Below are some pictures of JJ when he first arrived.

Jovanne and Jonavan Sr, best wishes from the entire Mothers at Booth family! We look forward to seeing JJ around Booth soon and often!

We hope you are all enjoying the summer!

Amazingly Dena and Lindsay ended up in the hospital together and sent a great snapshot

Dena and Lindsay, we hope the life of your children will be sunny and bright!
As for yours, now it will be much more interesting and colorful!

Best wishes from Mothers at Booth!

We wanted to send out one final email to end a great spring quarter for Mothers at Booth. This quarter, we hosted a coffee chat with Dean Kole, a Mothers Day Luncheon, and our first-ever March for Babies Team raised over $1200!

We also added 12 new posts to the Mothers at Booth website!

Huge thank you to all of you who supported our blogging by writing or contributing to an entry and to those who helped organize our events! It was an awesome quarter!

We also, more importantly, want to say thank you, congratulations, and good luck to our second year mothers, who not only helped to carry the M@B torch this year, but provided amazing mentorship and support to our new class of first year moms:

• Alina Rosu (2009-2010 co-chair!)
• Jackie Avitia-Guzman
• Sharon Duchin
• Radhika Josyula
• Mirella Miranda
• Talia Shefi

Good luck with your professional and personal endeavors, and please stay in touch as M@B alumni!!!  We will always welcome your support.

Finally, a big good luck to our three members who will be delivering this summer! May they be easy and healthy deliveries:

• Dena Koren (due July 13th)
• Lindsay Winn (due July 19th)
• Jovanne Smith (due August 25)

AND, a huge congratulations to our two newest Mothers-to-Be, who recently learned of their good news and will be delivering in the fall:

• Marie Hoegh-Guldberg (due in early November)
• Natalie Mindrum (due in early December)

To all of our first-year members, good luck with the summer and we look forward to more exciting M@B events, blog-posts, and mother-bonding next year!

The only bummer is that we forgot to take pictures. And… it’s not like I did not have my camera in my purse… I just forgot!!! My apologies…

I hope those who could not make it today will be able to join us at the next event.

Students, Staff and Faculty moms will get together to network, share and celebrate mothers and their daily juggling act.

For questions or comments contact us at mab@lists.chicagobooth.edu

Were you too busy to attend the Booth annual conference on “The Future of Finance”, this past Thursday, April 29th?

Well, good news !! You can view the entire Keynote Panel from the 58th Annual Management Conference from the comfort of your house. This year, Chicago Booth faculty and alumni experts looked at what finance and investing will be like in 10 years.

Enjoy!

M@B: When did you first find out that you were pregnant? Was it surprising news?

We decided to have a baby during my first year in school but it happened really quickly. I thought it would take several months but it took one try! So we were very surprised and excited when we found out. It was in the midst of recruiting for internships, in February.

I found out a day before two major interviews. I was interviewing with the largest automotive interior protective products manufacturer in the Americas (based in South Carolina) and with a multinational corporation that designs and manufactures consumer electronics, computer software, and personal computers (based in California).

My head was somewhere else; I was very excited about my pregnancy. I do not know how I interviewed but I ended up getting both offers. My husband was in Chicago and he couldn’t come with me so it was a hard decision to make. I was pretty nervous to move by my-pregnant-self. But I accepted the position in California.

M@B: Did you tell your employer? How did your co-workers react when they saw you with your big belly?

I called my future employer around May to let him know I was pregnant. I did not think it would interfere with his decision but did not want to surprise everyone with my big belly.

I was very surprised by his reaction. Not only was he supportive but he also sounded really happy. My team sent me a present before I even got California and met them.

Once I was there, I got endless support and had a very supportive team. They got me bottles of water so I would drink enough. I spent three months in California and was lucky to have a very easy pregnancy. Besides the physical changes, I felt great.

