Where do Middle Managers Find Support for Themselves? with Erin Mantz

Being stuck in the middle isn’t just a metaphor — it’s daily life for the sandwich generation. These are the working parents juggling the care of kids while also supporting aging parents, and it’s a lot. Between the rising costs of childcare, senior care, and just everyday life, the pressure is mounting, especially for women who still tend to shoulder most of the caregiving. In this episode, we speak with Naaz Nichols, chief customer experience officer at Care.com about her own difficult journey juggling her dad’s health needs along with her two children as a single parent. She shares how she had to give up her job and sell her house, so she could find the right care for them all. Countless hours disappear into the black hole of researching, coordinating, and worrying about adequate care for aging loved ones. Hotel group Hilton has sought to address this issue for its employees. We speak with Lora Lawler, SVP of total rewards and HR technology for Hilton, about how its partnership with Wellthy provides an invaluable service to its employees in caregiving roles, shaving thousands of hours off their searches and giving them vital peace of mind by vetting caregivers and facilities on their behalf. And we speak with Sarah Robb O’Hagan, an entrepreneur, author, and former global president at Gatorade, who shares how her own parents’ diagnoses affected her mental health at a time when she had three young kids and was working full-time. She also talks about how more flexible structures within corporations can benefit both parents and businesses.

For working moms, the rising cost of raising a family isn’t just a financial burden — it’s a daily source of stress that impacts careers, well-being, and the ability to plan for the future. In this episode, we dive into the rising financial pressures facing working parents today. From the skyrocketing costs of childcare, school supplies, summer camps, and college tuition to the everyday expenses of raising a family – the financial burden has never been higher. We speak with Kendra Cole, a PR professional and mother of three, about the crippling costs of summer camps across the U.S., with families shelling out thousands of dollars just to cover the school summer vacation. Meanwhile, wages haven’t kept pace with inflation, leaving many parents stretched thin as they try to provide stability for their children. We speak with MarketWatch personal finance reporter Venessa Wong on how parents are going into credit card debt to cover costs. And how she herself feels the pressure to start saving for her kids’ college education before they reach high school. And we speak with Priya Krishnan, chief transformation officer of Bright Horizons, about how some employers are trying to bolster their benefits to help offset some of these stressors, providing on-site childcare and backup childcare services.

Working moms constantly juggle two nonstop ticker tapes — one filled with work deadlines, the other carrying the endless mental load of motherhood. It’s a daily reality that rarely gets the attention it deserves. In this episode, we discuss the daily dance that so many moms perform: the push and pull of balancing professional goals and financial stability with family responsibilities. We speak with global operations director Barbara Nicholas about how she had to take sick days or unpaid leave when she had her first child, rather than risk being fired, and how she missed out on many of her daughter’s first moments as a result of being overworked. And how that experience taught her to push for better boundaries and establish the right work-family balance at an employer that doesn’t expect her to prioritize her job at the expense of her children. We unpack how the "Lean In" era, while well-intended, has left many women feeling like they can’t “have it all” – they’ve ended up being expected to do it all — and why that idea no longer flies. We reunite with returning guests Kendra Pennington, founder of Beyond the 9th women’s community, and sociologist and author of Jessica Calarco about why the “supermom” label can feel toxic, putting even more pressure on mothers to perform at an unrealistic level in both their careers and at home. And we look at why mothers’ ability to juggle is a strength, so why do so many workplaces seem to regard it as a weakness?

Returning to work after maternity leave should be a transition, not a battle — but for many women, it’s anything but smooth. In this episode of Mom’s at Work, we explore the hidden struggles of working mothers re-entering the workplace, especially in hostile or unsupportive environments. From being sidelined or laid off to facing subtle (and not-so-subtle) biases, many mothers find that their roles have changed — not because of their abilities, but because of how they’re perceived once they become mothers. And because too many workplaces still don’t commit enough to figuring out how best to support them when they return. We speak with growth marketer Kendra Pennington, on how the judgment she felt at work since becoming a mother has led to “employment-inflicted trauma” that she carries with her today. And we speak with Bodacious founder Zoe Scaman on how she unearthed hundreds of other mothers’ stories about being squeezed out of their companies, and the true cost of that to businesses. And we speak with both Kendra and sociologist and professor Jessica Calarco on the “supermom myth” and why some feel that label has become toxic in a period of disillusionment where many women feel “having it all” simply means “doing it all.” We’re also joined by Amanda Carlson-Phillips, chief performance innovation officer at human performance and wellness company Exos, about the importance of having a “pro-recovery culture.” And Maven Clinic’s Will Porteous gives us valuable insights into the parent burnout crisis and why employer support drops off at the most critical point in parent’s journeys.

