An Interview With Candice Georgiadis
Empathize to innovate. It’s important to honor every individual’s journey (from our colleagues to our customers), and engage, explore, and seek a deeper understanding to make our products and processes better.
As a part of our series about women who are shaking things up in their industry, I had the pleasure of interviewing Sascha Mayer.
Sascha Mayer is the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and co-founder of Mamava, the creator of freestanding lactation spaces for breastfeeding on the go. Sascha is a recognized expert on lactation space design, family-friendly workplace policies, and social entrepreneurial leadership.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you a bit more. Can you tell us a bit about your “backstory”? What led you to this particular career path?
I studied sociology and gender studies at the University of Vermont, and got my first job out of school working for then-Congressman Bernie Sanders. I believed in the power of progressive policy to create more equity, but the convolutions of government and the pace of change felt excruciatingly slow. After a couple of years, I found a job at a local design studio. There I grew into the role of brand strategist and learned how positioning and good design could be a far more efficient path to influencing people and creating change. If government was about creating language to guide the law to affect lives, design was about creating experiences and environments that could change minds and affect lives almost immediately. As a breastfeeding mother who needed to travel a lot for business, I found there was no dignified place designed for using a breast pump. My co-founder, Christine Dodson, and I were able to incubate Mamava at the design studio while still working our day jobs.
Can you tell our readers what it is about the work you’re doing that’s disruptive?
At Mamava, we design and manufacture freestanding lactation spaces for worksites and public places. We’re disrupting the status quo of built environments — especially workplaces — that have been primarily designed for men by designing products specifically suited for breastfeeding and pumping parents. We’re bringing a more inclusive approach to the concept of “human-design” with our freestanding moveable lactation pods so that breastfeeding people have private spaces to pump. (When breastfeeding parents are away from their babies, they need to express milk every three hours or so to continue making milk.) Our designs are helping solve the perennial problem breastfeeding mothers and other lactating parents face when they work outside the home.
Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
I wouldn’t say this is that funny, and it’s more about starting again versus first starting, but at the beginning of the pandemic my executive team and I spent countless hours discussing what the future of work at Mamava should be — remote, hybrid, flexible hours, etc. After two months, however, it became clear that no one was going back to an office any time soon, and expectations around work and working environments would be radically changed. Now we know that these changes, like greater flexibility and reduced commuting, are better for everyone, but especially for working parents. The lesson we all learned during the pandemic is that control is an illusion and change is inevitable.
We all need a little help along the journey. Who have been some of your mentors? Can you share a story about how they made an impact?
Michael Jager is the creative director and owner of Solidarity of Unbridled Labour, the design studio where Christine and I incubated Mamava. He’s also a board member at Mamava and continues to be a trusted advisor. My greatest lesson from Michael is just the resilience and perseverance you need as an entrepreneur. He has always been there to remind us how important our mission is, how far we have come, and to keep going.
In today’s parlance, being disruptive is usually a positive adjective. But is disrupting always good? When do we say the converse, that a system or structure has ‘withstood the test of time’? Can you articulate to our readers when disrupting an industry is positive, and when disrupting an industry is ‘not so positive’? Can you share some examples of what you mean?
Progressive social change in this country has often been considered a disruption — consider the women’s suffrage movement, the civil rights demonstrations of the 190s and today, equal marriage rights for LGBTQ people — as the change is a challenge to the status quo. Yet none of these important milestones that secure rights for more people would have happened without massive disruption. (And, as evidenced by new laws limiting reproductive rights, voter registration, and access to gender-affirming care, clearly there are many in this country who continue to not only resent but resist these changes.) Structures that are inherently unequal or built on systemic oppression deserve to be disrupted and changed. It’s hard to think of an industry that has not benefited from disruption of some kind because the history of human innovation is about solving problems and change, and hopefully achieving greater social justice. All industries benefit from being open to new ways of being, doing, and thinking. Consider our imminent climate crisis — everything will need to be disrupted to adapt and survive.
Can you share 3 of the best words of advice you’ve gotten along your journey? Please give a story or example for each.
Progress over perfection. With every product we’ve launched we’ve made changes. It has been more important to bring something into the world — and to learn from the feedback — than to get it perfect the first time.
We each have different gifts for the revolution. This is an expression taught to me by our colleague Janet Stambolian when we were first starting out. She and I were working at my kitchen table and I wondered out loud if I had what it took to figure out the business. Her words have stayed with me ever since and became one of our company values. Our diverse backgrounds, experiences, talents, and styles make us stronger. At Mamava, we celebrate our differences.
Empathize to innovate. It’s important to honor every individual’s journey (from our colleagues to our customers), and engage, explore, and seek a deeper understanding to make our products and processes better.
We are sure you aren’t done. How are you going to shake things up next?
We are about to launch a new product designed for the everyday, multiple-times-a-day user. With a low-profile exterior (that fits better into work environments) and an interior to surprise and delight, it’s specifically designed for multi-tasking while pumping in comfort and privacy. So while our first units disrupted from the outside by being bold billboards for breastfeeding, this unit disrupts from the inside (in a good way).
In your opinion, what are the biggest challenges faced by ‘women disruptors’ that aren’t typically faced by their male counterparts?
American culture is still reckoning with outdated gendered stereotypes that don’t serve women well. Speaking up and making change can be seen as rocking the boat. And women, especially in older generations, were raised not to make waves. So we all carry the weight of inherited cultural expectations and inherent biases and these are present for women leaders every time they enter a boardroom or join a speaking panel. Even though it’s 2022, I read articles every day about the persistently low percentages of women CEOs. Women are still woefully under-represented in leadership positions in every industry — especially BIPOC women. In my lifetime, it’s beginning to change, but there’s more work to do to ensure a level playing field of access and opportunities.
Do you have a book/podcast/talk that’s had a deep impact on your thinking? Can you share a story with us?
I’m currently reading The Extended Mind by Annie Murphy Paul. As we emerge from the pandemic, it’s a good reminder of the limits of our individual minds and of the importance of collaboration with others. We can extend our mind through empathy, experimentation, and even the environments we inhabit.
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂
The movement I’m most passionate about right now is making sure that all parents have access to the infrastructure and support they need to breastfeed as long as they choose. Too many parents stop breastfeeding before they want to because their workplaces lack adequate lactation support. Breastfeeding isn’t just a women’s issue or a family issue — it’s a public health issue — so improving lactation support is a win for babies, parents, communities, and improved health outcomes.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
I was a serious athlete in high school and went on to play two years of college field hockey. Whenever things felt too hard, or I wanted to quit, my mother would say to me, “If you have brass buttons, you have to polish them.” The idea is that you shouldn’t squander your natural gifts, AND it takes hard work to make something of them. I think it applies pretty well to entrepreneurship too.
How can our readers follow you online?
I’m on LinkedIn.
Thank you so much for joining us. This was very inspirational.
Female Disruptors: Sascha Mayer of Mamava On The Three Things You Need To Shake Up Your Industry was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.