{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","provider_name":"Transistor","provider_url":"https://transistor.fm","author_name":"Random Access Memories","title":"Career, Motherhood & Becoming CEO | Avani Desai, CEO of Schellman","html":"","width":"100%","height":180,"duration":2369,"description":"\nAvani Desai once believed she had to make an impossible choice: be a good mother or become an exceptional executive.\nToday, she's CEO of Schellman, and she's building the kind of workplace she wishes she'd been able to see earlier in her career.\nIn this episode of RAM, Avani joins Jake Bernardes to talk about growing up as the daughter of immigrants, beginning her career as one of the only women in penetration testing, and eventually becoming one of fewer than ten women leading a top-100 CPA firm.\n\nBut this isn't really a story about becoming CEO.\n\nIt's about what happened along the way.\n\nAvani opens up about being afraid to disclose her first pregnancy because she worried it could affect her next promotion, seeing her newborn son fewer than 50 days during his first year, and ultimately leaving a job she loved because she refused to sacrifice the kind of mother she wanted to be.\nThen an opportunity at Schellman changed the equation.\n\nNow, as CEO and mother of three, Avani is trying to make sure the people coming behind her never feel forced to make the same choice.\n\nIt's a conversation about ambition, representation, parenthood, leadership—and redefining what having it all actually means.\n\nIn this episode\nWhy Avani's father moved his family to America specifically to create more opportunities for his daughters\nGoing from penetration tester to privacy, marketing, president, and ultimately CEO\nWhat it feels like to be the only woman—or woman of color—in the room\nWhy Avani was afraid to tell colleagues she was pregnant\nThe impossible choice she felt forced to make between motherhood and her career\nSeeing her son fewer than 50 days during his first year\nWhy she ultimately left a job she genuinely loved\nFinding a company where parenthood and ambition didn't have to compete\nWhy 70% of Schellman's executive leadership team is female\nWhy Avani believes representation isn't about celebrating being “the only”—it's about making sure you're not the last\nHer approach to...","thumbnail_url":"https://img.transistorcdn.com/AgTc_ajuZymV7B6Is4iwonkllAQv6bMTNgmQnuJEL_A/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:400/h:400/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS84NGMz/OWQxZDMwZjBiYjQx/ODZlYjc3ZjJlN2Jk/YzM5Yy5wbmc.webp","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_height":300}