Erica Seamster- Balancing Parenthood and the Workspace: Navigating Boundaries and Advocacy
Meet Erica Seamster, the Managing Director of Support at GIPHY. With a profound affinity for working with startups, she brings over a decade of expertise in spearheading support and operations teams. Erica's approach as a pragmatic project manager is exemplified through her enthusiasm for meticulously documenting solutions. Beyond her professional role, she exhibits a strong dedication to fostering supportive environments for motherhood within the workplace, showcasing her passion for inclusive and empowering work cultures.
Check out this video featuring Erica Seamster our upcoming speaker for November's Leadership Summit, where she discusses the intricate balance between parenthood and work, emphasizing the blurred lines between the two roles. This video offers a sneak peek into the compelling insights Erica will be sharing on stage in Oakland.
Erica Seamster :
I think it's something that we don't talk a ton about. Being a parent is a unique situation. It certainly doesn't apply to everyone, but it is the place where I'm coming at a lot of this from. We spend a ton of time pretending that when we're at work, we're at work, and when we're with our family, that we're with our family, and it's just not true. You might not be a parent now, but perhaps you want to be in the future. Or you wanna be able to support your coworkers who are, and the lessons around advocacy and boundary setting don't just apply to parenthood, but yes, specifically parents.
I work at Giphy, a gift-sharing website. I'm the Director of customer service. Employee resource groups are just groups of folks gathered around marginalized groups. We've got one for mothers at Giphy, we meet once a month and just talk openly, probably far too openly about the challenges of motherhood and what we're going through. We were a very small company, and so it's been cool the last couple of years to see the new moms and the growing families at Giphy.
I am part of the company ERG (employee resource group) that's specifically for Moms. For Mother's Day, I was asked to moderate a panel called the Art of Advocacy and Setting Boundaries for Giphy. The event was optional for employees at Giphy. We just thought the moms would come, but the reality is everyone came, and it had great participation, and it was really well received. So that's what got me thinking that this could be a bigger presentation; it could be helpful to senior leadership at the Oakland event, and it really resonated with me.
We were thinking, how can we empower women a little bit differently, we just felt like this year was different, and we wanted to speak to that in some way. And we just took it a little bit more seriously than we had in the past. Like, how can we use this dedicated company time to say something that matters? And this is what the group voted on.
The work world, in general, is changing, and people are learning to advocate for themselves, to set better boundaries for themselves in the workplace, and that as leaders, it's our job to not just listen. Certainly, we need to listen, but actually to invite it and, more importantly, to demonstrate good boundary settings for ourselves and for our teams. And then make sure that they know how to do it for themselves and that we've set up the right processes and the right places and systems for them to advocate for themselves and that they know how to do and feel comfortable doing it.
I hope that this conversation speaks to everyone. But my experience is centered around parenthood and the workspace. At our company, I was surprised by how well-received it was by people who weren't even parents.
Deniz: so you'll be presenting about this at the leadership summit in Oakland in November. We'll see everyone in November, in Oakland, hopefully.
Check out this video now featuring Erica Seamster our upcoming speaker for November's Leadership Summit. Be sure to watch and get a taste of what's to come!
