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The Coffee Chat (#50)
My conversation with Tamara Hinckley - Director of Product, Enterprise Tools at Pinterest, Writer of Half Moon Hustle newsletter and a Mom!
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Hi there 👋🏽
Tennis has had an outsized impact in shaping me. It taught me a whole host of things including, the only way to keep getting better is to keep showing up!
This is the 50th Coffee Chat and I am excited to keep showing up in your inbox every other week. The only thing I ask of you is the gift of feedback (click here to fill out this Survey - under 2 mins)
☕ Now, on to today’s coffee chat…
Meet Tamara Hinckley.
Tamara current leads the Enterprise Tools Product team at Pinterest and is very passionate about health & wellness. She considers herself a lifelong student of mindfulness and in 2017 she completed a 10-day silent meditation retreat!
I was thrilled to be able to sit down with Tamara for this chat, as I have been a big fan of her writing. She writes a newsletter called Half Moon Hustle - focused on the intersection of physical health, mental health, motherhood, and anything else that’s stressing out ambitious women!
Below is my conversation with Tamara…
Please tell us a little bit about yourself and your family
I am originally from Ukraine, I grew up in Kyiv and moved to the States when I was 7 and spent most of my childhood and early adulthood on the East Coast and about 7 years back moved to San Francisco. I live in the Bay Area with my husband and our 22 month old daughter Maya and 3 week old baby girl, Sienna - so very recently we have become a family of four!
Professionally I work at Pinterest in product. I've been there for seven years. So I moved to California for Pinterest and have stuck around with the company and done a bunch of different things which has been really fun. My husband is an entrepreneur, he's got his own business, doing content creation.
In terms of hobbies, naturally, there were more before kids were in the picture but I love yoga. I'm actually a certified yoga teacher, I've never taught a course yet and hope to one day do that. I enjoy spending time outside - love being in the sun, traveling to warm places. Hawaii is kind of my happy place.
Besides just a shift in hobbies, what are the changes that you have observed in yourself after you became a parent?
Let me paint more of a picture of who I was before becoming a parent. So as I mentioned, I'm an immigrant so I kind of grew up with this I must work really hard at all costs mentality. I started my career in finance, working in investment banking and private equity and then went to business school at Harvard, so I've kind of been in circles and environments that reward working hard coupled with a strong work ethic.
For me, I do have dreams of doing big things with my life and I think those dreams still exist. I think becoming a parent has changed the logistics of how I get there.
Pre-kids, just putting in more time was a key part of the equation. So there was my ambition - the what I want to do and the the impact I want to have and then the way you get there faster is you know work harder than everyone around you. Put in more hours. As a parent that just becomes logistically impossible because the amount of time in the day stays the same but your responsibilities go up! It just slows down how quickly I can hustle.
I think this idea of slowing down has actually been really healthy for me - becoming a parent was not easy for me, I struggled with infertility and went through a big kind of life change and realized I had an autoimmune disease and this hustle was not serving me and my health. As a part of trying to get pregnant I really revamped my lifestyle change with a lot of diet changes and made sleep and exercise priorities. Post being a parent I am a much healthier balanced person and that has meant that work is not work at all costs anymore!
In some way this has also been really difficult because it means that I'm not going to get to where I want to get to as quickly as I want to go and I'm also redefining where it is that I want to get to given the realities of my life. I haven't quite figured it out but I'm asking myself a lot of these questions because I think I've made a lot of changes to the foundation of my life as part of becoming a parent and now I'm thinking about how does work fit in to all this.
Has it been hard for you? You worked in private equity, in investment banking, went to Harvard to get your MBA and now work in Silicon Valley - has comparing yourselves with your peers been hard? It should not but, sometimes career trajectories do change after becoming a parent especially a mom…
It definitely bothers me. I really love a piece of advice one of my HBS professors gave which was - choose your own scorecard - important to decide who you are going to compare yourself to, if you want to go down that path. And so to me, that means, I don't compare myself to my male classmates as much because just the reality is that they they're facing different constraints than I am. And I try not to compare myself to my female classmates too, because every situation is so different. I have this amazing group of friends from HBS and some of them are mothers and some of them are not. And they're all differently successful. Just because we all share ambition doesn't mean that we're all going to manifest that in the same way. The diversity of perspectives keeps me really grounded.
The comparison game doesn't serve us. I think I compare myself in the worst of my moments. I'm the happiest when I kind of choose my own scorecard and try to think of what do I want to achieve relative to what is possible for me.
That for sure is a better mindset and something I am coaching myself to do too! I know so many women like us who became moms once and want to do it again but this idea that it will reset their clocks again is something that holds them back. It is also so hard to find a safe space to have this conversation because there is this fear that you will be labelled insecure or selfish…
Ah I thought a lot about this specially as I was getting ready for the birth of my second child. As I processed it, a couple of things came to mind.
