By Beki Osborne, CEO at Sexual Assault and Abuse Support Service, Buckinghamshire and Milton Keynes
Becoming the CEO of an organisation that I felt so passionate about at the age of 30 was beyond my wildest expectations of what I might achieve in my career. As many charity CEOs, I fell into it by saying “yes” to all the opportunities coupled with a strong work ethic.
Living with endometriosis and adenomyosis, the road to motherhood was fraught with uncertainty. Often, becoming a parent is described as a “choice”. You speak with your partner and become pregnant. But I wasn’t lucky enough to simply make a choice, motherhood had to choose me.
And whilst I was waiting to know if I had been chosen, I was showing up at work every day and giving it my all. That’s why, like many millennial women, I found myself reaching career highs around the same time as starting a family.
When I found out I was pregnant, it was a mixture of relief and joy, but also worry about what that meant for my charity.
I saw my role as CEO as largely about leadership and steadying the ship. The year I joined, I was tasked with restructuring the organisation and building resilience in a team that was incredibly talented but lacked confidence and structure. I knew that taking time off for maternity leave could potentially undo some of my hard work and may cause more instability, which I felt guilty about.
Planning my maternity leave was like a whole other project, on top of an already very busy role. As well as managing my own feelings, I spent a lot of time working to manage the feelings of my team, funders and partners.
I run a rape crisis centre, so naturally I predominantly work with women with strong feminist values. I felt supported both personally and professionally. But the reality was that, despite my best efforts to reduce the impact, my maternity leave was disruptive and costly.
To this day, I still feel guilty about it. I feel jealous of my friends who simply let their manager know they are off on maternity leave, and don’t give the sustainability of the business a second thought.
When it came to handing over to an interim CEO, it was a strange experience to say the least. A typical handover is a presentation of the journey travelled thus far, perhaps some recommendations for the future, but ultimately it is up to your successor to decide how to proceed. However, with maternity cover, I knew that whatever happened whilst I was away – good or bad – would be my responsibility to pick up again in a year’s time. Therefore, beyond my altruistic good wishes for the organisation, it was also in my personal interest to set the interim CEO up for success.
As a feminist leader, I wanted to make sure the interim CEO enjoyed the role and felt they could make their own decisions, instead of them feeling too penned in by my business plan. It was also a great opportunity to get a fresh pair of eyes on everything and for someone with different skills and professional experience to make the improvements that I hadn’t thought of or been able to. You rarely get the opportunity to have such a peer review of your work, and it was an incredibly validating and enlightening experience.
My mat leave cover did such an amazing job that she agreed to stay on to share the role with me, which meant I could reduce my hours. I can already see the benefits of this co-CEO model to our organisation, and this has helped me no end with easing back into work.
Despite my co-CEO’s support, the return to work has been much harder than I expected. The nature of running a small charity means that you have to get stuck back in straight away. I’ve also been navigating breastfeeding at work and fending off nursery germs, all while traversing the chronic underfunding and major challenges that continues to pervade our sector.
I’ve questioned whether I was still the right person to lead the organisation, now I am a new mum with competing priorities. But despite my tiredness and new caring responsibilities, my passion for our work hasn’t wavered. I know I have so much more to give. So, until that changes, I’m committed to leading my organisation with everything I have.
Since being public about my experiences as a charity CEO taking maternity leave, I’ve been contacted by others travelling the same path. If this is you, or you’re interested to learn more about traversing maternity leave as a CEO or senior leader, please don’t hesitate to get in touch. Like most millennial new mums, I have also started sharing my experience as a charity CEO on social media:
- Instagram: @bekiosborne
- Tiktok: @bekiosborne_ceo
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bekiosborne/