Speaker

Yasmin J. Mattox

Born in Lower Manhattan, and raised in Harlem, NYC, Yasmin J. Mattox has lived in Rochester, NY since 2007, following the completion of her undergraduate studies at Alfred University where she earned a B.A. in Political Science. Yasmin went on to earn an M.S. in International Studies from St. John Fisher College in 2011. Throughout her career thus far, through her work in the legal, mental health, energy, and higher education sectors, the common and connecting thread has always been her love for and commitment to research, especially that which helps society better understand human thought processes, motivations, and behaviors in a better light in order to help individuals and societies make better decisions that lead to more human progress on the societies and fulfillment and self-actualization for individuals. Yasmin owned a social science research and consulting firm from 2012 through 2016, and has recently founded a technology company called Arkatecht that works to create digital tools that assist professional women with proactively and integratively planning for family and career advancement to facilitate success and positive outcomes in both areas.
New York City, NY August 20, 2017
Integrating Family & Career: Ensuring Women's Dreams Continue to Take Flight After Motherhood
Postpartum Depression; Depression, Suicide, Infant Mortality, Maternal Mortality; Workplace Discrimination, e.g. workplace sexism and workplace racism.

Professional women and their families lose out on upwards of 20-30% of lifetime income, and approximately 63% of immediate (within year of childbirth) income, to the ‘motherhood penalty,” due to the transition from pregnancy to becoming mothers, which is a major driving force of the 'gender pay gap.' Employers also lose millions on retention costs due to the attrition of remarkably talented women from the workplace, often due to the seemingly insurmountable task for women to balance family with work obligations while working in highly demanding careers.

This is something that few employers do much to mitigate even though they often state that doing so is critical to organizational success and that they are willing to invest in solutions. As a result, there are dire societal and economic consequences that arise because society has not yet developed a framework for planning for family and career that is integrated to 1) consider the health and professional realities of pregnancy and the postpartum period, 2) that is proactive and synchronized, and 3) that treats both women’s desire to create life and create value through work as core aspects of their identities deserving of sustained support and synchronous effort that benefits all.

In this vein, this talk will provide a brief background on this disappointing status quo, but also offer hope for a better way forward through the creation of AI-driven technology that will help professional women transition from pregnancy to motherhood in a way that optimizes their ability to more efficiently advance in their careers with fewer unintended setbacks. This talk will incorporate insights based on the speaker’s experiences as a professional mother and entrepreneur with two daughters, and a third on the way, as well as those of other professional mothers, as the user-centric blueprint for this technology. Public health issues related to pregnancy and the postpartum period, such as perinatal and postpartum depression, will be discussed in the context of the real need to proactively plan for this wondrous but potentially turbulent time in women’s lives with a sensitivity towards professional impact and advancement, and a woman’s preservation of her ability to be self-sufficient as it can be addressed with technology.