The first - I think maternity leave is a double edged sword and this is a concept I wanted to explore with you. On the one hand, I think it's ridiculous that it's not federally mandated that everyone - all working parents who have children - have some sort of leave and the disparities that exists between men and women and even women within different companies create this like crazy environment where women don't have enough time to recover and I'm super lucky and privileged that my company offers a very generous policy. However, the double edged sword is that if I take my full leave, which in my case is six months, that's a whole performance review cycle and a promotion cycle. So that sets me back to your point about comparisons to the male peers who don't take it. So I think one of the biggest challenges with leave is that it's usually maternity leave and not parental leave, and when men don't take it, that's when that disparity emerges. This is tough because on the one hand, I am very excited to have the time with my family but I do think a lot about how it's going to set me back within my own company and peers who became managers the same day that I did, or perceived as having more experienced than me because they've just been around longer. And technically, we've been around the same amount of time, but I've been out on these leaves. So I think about that a lot. I think I'm trying to come to peace with the fact that my family is my priority.
I've heard a lot of women who have multiple kids talk about this idea of it's a season of life or a phase of life. I'm trying to just not fight it and kind of go with the flow and just admit that yes it's going be four years of being pregnant, being on leave, nursing, and then do that all over again. I mean in a way I am glad that our kids are closer in age because we're compressing the amount of time that I'm in that phase of life, and then we can kind of move on hopefully and jump into other things when they are not as little.
This is a real dilemma and I too think about this. In the context of evolving societal norms and workplace dynamics, more women now have kids in their 30s and there is a direct conflict in some cases between your biological clock and the career clock! Organizations and leaders within them need to ensure equitable career opportunities for individuals who take breaks for family responsibilities?
So many thoughts!
Ideally at the federal level one needs parental leave policies and organizations should encourage fathers to take leave too. Men don't take parental leave nearly as much. I don't think it's as culturally accepted and that kind of begins the cycle of disparity. So that's the first thing I'd love to change. The encouraging thing in the last few years is that I see a lot of people doing it and setting a good example from the top and I think that helps.
The other thing that companies can do is create policies around working parents with kids when it comes to travel. I know you travel a lot for your work but for me travel is really intimidating as a parent, especially when there's two kids - logistically it's just a lot harder to be away! Small things like if the mother is still nursing then provide them access to a service like - Milk Stork, that ships breast milk home. Build in breaks so women who are nursing have the time and space to pump when travelling. Maybe even lower the expectation on how much they’ll travel for the next few years.
I'm really lucky that my job hasn't required a lot of travel and so it's been a little bit easier to make it work. But I think that depending on the industry this can be intimidating for people and I see why. If I were in a role that required travel very frequently, I would have second thoughts about whether I can be successful, given that it requires all these kind of things outside of what one might expect when you become a parent.
The push for policy change is great because it does not put the burden on the individual. In some sense the ability to be hybrid can be a big unlock for men and women who want to raise kids and are still deeply ambitious…
I totally agree. This is a big factor for why I've stayed at Pinterest for so long. Pinterest is one of the few companies that isn't mandating return to Office and is embracing kind of this remote hybrid culture and I think that employers will start to lose not just female but also male talent. So to me a big criteria when I think about future opportunities is how much time am I spending commuting and I suspect that many people will consider that when they're making career choices. I bet over the next decade, companies will recognize that they're losing talent and maybe they do or don't self correct, but I think now that the marketplace is wider and there are more options and more companies are embracing this flexible structure…. people will opt in to that when they can.
How did your husband feel about a second child?
I don't want to speak for him entirely but you know, I think he had different concerns.
I've heard this and we'll see what my experience is like, but one mental model I've heard is that the transition from zero to one is harder for mom and transition from one to two is harder for dad. This is because logistically at least in the beginning like the baby is with the mom and so the dad becomes a solo parent to the other one for a bit.
So I think for him, he's in for a bit of a wake up call for how much harder it's going to be and how much of the free time that he has now is going to go away. But you know, one thing that I really value in our relationship is that we've done a lot of work to kind of optimize and balance our partnership. I don't know if you're familiar with Fair Play by Yves Brodsky, but it's a great book and I highly recommend it - basically the idea is that you like write down all the tasks and chores that need to be done in your household and then decide how you as a family want to split up. So we did this exercise and we call it kind of the great accounting because it was tallying all the hours of who is doing what and we're definitely going to have to reshuffle with two kids but I think it keeps us honest on… Hey, these are just things that have to get done and they're not magically going to be done by mom anymore. We are kind of putting everything out into the open. From a logistics perspective, I feel really good that we have that foundation in place and we'll be able to adjust into being parents with 2 young kids.
I will say that one downside of that system is you are kind of always keeping score and so I'm trying to be much more conscious of how do we maintain a partnership that is outside of the planning and logistics.
