Sheryl Sandberg’s LeanIn.Org Features Jill Salzman’s TED Talk

IF you can believe it — we know we can’t — the one and only Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook and founder of international organization LeanIn.Org, featured our founder Jill Salzman in her May newsletter. (!!!!!)

LeanIn.Org helps women achieve their ambitions. They offer education videos and other resources that women use in Lean In Circles, much like The Founding Moms’ Exchanges that we host around the world.

This Mother’s Day, Jill’s TED Talk, “Why Moms Make the Best Entrepreneurs,” was offered up to LeanIn.Org members in the education section of their website along with a discussion guide that Circles use to engage with the content more deeply. It went out to women in their 32,000+ Circles in more than 150 countries.

Jill gave the talk on 11/11/11 at a time when mom entrepreneurs were not yet a favorite marketing target. No one was talking about moms specifically when it came to business. There was lots of buzz about women in business. There was plenty of talk about moms, from stay-at-home moms to work-at-home moms, all trying to “juggle” and “balance” and do what was right to stay sane. But a combination of the two? It was rarely discussed, let alone featured on the TED platform. Moms have long gone the way of the has-been; She has, culturally and societally, lost her voice to her children. Good moms are still represented in the media by pictures of women carrying their children, feeding them, doting on them. All things that good moms should do. But when it comes to working — that had always been a separate issue. If a woman was at the office, she was not to talk about her children. If it was your choice to leave your home in the morning — thereby leaving your children — it was such a negative that the mere suggestion of leaving a work day slightly early to tend to childcare needs (from school pick-ups to medical emergencies) that it has been a no-no for a long time. For too long a time. Enter the mom entrepreneur: She is a capable woman who can build a business and raise a family, too. She does not have to be penalized for the assumption that she is doing one and neglecting the other. And it is our belief system at The Founding Moms — years after this TEDx talk was done — that moms make the best entrepreneurs.

Could we be prouder to have had such an incredible feature? Nope.