Dr. Whitney: Hello everyone. Welcome back to the Modern Mommy Doc Podcast. We're so glad to have you with us today. We are talking with Sandy Abdallah. She is the CEO at MAM USA, and I'm so happy to have her here. We're gonna talk all about creating a culture that is positive for families. We're gonna talk about MAM and what they offer, how they support moms, how they promote breastfeeding, and how they promote healthy connections between families and their babies. So welcome to the show, Sandy.

Sandy: Thank you Whitney. Excited to be here.

Dr. Whitney: Okay. So tell us first a little bit about who you are, about what your background is, why you chose to be in your role at MAM, and who MAM is.

Sandy: So I have been in consumer goods over 20 plus years. I was at L'Oreal for 15 years and spent a good portion in a host of different roles there. And then I left L'Oreal to go run three acquisitions and merge them into one, where Global Brands Group became centric. Spent about two and a half years there and got a call in regard to MAM. And it always happens when you're not looking. And I just had such a deep connection with everyone I met with. It was the most organic process, meeting wise and I believe in this brand. And I think that's really what's important to me. Anything that you're representing, you authentically have to connect with it. So it was an easy decision and here I am. It's been about two and a half years. Time flies when you're having fun. So I run North America and have a team here in New York and a team spread in different parts of the country, depending on where the retailers are.

Dr. Whitney: Awesome. And tell us, for those who aren't familiar with the brand itself, with MAM, tell us what you provide. I know, but I want people to hear about it.

Sandy: Yes. So MAM has been around for 46 years. It is an Austrian brand, still family owned and operated, which is so important with this type of product, because every single thing we do, we do it to perfection. And we're very specific. We're not a company who launches every year. So our core pillars are soothers, pacifiers. We have five different franchises, but we are the number one brand here. Globally as well. We've got baby bottles. Our key baby bottle is our Easy Start Anti-colic, which is so spectacular. And then we also have breast pumps. We also have oral care, teethers, et cetera.

Dr. Whitney: When I was looking through your catalog of products that you offer, I was the most excited actually about the teethers and like the little toothbrushes, because when I would go to take my kids when they were babies to the dentist, I would ask them, is there some magic product that you can tell me about that will help my baby actually let me get in their mouth? Because parents come to me all the time and say, I have such a hard time actually brushing their teeth. And so I love that you guys have some unique products that are actually aimed at trying to get in there.

Sandy: You know, Whitney, thank you for that. Just from a personal standpoint, I remember not even taking my kids to the dentist until they were two because I just didn't know. And I think, as moms, these are things that you just think like, oh, they don't have teeth, or they don't have a full mouth. They don't need to go. You're actually supposed to start taking care at birth, because of the milk and wiping it down. And so I have to tell you, this is a huge priority for us in 2023/2024, because it's my obligation as a parent and as this brand to do a better job educating parents about this. Like you said, you didn't know and you're a doctor. You didn't even know. So think about all us regular moms out there. And our product is amazing because it really teaches the child how to do it, how parents can help. And it's a collaborative effort until they're ready to do it on their own. So we have different stages as they grow.

Dr. Whitney: Well, and that's important too, because I definitely did not clean my kids' gums right from the very beginning. I mean, just being honest. I knew the policy, but again, it was too hard. I was doing all the other things. If I'd had something that would've made it easier, that would've helped me and my child. Because what actually happened is I went to my own pediatrician, who is a partner in my office and said, hey, my 18 month old, I'm basically having to get her in a Full Nelson hold and get in there. And she's really traumatized every single time. And I said, do you have any tips or tricks? And she's like, no, that's what you have to do. And my philosophy has always been that I wanna do the preventative care. I wanna help kids, but I want it to be so that you're not making it so that something that's so good for them becomes a terrible chore. And that they hate it.