So I haven't read Fair Play but I suspect my husband may have read it because two weeks back, he basically opened up an apple note and started saying hey, let us divide chores and I appreciated it
Yes and it is not just about the number of tasks but the mental load - so figuring dinner out everyday is wildly different from doing laundry or mowing the lawn once a week!
Slightly shifting gears, I find your writing very honest real and raw. Did you face challenges when deciding to be open about being a parent to young kids, especially in Silicon Valley, where there's a perception of a "mommy tax" or you being so transparent in wanting to live a healthy balanced life? How do you navigate the potential biases and assumptions that may arise - saying she has lost her drive or will now not be as “hardcore”?
I was really scared to write at first about this both because infertility is a very scary topic to write about, and I was still kind of going through it when I started to write but also for the reasons that you mentioned - like the fear of harassment and discrimination whether it's overt or unbiased and unconscious. I think I've been surprised actually at how being open has been helpful. And so I don't know about those opportunities that I'm losing out on but, for example, I was recruiting for a role on my team and the woman who we ended up hiring mentioned that one of the reasons she wanted to come work for Pinterest was because of my writing and how transparent I was about it and she just wanted to be part of a culture and a team that valued you know, a person in all the ways that they exist.
I think setting that example can be really helpful. I've come out on the side of I want to be the person who is opening up this conversation - that's the legacy I want to leave behind to some degree. And if I don't speak up about it, I think that I'm losing out on an opportunity to help other people both as a role model but also, I've learned from a ton of people who have reached out and you know connected with me - so it's expanding my network of fellow working parents and learning about how they're navigating things. So selfishly, it's been really beneficial.
I do think that if a company chooses not to hire me because they realize that I have kids - it is anyway not going to be a good fit for me because it will be an uphill battle that I'm destined to lose.Writing for me has been really cathartic as a parent and finding kind of fellow companionship with people going through the experience has been really helpful because I think motherhood can be very lonely. I'm glad I'm doing it and I hope that I'm not missing out on too many opportunities, but I guess I'll never know.
I always tell people - parenting is a feature not a bug! What people who don't have kids do not realize is that there are these really transferable skills around being super efficient, being very empathetic, that actually make you better at almost any other day job…
Yeah, I found that when I came back from my first leave, I was much more efficient and I also was much better at prioritization, because I only had 8 hours a day instead of 10 to 12 to work, and so I knew I can only work on the most important things - it made me bolder at work. I also realized that I had a higher bar for what I was willing to tolerate - I just didn't have the time to deal with things that were not important. I think that as a leader the more senior you become, the more important those skills are - understanding what's important and setting priorities. It kind of forces this constraint on your time that has positive, unintended consequences. As someone who manages teams and resources you just have to be ruthless about how you prioritize your time. So I found that to be helpful, despite doing it while I was very sleep deprived, tired and going through all the hormonal changes!
I never asked you about about your journey trying to conceive…
I did not end up having to use IVF or other methods, but instead went down the functional medicine route, which required me to make a ton of changes that were really hard. I have an autoimmune disease related to my thyroid and I also have PCOS. I basically had to redo my diet and my lifestyle to help my body reset and that was enough to help get me pregnant naturally!
But it was really hard. I cut out gluten completely, which was hard because I love all things containing gluten and that was maybe the biggest change but for a while I wasn't eating dairy, soy, corn, processed sugar. I was basically only eating vegetables and proteins. Then I also tried to incorporate all the best practices we know we should do - get at least get eight hours of sleep, focus on my mental health via know, meditation or restorative yoga. This journey started in 2020 which in terms of timing worked out well because I got my commute time back and we were not going out or anything.
I also worked with a functional medicine doctor on specific supplements based on all the testing that we did and so it was a very like tailored approach that helped me personally. I very lucky that I didn't have to go the Assisted Technology route because I think that is heart wrenching. I'm very lucky that it worked for me not once but now twice, but it did not come for free!
First of all, kudos to you to make those changes because God knows how many times I've tried to quit sugar and gluten, and then I come back to it. I have immense respect for people who actually stick it out! I know we are not doctors but just the number of anecdotes I have heard I feel like there is certainly something about women’s fertility and high stress environments and bad lifestyle…
I've been unpleasantly surprised by how many women have autoimmune diseases and autoimmune diseases are basically different forms of stress on our body for different organs. So for me, it's my thyroid that is under stress. But I think there's a huge epidemic of autoimmune issues for women that is under reported and studied and it is actually more common among women than men.
Every week someone reaches out because I've started writing about this publicly and they say …Hey, I just got diagnosed, what do I do? They're all women and most are in kind of stressful environments. They're very ambitious. They work really hard. And sometimes it's related to trying to conceive but not always and they just realize their bodies are breaking down!
