Working Mother

How I Convinced Our CEO to Upgrade Our Parental Leave Policy

meredith and jeremy bellies

My firstborn with his "bump" and me with mine.

Courtesy

In my August/September 2018 editor's letter in , I wrote about how I shared a document I hoped would persuade our male CEO to . Well, it worked. We went from six weeks at 60 percent pay to eight to 12 weeks, depending on tenure, at 100 percent pay for new moms, and from one week to four weeks at 100 percent pay for new dads and adoptive parents. I didn't expect it, but since sharing that story, I've gotten requests from people I've never met via LinkedIn, Facebook, and regular ol' email asking me for my secret sauce because they, too, would like to convince upper management that their people deserve more-generous leave. Well, because you all asked nicely and because I want everyone, not just my colleagues and

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