really big mindset shift.
00:17:12
Speaker
I also try to logic to myself that like that time, it's not necessarily the quantity of time that I'm spending with him. It's like, can I have... more quality time and make sure that there's time for that.
00:17:23
Speaker
Yeah. Well, I love where you're talking about delegating and prioritizing and putting your efforts where you need to be. Also leads perfectly into hearing more about your story with Sundays and why you created it. And we're going to pause here today, everybody. i hope you all will join us next week to hear part two of my conversation with the amazing Ashley Chang.
00:17:48
Speaker
and all about Sundays and her transition to motherhood. So thank you, Ashley, so much for joining me today. and I'll look forward to talking with you next week. Thank you. soon.
00:17:59
Speaker
All right. Bye, everyone.
00:18:06
Speaker
If you're loving what you're learning on this podcast, I'd love to invite you to check out the Executive Mom Reset. It's my six month coaching program for ambitious, success driven, career focused women who are ready to stop surviving and start thriving.
00:18:21
Speaker
Together, we'll tackle the stress, guilt and overwhelm that come with being a high achieving executive mom. You'll learn how to set boundaries, prioritize what truly matters and build the confidence to show up powerfully at work, at home and for yourself.
00:18:35
Speaker
Head on over to coachleana.com right now to schedule a free discovery call. We'll spend an hour talking about where you are now, what you want to create, and how I can help you get there. Because every woman deserves to live the life of her dreams.
00:18:49
Speaker
Let's create yours together.