I think people don't always realize that they've been living under so many issues, until they start to get pregnant and then that's kind of the thing that's like the red alarm bell, which is what happened for me but then looking back I realized I wasn't feeling well for years and my hair was falling out, I was having a lot of digestive issues, skin issues and I just kind of like took those as like the toll of living in a busy modern life.
All of that got a lot better once I made my lifestyle changes and it's definitely a lot of time, money and effort but now that I'm in this new normal, I think it's a lot easier. The biggest piece of advice I give people is that you have to be committed to making this change and usually it's easier to be motivated by something like a pregnancy than just to do it for fun, which is, you know, kind of what motivated me to do it.
I suspect in a few decades there will be a lot more acceptance of this holistic medicine path and because I think that we're just now realizing how bad the problem is. I'm excited that it worked for me and it's working for a lot of other people. It's like you said, I'm not a doctor either, so I can't guarantee results, but I think it can definitely help.
What about energy levels? From what I hear those significantly improve too!
I think a lot about my energy levels and kind of managing my energy, not just my time - this means very tactically scheduling time for the things that give me energy at the times that are most effective. I have very little energy at the end of the day and at the end of the week and so I try to do my writing in the beginning of the week.
I start my days typically with a workout at least three days a week and that gives me a lot of energy, just to move my body and kind of stretch.
Being outside actually gives me a ton of energy - so scientifically with autoimmune disease, the sun has vitamin D, and that is beneficial for our bodies. So on days where I can't get a workout, I'll go for 15-20 minute walk in the middle of the afternoon. That really energizes me to make it through the rest of the day.
Then it is the diet. When I eat something that tastes good, but does not have the nutrients I definitely feel worse and so I pay a lot of attention to what I'm eating and on a day where I make the healthier choices, I have a lot more energy.
The last one that may be obvious, but it's kind of foundational is sleep. I will not sacrifice sleep outside of the needs of our children. I'm very strict about going to bed by 10 and trying to get a solid eight hours. It's very rare that I go outside of that and so that limits you know other things that I can be doing like working or writing or spending time with friends but I kind of view sleep as sacred.
There is this one parenting hack which I share, obviously this comes with having privilege but my biggest parenting hack is we have a babysitter come on Saturday mornings for four hours and that is actually what I do most of my writing. That is me time and I tried to protect it. It is a luxury that we can afford and we've prioritized it because that means that the rest of the weekend I can be really present. This actually energizes me after a very crazy week of work.
Quick-fire questions:
What’s the best thing you have watched recently?
I loved Lessons in Chemistry - Brie Larson does an incredible job, and it's always fun to watch a show featuring a strong female lead.
What’s the best thing you have read recently?
I just finished The Alice Network by Kate Quinn. I’m a huge fan of Reese’s book club and especially love historical fiction.
What’s the best thing you have listened to recently?
I recently listened to Tom Lake by Ann Patchett on Audible (also Reese's book club!). Meryl Streep narrates it, she's incredible!
🤓 Open tabs…
(I have modeled this section after those “open tabs” that we all have with a few (okay 30-40) interesting links that we promise we will eventually get to one day. These are the links that I had open for sometime that I finally got to …)
⭐Rethink What You “Know” About High-Achieving Women
Harvard MBAs value fulfilling professional and personal lives—yet their ability to realize them has played out very differently according to gender. The authors found not just achievement and satisfaction gaps between men and women, but a real gap between what women expect as they look ahead to their careers and where they ultimately land. The men and women who graduate from HBS set out with much in common—MBAs, high ambitions, and preparation for leadership and urge such to make time for more-candid conversations—at home, at work, and on campus—about how and why their paths unfold so differently
⭐The secret to a long life (🎧)
Time flies, so how can you live the longest feeling life possible?
⭐Book review: “The Road to Character,” by David Brooks
“The Road to Character” is an account of Brooks’s effort to find his way out of shallow punditry—or, as he puts it, to “cultivate character.” To make his case, Brooks—who likes to reach for the occasionally effortful neologism—has come up with a pair of clarifying terms: the “résumé virtues” and the “eulogy virtues.” Résumé virtues, he proposes, are those that are valued in the contemporary marketplace: the high test scores achieved by a student, the professional accomplishments pulled off by an adult. They are the skills that are met with bigger paychecks and public approbation. Eulogy virtues, on the other hand, are the aspects of character that others praise when a person isn’t around to hear it: humility, kindness, bravery. Our society exalts the résumé virtues, Brooks argues, but it overlooks the humbler eulogy virtues. Still, he writes, we know at our core that this second category of values is what matters more
📖 My private thoughts from my very public diary…
(My X (Twitter) use has drastically gone down, I am now more active on Threads)
I would love to hear from you, feedback is always welcome!
And if you happen to know an inspiring working parent who should be featured in a future edition (or if you yourself are one) - please do get in touch
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Disclaimer: All views expressed are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views of my employer