Sandy: And that's fundamentally what we believe. If you start this off as an early habit, it's just natural. I will confess, I didn't do it with my first one, to be honest. He had two cavities at the age of four. Because I didn't know. And I probably took him to the dentist. Now my daughter is constantly flossing, she's doing it. So it's our obligation to educate and to help parents and to make it a fun experience.

Dr. Whitney: And what I saw on your website was that, of course, you have your products, but that you also have a lot of educational resources for parents. So to that end of trying to make it so that you're actually meeting families where they are, and of course promoting the things that you're selling. But it looks to me like you're really focused as a company on making sure people actually know the information that they need to know to be successful.

Sandy: Thank you for bringing it up. I can tell you, this is what's so special about working for a family-run global business. It isn't just about selling products. It is a family's belief to really help parents. Parenting is hard. So we want to help provide information wherever you are in the journey of a parent. Whether you're celebrating milestones or whether you're even considering having children. And that's really important to us as a brand. It's not just about products. It's about being a resource hub and helping just answer some questions.

Dr. Whitney: Absolutely. I wanna ask you about a picture I saw of you. You were on another podcast and the title of the podcast episode was "CEO Sandy Abdullah leads MAM to be a family first company. So it sounds like in terms of your consumer facing efforts, of course that's family first to think about resources. But how are you making it a family first company for your employees, for everyone who works for you? Talk to me about that.

Sandy: So one of the reasons that I struggled in different roles was because I had to separate my identity. I had to be the strong-willed woman who was showing up, who didn't have any personal interests, hobbies, outside of work. And I struggled with it. I struggled, personally, when I was married. And for me, as I moved up the corporate ladder, one thing that I realized is we have to allow people to bring their authentic selves to work. And whether that's an athlete, whether that's a parent, because you get the most out of your team when they can be who they are. It's okay. 

My daughter comes on half my Zoom calls. We're constantly like, oh, I just got a call from the school. My founder, who is in Vienna, my COO literally arranges their calendars based on when I have to drop my kids off at school. And for me it creates a commitment. It creates an opportunity for people to feel more invested. You're not good at work unless you're good at home. I fundamentally believe that. Because then when you're at work, you're not thinking about it. You're thinking about all the other things. So if I can just allow people the freedom and the flexibility and the ability to be like, guess what? My kid's sick. It's okay. It's okay, because things come up. 

I can tell you that in my prior lives in different organizations, I really struggled with this. And so many parents struggled with this. And I saw a woman leaving the workforce because of it. And it fundamentally bothered me. And it's one of the reasons that I took this job, because it was something I talked a lot about in the interview process. And it's something two and a half years in, that I'm really happy and proud of to have created this environment and this ability to be flexible.

Dr. Whitney: So tell me about the components that you've put into place or about the culture you've created. What are some of the more specific things that you do to support caregivers? It sounds like flexibility and that common understanding that, hey, if there's an emergency, we get it. You might have to reschedule a meeting, that type of thing. Is there anything beyond that that you feel you're really proud of that you guys have done?

Sandy: So I would tell you this. I think that we tend to use this term "work-life balance." I don't believe in balance. because that means it's 50/50. We can all agree to that. It goes in ebbs and flows. There's times when we're preparing for board meetings, there's times where we have a retailer presentation where we're all in. And then there's times where it's a little bit slower. My motto is, I don't care if you're sitting on the beach. I don't care if you're at the daycare. Just get it done. Get it done. 

So we have incorporated flexibility not only in the days that you can be there, but in the times and the hours and allowing people to say, you know, I gotta drop my kids off. I can't start meetings till 10, or I don't wanna deal with the rush hour. So three o'clock is my time where I have to leave. And it's all flexible. I believe in providing a framework. And then there's flexibility within the framework. So the hours are one. 

Another thing that we do is a No Meeting Zone Friday, so that you have time to go to the dentist. You have time to take your kids to things. So that day you don't have to worry about getting bombarded with meetings. You can just put your head down, do that type of work, or you can schedule all those things that sometimes you can't.