Starting a family is one of the most exciting moments in life. But for so many people, the reality comes with unexpected hurdles — whether it's struggling with fertility, figuring out what benefits your job actually offers, or realizing, too late, that your employer doesn’t provide much support at all.` Fertility issues are more common than ever, and the cost of treatments like IVF is sky-high. That means fertility benefits, paternity leave, parental support, and family-friendly policies are becoming make-or-break factors for many job seekers. In this episode we speak with Jenna Glover, chief clinical officer at Headspace, who shares some of the challenges she and her wife had on their own fertility journey, and in navigating company benefits, and what a bad maternity policy looks like. We also speak with Cisco’s chief people officer Kelly Jones on why offering employers tens of thousands of dollars in fertility support is an ROI no-brainer. And we speak with Sean Puddle, managing director for North America at talent search firm Robert Walters, on the real costs businesses face when they have to replace talent, after mothers exit the workforce.

Being a working mom is hard. Being a working mom with a child who has extreme medical needs? That’s a whole other level. In our first episode, host Jess Davies and Katie Martin, EVP of marketing agency Front Row talk about their personal stories of navigating intense caregiving journeys while juggling careers, and how they spent three years sending each other daily voice notes – across different continents – sharing the raw, unfiltered realities of balancing work and motherhood in impossible circumstances. We also bring in sociologist and author Jessica Calarco, who unpacks why working moms across the U.S. are struggling more than ever, and Kelly Jones, chief people officer at Cisco, who explains why companies need to go beyond just offering benefits — they need to embed flexibility into their culture to truly support and retain working moms.

If there is one thing that has revolutionized the working world this past year, it’s the surging popularity of generative artificial intelligence. Technology like ChatGPT and Microsoft’s CoPilot can take notes for you, draft emails, summarize meetings, write performance reviews, provide tips for tough conversations, and as I’ve learned, even write you an introduction for your podcast. It’s been revolutionary for middle managers who are looking for ways to streamline their workflow and get more time back to work on other tasks. In this episode, we speak with Bethany Lopušnak, a manager of benefits advisory services at Mitratech’s Mineral platform, who has ChatGPT open everyday to use as an assistant. She tells us just how much time using GenAI has saved her, what she uses it for, and how she encourages her team to take advantage of it too. Later in the episode, we hear from Colette Stallbaumer, who leads Copilot and Future of Work at Microsoft. Being one of the earliest users, Stallbaumer shares her favorite and most useful prompts, how AI is helping managers save time, and how the technology continues to evolve.

One of the most common ways workers can find support and camaraderie is through a union. But what if your role doesn’t allow you to be a part of a union? That’s the case for middle managers. According to the National Labor Relations Act, managers are prevented from joining unions because it creates a conflict of interest. So where does that leave managers when it comes to support? Like in so many other instances, they are falling through the cracks. Without formal support groups, middle managers, like today’s guest, have to go out of their way to create their own. Erin Mantz is currently a middle manager at communications agency Zeno Group, who has also been a middle manager at big tech companies throughout her career. She says her informal support group is necessary to stay above water. In this episode, she tells us how her support group operates, the benefits of having a support network, and where other managers might find their own support to get one of the hardest corporate jobs done.

A therapy session and a one-on-one with your manager can be eerily similar. In fact, middle managers are often navigating tough conversations with team members. That is heightened today in this return to work era that puts new dynamics at the forefront like hybrid and remote work. Those conversations range from figuring out a flexible work schedule so that your team member feels comfortable picking up their child from school instead of attending a 4 o’clock meeting to telling a team member they’re being laid off and will need to turn over their laptop ASAP. No matter what exactly it might be, these kinds of conversations demand a certain level of grace and understanding by the middle manager. So how do you have those conversations? To get a better understanding of why the people part of management is so important, we spoke with Julia Toothacre, who has worked with thousands of clients with their career paths in her role as a seasoned career coach and strategist at Ride The Tide Collective.

What does it look like when an organization doesn’t have any middle managers at all? In our last episode, we spoke to Cary Cooper, a professor of organizational psychology and health at the University of Manchester, about the pitfalls of promoting an “accidental manager.” He doubled down on why the best player doesn’t always make the best coach, why proper management training is crucial, and how the younger generations are changing management. So to avoid creating an “accidental manager,” what do you do? Creating a whole new way of promoting managers is easier said than done. But this week’s guest did just that. Rob Pierre is the ex-CEO of Jellyfish, a global digital marketing company. During his time leading the company, Jellyfish pioneered a new way of thinking about the managerial path and debated if we need managers at all. Throughout this episode, Pierre shares how Jellyfish operated without middle management, whether or not it was hard to implement, and how other organizations can replicate this model.