For the summer, I signed up for executive housing through the company, and it had no air conditioning, which was a big mistake! I was very hot all the time. Every day after work I would jump into the pool or go to the mall to chill. Also, I thought it would be a good idea to exercise while pregnant so I got the housing next to the main corporate office but I didn’t know that the offices were scattered around the whole city and I ended up having to take my car everywhere. So in the middle of the summer my husband came to help me move!

M@B: You began your second-year 8-months pregnant. How was your fall quarter?

I only took two classes in the Fall quarter, Corporate Finance and Theories of Leadership. Both of them were at Gleacher so I could get in a cab to go to class.

My due date was November 2nd, right on the day of my Corp. Fin. Midterm, so I wasn’t sure if it was worth studying for it ?. But I studied just in case and I was right to because Mia was born two days after the midterm!

I wrote a paper for my Theories of Leadership class when Mia was 5 days old. The pain medication must have given me good insight because I got the best grade of the quarter!

After Mia’s birth, I had to miss 2 or 3 classes but both professors were very understanding and supportive, and I studied by myself to catch up before the finals. I then enjoyed some time off during winter break and my mother in law came to help out.

I was back for winter quarter when Mia was one month old.

M@B: Who takes care of Mia when you’re in school? How did/do you handle school (classes, groups, homework, etc.) and a newborn?

I have an AMAZING nanny that comes by four times a week. I found her online and was very lucky! She not only takes care of Mia but also helps me with the house.

At the beginning I would sleep during the day and read cases between night feeding. I try to study during the day at home and attend classes at Gleacher at night when my husband is home. Yoad (my husband) is a hands-on guy and he can bath Mia and put her to sleep when needed. He also covers for any middle of the night feeding when my schedule gets busy. This quarter (my last quarter) I try to go to Harper more frequently. But, the bottom line is that I have a great support system that helps me keep on track. It is not the cheapest option but it keeps us all happy.

M@B: You’re graduating in a few weeks! What are your plans?

I decided not to accept a full-time position where I interned because it was in California and my husband has a good position in Chicago.

Full-time recruiting was early in the winter quarter and I was 8-9 months pregnant so I decided not to recruit. It was my own personal choice. I was not in the right mood to interview. I didn’t feel on top of my game.

It took me a couple of months to get back to the field and to decide to start looking for work. I am now looking for a full-time position in the Chicago area.

M@B: Anything else you would like to share with our readers?

There’s a sacrifice in being pregnant in school; my interests were not the same as most of my classmates and I did not go to most TNDCs. Mainly, I felt my energy level was not as great as my classmates’. But I got to control my schedule; at Chicago Booth you can take the classes you want, whenever you want, wherever you want! The faculty and staff were supportive and understanding. So after Mia was born, I took classes that were “easier” for me, and now I take classes at night to spend time with my daughter during the day.

Giving birth in Chicago is also amazing because of the great hospitals. I gave birth at Prentice (Northwestern) where every room is private with an amazing view on Chicago’s skyline or the lake, and a flat screen LCD TV (for when you have enough of the lake). When I was in labor, after they gave me the epidural, I watched “Confessions of a Shopaholic” with the Video On Demand system! This hospital stay was great; I didn’t want to go home!

More importantly, most research show that the gap between men and women in the workplace starts when women take off for work; I won’t have to take time off of my career and I had my baby in a very supportive environment.

Here is the link for our team page on the March of Dimes website:
http://www.marchforbabies.org/s_team_page.asp?seid=1401194

Students, alumni and their families in the area are invited to join our team!  You can join the team by clicking on the link above, and once you join, we’ll email you with any special details of the group’s plan.

If you can’t join us but you’d like to support our team’s effort, please feel free to make a donation on the team’s page (link above).
Our team’s goal is to raise $500.  We’ll be staffing a table at the Harper Center this week and next week to garner support from our classmates !

If you have any questions or would like to get in touch with the group co-chairs, feel free to email
mab@lists.chicagobooth.edu.

