Heather Lockhart and her husband both had good jobs in the Washington DC area—but those jobs required a ton of time, attention and travel.
“The rat race in DC,” Heather says, “was taking its toll.”
Parents of a young daughter, the couple decided to relocate to Charlotte, North Carolina. “We wanted more balance and a little bit slower pace,” she says.
Heather started searching for part-time work. She didn’t want to give up her career in marketing, which she loved, but she also didn’t want another “full-time, full-tilt job.”
She saw a report on the local news about Mom Corps, a company that hooks up moms who want to work professionally, part-time, with employers. Soon Heather was back at work, doing the kind of challenging strategy work she loved. The difference? She now works fifteen to twenty hours a week, and employs a nanny part-time instead of full-time.
These days, when she’s hanging out with her daughter, who is two, Heather isn’t mentally going through a massive to-do list for her intense job. “I can just focus on her and what we’re doing,” the thirty-six-year-old says.
Sound like your dream?
Allison O’Kelly, the founder of Mom Corps, offers the following advice for mothers who want alternative work situations:
“The biggest advice I would give is not to settle,” she says. “There are flexible solutions. It takes work to find them.”
She says women should start by working their existing professional relationships. Of course, she says, Mom Corps is also a great resource. Here’s more information on Mom Corps and another Web site aimed at moms who want to work at home.
Allison, who has an MBA from Harvard, got the idea for Mom Corps from conversations on the playground. She had given up a corporate job to spend more time at home. She was working part-time, doing accounting work on a contract basis, and other moms kept telling her they would love a similar situation.
“I had so many people saying, ‘How do you do it? I want to work part-time! How can I get this kind of life, with balance?’” Allison said.