Dr. Whitney: To me, it's about trust. It's about hiring people and instilling in people who know that I care that the work gets finished. I trust that you will find the way to get it done, in a way that works for you. And if you can't, then, of course, maybe you're not the right fit for the organization. If you can't actually get the work done. We're not talking about a free for all where you just get to do whatever the heck you wanna do and perform. But that we can trust that women, who are amazing at juggling a lot of things and who can actually do it really well if they're given agency to do it in a way that works for them.

Sandy: You know, I love that you used the word trust, because that's one of my trigger words. It's a trigger word, because there's so much depth to it and has so much meaning. And you have to trust until you give me a reason not to trust. So I think that's precisely it. Someone once asked me, how do you recruit? What's important to join the MAM company? I will tell you our number one priority is culture. We can teach anyone anything, we will help you. But if you can't embrace this culture and won't be a fit within this environment, then it's just not gonna work. 

And so it's interesting, because whether we're interviewing someone for a finance role or something else, we have every single function meet with them, because you have to be able to work collaboratively. We wanna make sure that the integration would be there, that connection. So for us, that's the number one thing we look for. Is this the right cultural fit?

Dr. Whitney: What advice would you give to women who aren't in such a supportive culture like yours? Maybe they have a supportive manager or they are a manager in their job, but it's not coming from the top. The CEO is not having all of these discussions, you know? I'm thinking about a lot of the banks that told people like kind of mid pandemic or end of the pandemic they had to get back to the office or else. 

Do you have any advice for those women who are trying to climb the corporate ladder? They care about their careers, but they also are starting to realize that wellness matters and they will actually be able to perform better if they're taking better care of themselves.

Sandy: Yeah. You know, it's interesting because this was a big topic when I was at L'Oreal and I worked on some transformation there. One of the big learnings was, we have to set our own boundaries and we have to trust them. If a company says, you have to return five days a week, and you know you just cannot do it, you have to be willing to say, this is what I can do and this is how I'm gonna offset it. And you have to trust me. At the end of the day, we all just want results. If you can deliver the results and prove it out, done deal. And maybe you just ask for it as a test for a period of time and you align. But for me, I've heard of so many women in particular, men too, who are afraid to speak up. And in fact, it's quite the opposite. We want our teams to speak up, because what we pay you to do is to have an opinion. So have an opinion about yourself, trust in yourself, and trust what you're bringing to the table. Right. I know we all say everyone's replaceable, but it's a lot harder finding someone new than it is investing in the great resource you have.

Dr. Whitney: You know, I've been doing some research for a presentation we're doing for a group of physicians. And it's about provider burnout. It's about providers who are women and what happened to them during the pandemic. And we have so many more women who are physicians that are leaving the workforce en masse in the pediatric space, in OB/GYN, and in family medicine. And it's interesting, because those aren't actually the ones that in the pandemic, you would think would've been affected the most. In my mind, you would think it'd be emergency room doctors. Intensive care unit doctors. All these people that were watching people literally die in front of them. 

And this article that I was reading in Forbes, as I was doing research, was talking about this idea of more women being in those fields. In OB/GYN and pediatrics and family medicine. And then it was looking at women who are working in that intense space where they're having to really be in charge of families’ expectations and take on a lot of the emotional burden, especially during the pandemic where it was heightened. But then having that second shift at home, where they went home and were responsible for all the work when they were there. That just became so maddening to so many physicians, female physicians in particular, who are highly skilled, highly trained, put in all the time for the education, paid all the money for the student loans, just like their male counterparts, you know? And it came to light even more, and was even more of an aha moment, that they were getting duped. In your organization, or for you personally, how have you managed that cultural expectation of the double shift, either for your employees or for yourself?

