Our very own Lauren Daitchman and Nadia Cobalovic recently joined the Mom Project team in the mPower Hour Session where they discussed how they balance their career and parenthood at Northern Trust. 

Lauren Daitchman, Division Manager, Custody Client Servicing based at Northern Trust Chicago.

Nadia Cobalovic, Co-Chief Operating Officer, Hedge Fund Services based at Northern Trust Chicago.

How has your perspective on your career changed after motherhood?

Lauren: I think motherhood has put my career into perspective and help me look at the bigger picture and you know where my priorities lie and making sure my family is number one.

I think the notion that you can have at all, my personal opinion is you can't, at least all at once. I think there's phases in your life where you have to prioritize one thing over another and right now I have young kids so I want to make sure I don't look back later and realize I missed out on something important. I want to be more thoughtful about some career considerations and making sure my family is first in these decisions.

I also think as a leader it's helped me improve my interaction with my teams. I think I'm much more empathetic and can understand where things fit better in the bigger picture with people.

Nadia: When I was becoming a Mom, I was expecting and really worried about what things were going to look like and I really felt like I was not going to be at that same level of execution that I was used to or that people were used to from me. I was terrified to be candid of what the future might look like but then oddly enough I came back from leave and I was like I don't know if everybody knows what just happened but I can do anything right now!

I literally am capable of anything that you throw at me and so I came back honestly feeling this level of personal courage and feeling incredibly empowered and to kind of the point too of it snapping things in perspective of what's important and what's not, it gave me just this completely new lens to view my career.

I was really worried about letting people down honestly and feeling like ‘okay I have this whole other obligation at home that that looks very different now’ and how am I going to do all things. Understanding and balancing when to go all in or partially in, what that looks like and when you need to pivot and being resilient is really what’s changed for me.

Talk to us about your return to Northern Trust after your leave

Nadia: I did have to give myself some grace with easing back, in a way it was hard for me to ignore my tendency to kind of just dive right in!

I had to kind of figure out what was too much and what did I feel like I needed to do.

I had enough flexibility to say ‘okay I need to go home now or you know I need to kind of delegate more’ and I think that was another big part for me coming back. I feel even at work I had to figure out how to best use the resources that were available to me including my own team and delegation.

Delegation wasn't necessarily my strong suit at times but again understanding and looking what do I need to do myself and what can I maybe delay, defer or move to somewhere else where it might be more appropriate and it it'll still get attention.

Hindsight is 2020 and in the moment I'm sure I didn't give myself as much grace as I should have.

Lauren: I'm trying to like think back, it feels like a lifetime ago. I do remember I wanted to come back, prove myself and make sure my value was still felt. I think trying to protect boundaries I wasn't good at that at first, I kind of just threw myself completely back in but then when you're battling exhaustion from trying to take care of a baby I'm sure my output wasn't the best at times. I mean again give yourself some grace and ease back into it. It's not like I wasn't missed but life went on without me so if it takes me a little bit of time to get back up to speed again it's going to be okay.

What resources or support have you found the most helpful while working at Northern Trust?

Lauren: I think there's a lot of resources, a lot of great resources. When I was a new mom with my first daughter, I think the most impactful resource was on-site childcare in our building. I built this network of other working moms at Northern Trust built around that childcare community. To this day we're still friends and our kids are still friends. Northern has a ton of other benefits beyond that, there's great parental leave for moms and dads, there's discounts on childcare, nanny services, there's backup care benefits when you need just ad hoc childcare for example.

Nadia: There's this saying ‘work like you don't have kids and have kids like you don't work’. I I've never really felt that to be the case at Northern Trust where I feel like we've really normalized the fact that people have lives and have children and have families outside of the workplace.

We talk about it and I think that it's critical again for others to see and understand especially as they're starting families that it's okay sometimes to know you need to run and catch the train because there's a game or you need to relieve your nanny. Or this week, I'm working from home because my husband's traveling and honestly the logistics of getting my kids to school and what have you and getting myself anywhere at a normal time was just more than I could mentally handle. I think the fact that we talk about that openly and it's never been for me about pretending I'm anything other than what I am.

Whether it's in the office or at home and not being embarrassed about the fact that some of these other things that we kind of need to do outside of the office are important has really helped and I think that really starts from the top down in terms of normalizing that work and life collide at times. It's okay to pick and choose and kind of figure out what works, how it works and what we need to do to support each other more.

Watch the video here for the full conversation.

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