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Lauren Smith Brody

Why every mother should get 6 months paid leave from work: Three not-so-trivial reasons America needs paid parental leave? Happiness, health, and productivity, says Lauren Smith Brody, founder of The Fifth Trimester.

Program Topics

  • Designing the Future of Work for Caregiving Employees

    By the most conservative estimate, 45% of employees are caregivers in their personal lives, responsible for their children, their aging parents, and often, both. In this talk, Brody lays out how to retain stressed-out, talented working parents through the Great Resignation—and how to innovate alongside them toward a Great Reimagining of work. Sharing the strategies she’s developed for her consulting clients in tech, big law, finance, and the service industry, Brody defines the benefits, opportunities, and culture that prevent discrimination and keep women and parents in the pipeline to —all endorsed by evidence-backed research on the return on investment for caregiver support.
  • The Reset Button: How Caregivers and Business Leaders Can Recover from Crisis and Thrive in Our New Normal

    By the most conservative estimate, 45% of employees are caregivers in their personal lives, responsible for their children, their aging parents, and often, both. In this talk, Brody lays out how to retain stressed-out, talented working parents through the Great Resignation—and how to innovate alongside them toward a Great Reimagining of work. Sharing the strategies she’s developed for her consulting clients in tech, big law, finance, and the service industry, Brody defines the benefits, opportunities, and culture that prevent discrimination and keep women and parents in the pipeline to leadership—all endorsed by evidence-backed research on the return on investment for caregiver support.
  • How to Attract and Retain Working Parents

    In talks specially geared to managers looking to better support the needs of working parents, Lauren Smith Brody shares what she learned from 800+ new working moms and 100+ studies and experts for her bestselling book The Fifth Trimester, as well as the thousands of moms and dads she worked with throughout the pandemic. Brody makes the case for investing in parents through the tricky transitions of working parenthood, which keeps women in the pipeline to leadership, fosters gender equity (lifting profits, and preventing discrimination), and has long term ripple effects on the division of labor at home, too. Brody covers her most-recommended best practices in talks customizable to your organization’s needs.

  • Why Moms Make the Best Employees

    Many organizations are aware of the challenges that mothers face at work, but aren’t sure how to remedy them. Here, Lauren Smith Brody takes audiences through ways to welcome moms and meet their needs, all while explaining how the challenges faced by working mothers prime them for success at work.

  • Beyond the Lactation Room: How to Prevent the Motherhood Penalty in Your Workplace

    Concrete data shows that 80% of the gender wage gap can be attributed to motherhood, and  women’s earnings and status in the workplace drop with each child—in spite of research that confirms what Lauren Smith Brody found in the 800+ working moms she interviewed: Mothers are more efficient, better jugglers, and more creative, and more valuable than ever.  When you keep mothers in the pipeline to leadership, they increase everything from your profits to your stock value. In this talk, Brody explains how to protect your company’s biggest asset and lead this long-overdue correction for women in the workplace.

The Fifth Trimester

The Fifth Trimester

The first three trimesters (and the fourth—those blurry newborn days) are for the baby, but the Fifth Trimester is when the working mom is born. A funny, tells-it-like-it-is guide for new mothers coping with the demands of returning to the real world after giving birth, The Fifth Trimester is packed with honest, funny, and comforting advice from over 800 moms.

FORMATS AVAILABLE: Paperback, eBook, Audiobook

PAGE COUNT; PUBLICATION DATE: 416 pages; March 6, 2018

The Fifth Trimester

“A book you MUST read if you are returning to work after the birth of a child. . . . I loved it and you will too.” 

—Lois P. Frankel, Ph.D., author of the New York Times bestselling Nice Girls Don’t Get the Corner Office

“[A] no-BS guide to help moms, particularly new moms, cope with all the demands of the real world . . . like how the hell do you return to work, take care of another life, and somehow carve out time in the day for, you know, yourself?” 

—Shape.com
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Discover how Lauren Smith Brody can help you create a welcoming work environment for parents.