Introducing the Off Balance Podcast!

Off balance

My name is Raffaella Tenconi, I am the founder and head of research of ADA Economics – or as I prefer to say: Analyse. Debate. Act.

The first 15 years of my professional life were spent as a sell side economist for various investment banks. My passion is to try to understand the future, what makes countries thrive and fail and forecasting the financial valuations of that process.

In 2015, my life changed significantly. It was partly a conscious choice and partly it was not. At the same time that I decided to create ADA, I fell pregnant with my first child and so that was the beginning of a magical, but also very chaotic phase.

Maternity and entrepreneurship have been incredible eye opening experiences for my professional life as an economist. Both in my view are significantly more complex than what is said openly in the public discourse.

In September 2021, I asked my good friend Joanna Kalmer, to record a podcast with me about the lessons I picked up in my journey as a mother and entrepreneur. The exercise was partly selfish and partly not. For the first time it felt right to draw some conclusions about the first five years of my journey and my hope is that my reflections will prove helpful to others that are in a similar situation or are thinking about going down that path.

We live in a peculiar historical time. For the first time, there are more women graduates than men in Europe, even in “ hard sciences” where women historically were perceived to be weaker. Yet, the career of women remains shorter and profoundly influenced by maternity – and not in a good way. Child poverty rates show virtually no improvement in the last decade and the statistics clearly say that families (whether of single parents or with two parents) face significantly greater risk of poverty than any other parts of society.

Today’s common answer to this seemingly unfixable equilibrium is that women and families choose to have fewer children or no children at all. So how does this link to maternity?

Consciously or not, mothers (together with fathers, partners and other family & friends) are the primary teachers of information management so to speak for newborns and children. And not just that, they teach their children another very important skill – but somewhat underappreciated in society – emotional intelligence.

Maternity is thus at the cross roads of many challenges we are facing in society and for the economy. Recalibrating government policies to facilitate this magical time is not just imperative from a social angle in my view, it is the right strategic choice from an economic aspect too.

Off balance – turning the maternity penalty into a career divided (I thank for this awesome title Joanna and Viola) started as a series of podcasts about some of the key choices and experiences I had in the first years of my motherhood experience. It is a candid conversations with people I deeply respect and care for and I am grateful to their help to me. We are now adding a second layer by organising a virtual conference on the 16 of November that would like to expand on some of these themes. The plan is as follows Before we begin, please hit SUBSCRIBE to the podcast to be inspired and know you are NOT alone! I would also love to hear from you so please leave a comment to let me know what you think!

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