The rest of the recruiting process went very much as it did for those that weren’t pregnant.  I was frustrated when companies I thought knew me really well denied me an interview invite in GTS.  I was shocked when other organizations expressed what seemed like unsolicited interest.  I bid… I interviewed… I was rejected… I bid… I interviewed some more… rejected some more.   I suppose the only real key difference between me and most of my classmates was the little prayer I said each morning before trying to button my suit over my expanding middle.

Not only was I keeping my pregnancy a secret from companies, but just about everyone else.  Some Booth classmates were here helping to recruit for former employers and I was uncomfortable with my pregnancy becoming public knowledge.  I was also worried some would be frustrated that I was taking interviews when perhaps I wouldn’t be able to do the internship.  Maybe I didn’t give people enough credit, I just didn’t know what to expect since my situation seemed so uncommon.  Sometimes I longed to tell people, just to hear another perspective on what I should do.  To keep from forgetting who knew and who didn’t – I didn’t even tell friends outside of Booth.  Luckily this was my second baby – keeping that first baby a secret would have been brutal.

After weeks of failure, things seemed to start going really well.  I was wait-listed for an offer with one company for a general management rotational program.  I was really excited about an invitation to interview with a second company (ironically, a beer company) for a strategy role, and I’d received a number of invites from a third company for internships that fit my experience and interests well. Things were about to get exciting.  I was hardly sleeping at this point – knowing that all of my efforts and emotional investment could be for naught.  Unlike everyone else in the pack, an offer wasn’t my end-game.  If I was lucky enough to get one – there was still an uncomfortable negotiation that stood between me and an internship.  My husband was there assuring me that whatever happened I would be just fine.  He was convinced (and probably correctly) that an internship wasn’t as critical to my future as I believed it to be.

I attended a pre-interview event with the beer company, my leading choice.  They openly state that “passion for beer” is important.  I wasn’t drinking because of the pregnancy.  It was killing me.  I’m a beer LOVER.  I wanted them to know that, but didn’t know what to do.  Should I hold a beer and pretend to drink it?  What if I do get an offer and they remember that the pregnant lady was drinking?  Do I just have lemonade and pretend I’m not the sort of person who has sampled every kind of beer on as many continents as possible?  I went with a third option: drink non-alcoholic beer.  Now if that doesn’t demonstrate love for beer, I don’t know what does.  That stuff isn’t quite like the real thing.

The next day was the interview.  I wasn’t convinced it went that well, but when my cell phone rang a few days later in the middle of Accounting class I couldn’t believe my ears.  I had the offer!  I decided to savor the accomplishment for a little bit before telling them my “secret.”  Within 5 minutes of hanging up the stress hit.  How sad would it be if this job I’d gotten so psyched about fell through?  I plotted with friends and family over exactly what to do.  I went through with other scheduled interviews the next day, but decided to tell the company with the offer about my situation right away.  If they agreed to work with me, that would be it.  I would stop the process with other companies immediately, regardless of my level of interest.  I didn’t think it was fair to get one group to be flexible, only to reject them two weeks later for another opportunity. Besides, it seemed remote that all of the stars would align twice –multiple offers and multiple willing employers just didn’t seem possible when I’d prepared myself for the possibility of no offers at all.

I hatched a plan to take evening/weekend classes in the spring quarter so I could start an internship early.  Alternatively, I was willing to start work in June and then have the baby, returning to work a few weeks after it was born.  My approach was to call the hiring manager and outline some of the options I felt were on the table.  When I called it all went very well.  As a matter of fact, my future manager agreed rather quickly to have me start early, pending what he felt was certain approval from HR.  This guy gets manager of the year and I’ve never even worked for him!

What happened next was a sort of freefall.  The stress and worry and chaos were over.  For a couple of days I experienced a full-body weirdness – sort of like the ringing in your ears after you walk out of a loud concert into silence –except all over.   Life went from 90 MPH to 10.  How had I managed to pull this off?  I was going to get to have my internship, my baby, and a couple of months off before school started again in September.  I’m sure I’ll be rather tired from May 3^rd until finals are over, but in the end it will all be worth it.