Should You Call Out Your Career Break on LinkedIn?

Short answer: Maybe. In April I wrote about LinkedIn’s new feature allowing people to include career breaks, for caregiving and other reasons, to their profiles. I applauded the move — LinkedIn’s profile had been overly rigid and made accounting for time out of the paid workforce very difficult. Making our profiles more customizable to fit our actual lives is an important step in recognizing that not every career follows a…

Success Story: Varsha Munishwar

Varsha Munishwar took a three year break from her software engineering career to care for her children and spend more time with her family. When she was ready to return, Varsha learned about Path Forward returnship program. After reading several participant success stories on the Path Forward site, she was inspired to apply. She completed a returnship at VMware, where she now works full-time as a Software Engineer. Varsha talks…

Success Story: Aasavari Gokhale

Aasavari took a three-year break from her career in tech career to care for her family. When she was ready to return, Aasavari found out about Path Forward, and applied for a returnship at Red Ventures, where she now works full-time as a software engineer. She talks about her return to work experience, why she loved the flexibility of a returnship at Red Ventures, and the support she received from…

Success Story: Mei Wong

Mei Wong took a six and a half year break to support family moves to Taiwan, then to Austin, and to care for her children. She always planned to return to work, and when she was ready, Mei upskilled through a bootcamp and applied for a returnship at Momentive. She now works there as a full-time front-end developer, and talks about her returnship experience, and how Momentive supported her remote…

Success Story: Priti Khattar

Priti Khattar took a three year break from her engineering career to care for her daughter. When she was ready to return to work, Priti took the time to refresh her skills before applying for a returnship at Momentive, where she now works full-time as a senior software engineer. She talks about all the ways she prepared for her return to work, her returnship experience, and how Momentive helped her…

Every Mom is a Working Mom: Happy Mother’s Day!

This Mother’s Day, Path Forward is sending a special shout out to moms – those who are balancing motherhood and career, those who left the paid workforce to care for their families, and those who are now striving to restart their careers. You inspire us every day with your determination and resolve to balance career ambition and motherhood, and to battle the stigma against career breaks. For you, on Mother’s…

Success Story: Fatima Loumaini

“Right now I’m relearning how to be in the workforce again. This returnship is opening the door for me, it’s helping me to be more confident and comfortable in my job. And the thing is, I’m learning every day.” Collective Health interviewed Fatima for a blog article titled, “Meet the Collective: Hi Fatima!“. Read about her successful return-to-work journey and her thoughts on how employers can support women returning to…

Success Story: Wanda Chiu

After a 15-year career break, Wanda Chiu returned to her engineering career with a returnship at Cloudflare in 2016. Several years later, she started a new role at Mux. In this video, Tami Forman, Executive Director of Path Forward, asked Wanda why she encouraged Mux to start a returnship program. In short, Wanda has so enjoyed the supportive culture at Mux that she knows it will make the perfect landing…

Mother’s Monday: Now Powered by Path Forward

Our mission at Path Forward is to empower caregivers to restart their careers after a break focused on caregiving. Our work centers on shifting bias and stigma while uplifting and celebrating these women and men throughout their return-to-work journeys. The idea started because many of us had the personal experience of either being or knowing a mother who’d left the workforce to care for her young children and was struggling…

Audible’s Leaders are Creating a Next Chapter Returnship Program That’s a Catalyst for Change

Michael Masiello, Senior VP of Software Development, and Supriya Mimani, Director of HR Projects (Talent and Diversity, Equity & Inclusion) were both instrumental in the launch and success of Audible’s Next Chapter Returnship program. As Audible gets ready to launch their third cohort, we talked to them about ways the program has grown since inception, the crucial support Path Forward provided to the program, and the unique attributes returning professionals…