Sandy: You say double shift. I say that it's actually four to five shifts a day. This morning, I'll give you a perfect example. Woke up at five 30 and I'm working with a global company so in Europe the emails are going. Seven o'clock, the kids wake up. My husband has already left for work, because he had an early meeting, so I had to get two kids ready for school. This is shift two, getting two kids ready for school. Lunches packed. By the way, they go to two different schools, so I get them to two different schools. Then come home, get myself ready for a work day. And then at four o'clock, I'm on shift number three where they're home prepping for dinner, doing whatever and then they go to bed and I'm on shift four, which is back at work.

So I allotted four shifts. This week was the first week that we were back at the office, because we had moved offices. Monday, I went in and I came home after being there a full day. I'm being fully transparent with you. I was wiped. And then I had my two children. One is five and and one is seven. But the five year old said, mommy, I haven't seen you all day. Can you play with me? I want to be present, right? And I'm like, I just need five minutes to transition. I need five minutes or 10 minutes. I just need a transitional point. So to be honest, it's something that I personally have to work through, because we've been remote for so long that this transition was easier.

But now, physically being in an office, coming home and having to be fully on after your day is hard. And sitting in my chair, everyone wants to talk to you. You're going to the bathroom, someone's chasing after you, which is okay. I always say that it's a privilege, but it's this transition. And honestly, I'm a work in progress on it. I'm figuring it out. I'm figuring it out. I had it down with the four shifts when it was fully remote. But I have to figure out this formula for me. One of the thoughts that I had was that maybe I just need to leave a half an hour earlier and walk home and use that time to just decompress. That was kind of the thought that I had. And so I'm gonna try that and see if I'm any better.

Dr. Whitney: I love that. Well, first of all, thank you for your honesty, because I think there's a lot of female leaders who would feel the need to shine it up and seem like, I also have that all dialed in, you know? And I think that it's a work in progress. For all of us at Modern Mommy Doc, our entire framework is built around trying to help moms organize their stress and cope with their stress, so that they can create a life they don't need to regularly escape from or recover from. And this idea that we deserve to have a life that we don't have to recover from all the time, just like our male counterparts. 

And not to be stereotypical, there are plenty of men who have stress as well, but it's just a little different for female leaders and for women in the workforce. And yet, I came home the other day and my daughter was like, I need a "you day," all day long, because I wanna spend all day long with you. It's mommy daughter day. I'm like, okay, great. I took her to the roller rink. I took her to breakfast. I took her to get her ballet outfit for her new little class that she started. I did all that. I came home and then she goes, we need to have dinner, just us together. I'm like, oh my God, please gimme 5 minutes.

There's a couple things that I do in that moment, and no one's perfect at it. One, I give myself so much self-compassion of like, I bet I'm not alone in this. Sandy's feeling this way. I'm feeling this way, my neighbor's feeling this way, everybody's feeling this way. 

Second, I also have really learned in those moments where I'm feeling highly stressed and I want to connect with my child so badly at the end of a busy day or at the end of a busy week, but I almost find myself resentful of my child and angry with my child that she needs me so much to lean on my husband. So I have a partner, my husband works full-time too, but he was home on the weekend. 

We've developed a communication system where, even though I'm of the she-fault parent, as Eve Rodsky talks about a lot in her work, and we're working on that, that I look him in the eye and say like, this is the moment. This is the moment that I need you to step in. I want to love this child so badly. And I'm at risk of losing it with her on a day when I'm really trying so hard to connect with her. Can you please take over for a minute and then he'll do something wild and crazy to like shift her attention basically to him.

The third thing I do, because sometimes even our partners, either you don't have a partner or your partner hasn't stepped into their power of stepping up (I mean, we have plenty of moms at Modern Mommy Doc that has not happened yet, so I'm not gonna pretend like we all live in a fantasy world) is reaching out to other moms who are in the same boat as you. I mean, I don't know if you have a support group or a board or a coaching group that you reach out to, but I have a group of women that I can bounce things off of to say, like gosh, you see me all the time? Am I really diving way too headlong into work right now? Do I need to back up? Am I creating this? And getting that reassurance of like, no, you're fine.

