And then She Did

On the day of the 2016 Get Shit Done Summit, I was about 4 months pregnant. My belly didn’t start to show yet but I knew any day now the little human growing inside me would start poking out and produce a very visible bump.

I wanted to keep working to keep getting shit done but I also had to ground myself in reality. The reality was I had a toddler who was 4yrsq old at the time, I was the president of the school club Hack for Baruch, I was running my startup and working with Startup Institute, and I was finishing up my second to last semester of college.

This baby would make a grand entrance in April of 2017 and there was a lot to do in order to prepare not just physically but mentally for her arrival.

The day after the summit I announced to my team that I was pregnant. Everyone was shocked and excited all at once. They were there to support and genuinely happy for me, but I could hear the undertones of “ how the heck are you going to handle a newborn thrown into the mix of all you have going on”. I wasn’t sure myself but I knew I would figure it out.

In the months that followed I left startup Institute, reworked my spring 2017 class schedule to be fully online, delegated more responsibilities to my startup team, and digitized my work with the school club.

My baby girl Bryanna was born in April 2017. Having to go fully virtual and remote for those last months of my pregnancy was the seed that planted my interest and what would become my expertise on Virtual Events.

I was also a second-time mom and my life was drastically different from when I was a teen mom. I was now married with not just one but two kids. I had new lessons to learn and new adventures to go on. In retrospect I would say having my son was my wake-up call to adulthood, having my daughter was my wake call to womanhood.

Once again we had a live GSD summit in Fall of 2017.