Just an Ordinary Mom: How This Entrepreneur and Podcaster is Revolutionizing Equality for Women in the Workplace
By Naisha Roy
Today’s woman dreamer, Mridvika Raisinghani is an entrepreneur, podcaster, innovator, leader, and mother. Her startup. Sama [meaning equal], is revolutionizing equality for women at work, as they are building towards creating an algorithm that tracks patterns in womens' lives to predict their risk of falling out of the workplace. A multi-faceted woman, she is the podcast host and creator of Just an Ordinary Mom, where she helps mothers tell their stories of perseverance and success. Through her experiences in technology and motherhood, her impact on women in the workplace is twofold: emotional and data-oriented. Rasisinghani spoke to Women Who Win on her journey founding Sama, creating her podcast, and her mission to amplify women’s voices.
1. You wrote about the sabbatical you took from your full-time job in order to find your why, which led to you discovering the lack of equity for women in the workplace and the eventual founding of Sama. Why did this issue in particular drive you to action, and what is something people may not know when it comes to women in the workplace?
I have always worked at purpose driven organizations who have created equitable access to quality education or helped unlock professional potential. In this decade of my life, I was looking for my north star that would give me meaning and purpose. I took a short sabbatical of 3 months to figure out how I wanted to spend the next 5-7 years of my life which is when I also launched a podcast called Just an Ordinary Mom. It was a creative pursuit when I started because I wanted to learn how to create content, learn how to interview people on a podcast and I just found a space that I was really passionate about: motherhood and the penalty it brings along with it. So I began my journey of talking to amazing women who chose to become mothers and chose to continue working despite all odds. As I started listening to these brilliant women, and started reading literature as a part of my research, I was left shell-shocked to realize that India’s female LPR matched war-torn Yemen’s, and India ranked 140 out of 156 countries when it came to women in the workforce. What was even worse was that only 9% of urban women in India were gainfully employed. If 91% of urban women in India, who I believe are relatively blessed because of access to quality education and exposure to opportunities, are neither in jobs nor are they seeking jobs, it feels a huge waste of India’s potential.
What made me even more passionate to find a solution to this problem was my own lived experience as an ambitious urban woman who also happens to be a mother. Being a mother to twin boys and continuing to build a career at startups had already given me perspective about my career and opened my eyes about the struggle of millions of women in India, walking the very thin line between career, caregiving and identity. Since the problem is so huge, gains of a few percentage points to improve women workforce participation will result in decades worth of progress. This is what gave me the conviction and motivation to build Sama, whose objective is to help organizations build equitable workplaces for all.
2. Sama means equal. One of the ways you are working towards building equality in the workplace is by creating an algorithm that tracks patterns in womens' lives to predict their risk of falling out of the workplace. Could you explain how this works and why it is important for companies to have access to this tool?
At Sama we are building a predictive modeling tool that processes a complex dataset consisting of womens goals & aspirations, their skills & competencies, strength of their support systems, growth & mentorship opportunities received, flexible & safe working conditions at the workplace to find meaningful patterns that will predict their risk level (high/med/low) of falling off from the workforce. Insights generated by the tool will be used by organizations to create personalized interventions (via AI matching) to prevent women drop-off. The tool will also provide benchmarked insights for companies in the same industry and sector.
Organizations are increasingly realizing that diversity is not just a nice-to-have thing; it has a direct impact on the top line and bottom line. A Mckinsey report cited that organizations with gender diverse leadership teams are 25% more profitable relative to those who are not. For organizations to be able to build gender diverse teams and support women to have long tenured careers at their organizations, they need interventions that are rooted in objective data.
Implementing programs and solutions that are prioritized based on what women want within their organizations is going to be a better investment from the perspective of time, effort and their money. Sama’s hope is to help organizations retain as many women as they possibly can within the workforce so that women don’t have to choose between their life and their ambitions.
3. One of your ventures before Sama is the podcast Just an Ordinary Mom in which you tell stories of everyday Indian women and their identities. Have there been any stories or women that particularly struck you, and how did the podcast inspire you to start Sama?
Women always have a lot on their plates: juggling professional goals, societal expectations, and the responsibilities of families and communities. One cannot stress enough how important it is for women to see other women succeed and progress in life. The podcast is a step in that direction to bring stories of mothers to life and help them find support and solidarity in familiar stories. It is a passion project to inspire, share and create magic for mothers who choose to work outside their homes. I started this podcast with a sheer passion of creating a safe space for mothers working outside of their homes to share their life journeys, tactical ways of finding more time in the day, talk about frustrations & disappointments - both personal and professional, share struggles to keep up with conflicting priorities on their time and to tell that quiet mother in the room who is hanging by the thread before she breaks that she is not alone. You can read more about the details of how seeds of this podcast were sown here.
With 25 episodes in Season 1 distributed across 8 platforms, I have had the opportunity to be inspired by some of the most extraordinary women. The podcast is less about early parenting days but it's more about discussing everything that makes a person "whole" while they play their role as a parent. From Sudha who dispenses her perspective on being a fence sitter while deciding to embrace motherhood to Arundhati who talks about raising a daughter as a single parent to Mansi who discusses all the what-if's in life that she didn't pursue, to Shrutika who talks about raising a kid in pandemic while tending to her partner diagnosed with bipolar disorder to Payoshni who does not shy away from admitting that the relationship that bears the brunt the most after embracing motherhood is the friendship with your spouse.
4. What do you envision the future of Sama to look like?
The vision for Sama is to create equitable workplaces for all. We are on a mission to
build solutions that help retain Urban Women in the workforce by developing an
ecosystem of support and opportunities at their organizations.
In the short term, we will consider ourselves successful when the organizations become data driven in their approach for implementing interventions to support women. In the long term, Sama’s success will truly be determined if our work is able to reduce the constant decline in FLPR in the urban women population.
5. What advice do you have for women in the workforce who are dealing with unequal conditions or societal pressure to leave, and have you had to overcome these obstacles in your own time in the workforce?
As women, we are constantly making tradeoffs on our time. A lot of this constant crunch for time is owing to the fact that we run two shifts, one at work and another one at home, largely attributed to social conditioning that women need to lead at home. I don’t think I can dispense advice to other women because every individual’s situation is very unique to them and it will do more harm than any good if they expect what’s worked for others would work for them also. But I am happy to share a couple of things that have worked for me when I have found myself in situations where I am about to quit:
Constant upskilling / learning - I have always been a seeker. I have learned new subjects, competencies, new industries and sectors very keenly and eagerly. I have always grabbed an opportunity to polish my competencies, gather new functional knowledge so that I am opening myself to newer opportunities.
Having a personal board of advisors - I have very meticulously gathered a personal board of advisors that act as a sounding board and advise me with life decisions, evaluating opportunities and navigating challenges. This group provides me with unfiltered feedback that’s hard to receive from colleagues or friends.