Sandy: Just a reset, just a level set. You know, the other thing that I was gonna say, because I went through this when my husband was traveling and and I was alone, and at that point where you were, where I'm about to lose it. And I said, you know what, mommy just needs a timeout for 15 minutes. And I went in the room and I just kind of sat there and took a couple deep breaths and came back out. And sometimes it's just simple as saying, mommy needs a timeout, and they get it.

Dr. Whitney: They do get it. I also think our kids are capable (I'm gonna put my pediatrician hat on) resilience wise, and that it's good for them to get gentle truths back to them. So I would never say to my daughter, well, mommy has work. You get over here. Get on the side. Mommy has to work.

Sandy: I may have said that today.

Dr. Whitney: Well, no, I do tell her, mommy has to work right now, so you need to wait for me. But I mean, I would never say to her, my work's more important than you are.

Sandy: Of course.

Dr. Whitney: I know you would never either. But I'll say very directly to her: mommy wears a lot of hats. Mommy is a mom to your sister. She's a food buyer. She's a house cleaner. She's a school-taker-to-person. I do a lot of things and I have to sometimes take care of myself, because that helps me take better care of you. Our kids can handle that.

Sandy: They can handle it. It's funny you say this, we were on vacation and my husband and I just wanted to go out alone. The kids, they could not handle it. And they're like, what do you mean? What do you mean? So we had to say, mommy and daddy need to connect in the same way you need just one-on-one time with mommy or you need one-on-one time with daddy. We need one-on-one time with each other. So, they will learn. And now they're like, oh, are you going on a date? It's cute. But yeah, it's important. And it's important to be able to say that to them, because, you're right, they do get it.

Dr. Whitney: They get it. And I'm always thinking about, what do I want to model? What do I want the parents that I work with to model to our kids? I don't wanna model guilt. I also don't wanna model rage all the time. But I do wanna model humanity. I wanna model the fact that it's okay that sometimes you have that inner conflict. That is part of being a human. And part of navigating a world where systemic forces are literally in opposition to us for us to have an integrated work life situation. So I'm hoping that that kind of fires things up for my kids and helps them. I am on a mission to make it better for them and for their kids and for their kids after them.

Sandy: I think it's good for our kids to see us wearing multiple hats. I especially see this with my older one. This need to be the perfect basketball player. The perfect mathematician. And by showing that sometimes I forgot about this. It shows that you're human. I don't want to be perfect for my children and have everything figured out, because I don't want that pressure on them. They wanna be just like us, right? At this age.

Dr. Whitney: And it sounds to me, bringing it back to MAM, like you're doing that in your workplace, as well as a leader. Trust is the word that keeps on coming to my mind. And then that authenticity that people are allowed to show up as their authentic selves. That they're able to be fully human, they're able to be a parent, they're able to be maybe someone who loves rock climbing on the weekends, whatever, you know.

Sandy: Exactly. And you know, it's funny because I know we're talking about parenthood, but one of the things that I realized is so many organizations are like, for parents you get X. But you may not be a parent, but you may wanna go to your Pilates class; you may be training for a marathon. Go do you, whatever that is, right?

Dr. Whitney: Yes, exactly. It's about creating equity, right? For all of our employees. It's not about equality. It's not about every single thing being the same for every single employee. It's about making it work for employees so that they can come to work as their best selves. They can do the work as their best selves.

Sandy: Precisely.

Dr. Whitney: I love it. Thank you Sandy, so much. I know that especially working moms are gonna glean so much from this and having a shining example of someone who is doing her best and integrating and leading and also fully human is so valuable and powerful to our audience. Will you tell people again where they can find out more about MAM and more about you?

Sandy: Yes, mambaby.com. My handle on IG, although I'm awful at it, is @SandyAbdallah, but you can see all our latest products, follow us on Instagram. We have some really useful materials, and then obviously our website. So yes. Thank you.

Dr. Whitney: Awesome. All right. Until next time.