The life of a working parent is not always easy. The return to work after having children can be challenging, as parents balance managing their careers and their families.
Keerti Garg, Senior Accountant at Yellowbrick, wasn’t quite ready to make the transition from working part-time while taking care of her daughter to taking on a full-time role – but Yellowbrick represented an incredible opportunity she couldn’t pass up.
As a working mother, Keerti soon found that Yellowbrick offers so much more than she expected – and she’s redefining the definition of success as she embraces both roles in her life.
Here she shares her journey, why she joined, and the lessons she’s learned along the way from her colleagues and the Yellowbrick community.
I remember the exact time I got an email to interview from Yellowbrick. It was a Friday around 6.30 p.m.
I had no plans to start a full-time job at this time unless it fit my very specific criteria. My daughter at the time was 4.5 years old and was going to start kindergarten in August 2022. And somehow, according to my plans, I wanted to start working full-time only after August. At the time, I was consulting part-time.
As I am writing this, I have completed over seven months at Yellowbrick.
As you are busy making plans, life has other plans for you.
I already had two job offers the day I received the interview call from the recruiter at Yellowbrick. I was under a lot of pressure from others to just accept one of the jobs but I could not get the name “Yellowbrick” out of my head. The word “brick” stuck in my head – foundational, strong, sturdy, building blocks without which nothing would exist.
I knew I will always regret it if I didn’t explore this opportunity. The main draw for me at the time was the actual job profile. It consisted of so many diverse things that I could do, that I had always wanted to do. It was a startup. And I always wanted to be a part of one.
And so, that Friday evening, I decided to say yes – yes to exploring the possibility of what could happen if I listened to my heart and didn’t succumb to the pressures of what others told me to do.
The interview process moved fast at Yellowbrick, and I was amazed that the busiest people made time to interview me so quickly.
A week later, I said yes!
Two weeks later, my daughter was going to full-time daycare, something I had both dreamt of and had nightmares about since 2020.
Both my daughter and I started new journeys in our respective lives in February 2022.
Over the next several weeks, I learned many new things – talking on Zoom, learning to solve problems together in a distributed team, and realizing that my potential is more than I had thought… You see, motherhood changes you. It makes you stronger, but it also makes you doubt yourself. Especially when you have been sleep deprived for the first few years.
I had forgotten just how determined I used to be, I had stopped believing in myself – and somewhere, I had lost myself.
I love being a mother and feel blessed. But what the world doesn’t tell you is that becoming a mother is a new birth of the mother too. Society expects that the child is born and the next second, the mother stays exactly who she used to be before pregnancy.
It doesn’t work that way.
Just as that very same mother teaches the child to walk, talk, and get out in the world, she must do the same for herself. Only in her case, there is no one holding her hand or guiding her. She must do it all on her own. She must be her own teacher and her own student.
And so, Yellowbrick entered my life at the time when I had begun to believe in myself again, to trust myself again. But not as much as I would have liked to.
Outwardly, I seemed happy and confident. But inside, I felt something was missing.
I didn’t even realize what I was missing till I tasted it – intellectual stimulation.
I needed to feel needed, but not just by my daughter. I wanted to do something on a daily basis that made a difference, no matter how small. I wanted to feel valued. And most of all, I needed to feel worthy again when I looked in the mirror.
Another thing about motherhood they don’t tell you is that in order to manage it all, you need more than 24 hours in a day.
Yellowbrick provided me with the flexibility of working remotely, giving me two extra hours each day by saving time on the commute and other stuff.
Slowly, bit by bit, I started recognizing the person I used to be – a long time ago. It was astounding to look in the mirror and see myself in a whole new light.
The most miraculous thing was that my need to go back to the person I was just dissolved away.
In the last seven months, I have not only learned and contributed to work, but I have embraced who I am, right at this moment, without needing to change anything about myself.
I no longer feel guilty about being a mother at the workplace or being a working mom at my daughter’s school.
I have embraced both of these roles.
Life doesn’t have to be one way or the other – it’s all right to define success the way you see success.
And why did all of this happen? Because of the amazing people and team at Yellowbrick who make me feel valued every day. Who I value. From whom I’ve learned not only the technical things, but life lessons – the power of believing in yourself, remaining calm, putting your point across, not having an ego, and simply enjoying what you do.
The most invaluable asset at Yellowbrick is its people. They are the foundation, the building blocks, the bricks.
I have learned more in the last seven months than I had in the last seven years. I love how fast things move at Yellowbrick and how quickly we pivot.
I admire how dedicated everyone is to work but also, how well they balance it with other parts of their life – hiking, self-care, family, etc.
I love being a part of such a vibrant community as Yellowbrick.
Life is sunny at Yellowbrick!
