People Before Policy: CPO Laura Harmon on Flexible Work, Caregiver Leave, and ERG-Led BenefitsSummaryWhat happens when your policies promise flexibility but your managers don’t allow it? Laura Harmon, Chief People Officer at One Workplace and longtime HR leader at Bristol-Myers Squibb, Allstate, and Signet Health, explains how to close the gap between policy and lived experience. Shaped by her own journey as a parent, Laura’s North Star is simple: align what you do with what you allow. She shares a candid story of a manager blocking a flexible return from leave—and how coaching for equity protects retention—and a defining moment from her own first day back that underscores the power of managerial grace. Laura breaks down how to design benefits that scale beyond parents—reframing parental leave as caregiver leave, setting core hours, and investing in mental and financial wellness. She also shows how ERGs can co-create real solutions, like piloting a childcare stipend during the return-to-office crunch. Expect practical guidance on setting guardrails without “managing to the exception,” building cultures that support belonging, and what’s next: making flexibility a cultural norm and carving time for wellness and self-paced learning into the workweek.Timestamps[00:45] – Meet Laura Harmon and “people before policy”[02:15] – Parenting as a leadership North Star: align what you do with what you allow[03:47] – When a manager blocks flexibility: equity, retention, and coaching[05:35] – RTO mandates, equity, and setting guardrails without managing to the exception[09:32] – Designing inclusive benefits: caregiver leave, core hours, mental/financial wellness[13:31] – A defining return-from-leave moment and the power of managerial grace[16:33] – ERGs co-create solutions: piloting a childcare stipend and removing barriers[19:50] – The next 5–10 years: making flexibility a cultural norm and embedding wellnessTakeaways- Reframe “parental leave” as caregiver support to include aging parents and other family needs.- Codify flexibility with clear core hours and role expectations; judge outcomes, not location.- Coach managers not to manage to the exception; address outliers individually, not with blanket rules.- Use ERGs to surface real barriers and co-design solutions (e.g., childcare stipends).- Equip managers to respond with empathy during life transitions—it’s culture in action.- Carve calendar time for wellness and learning; offer self-paced options and stipends to meet people where they are.SponsorParenting at Work is brought to you by Juno — the modern financial safety net for working families. Juno helps employers offer affordable, impactful long-term financial coverage for children diagnosed with a severe illness or disability, giving parents peace of mind and flexibility when it matters most. You can learn more about how Juno is helping companies build family-first benefits that truly make a difference at junokids.com.
People Before Policy: CPO Laura Harmon on Flexible Work, Caregiver Leave, and ERG-Led Benefits
Summary
What happens when your policies promise flexibility but your managers don’t allow it?
Laura Harmon, Chief People Officer at One Workplace and longtime HR leader at Bristol-Myers Squibb, Allstate, and Signet Health, explains how to close the gap between policy and lived experience.
Shaped by her own journey as a parent, Laura’s North Star is simple: align what you do with what you allow. She shares a candid story of a manager blocking a flexible return from leave—and how coaching for equity protects retention—and a defining moment from her own first day back that underscores the power of managerial grace.
Laura breaks down how to design benefits that scale beyond parents—reframing parental leave as caregiver leave, setting core hours, and investing in mental and financial wellness.
She also shows how ERGs can co-create real solutions, like piloting a childcare stipend during the return-to-office crunch.
Expect practical guidance on setting guardrails without “managing to the exception,” building cultures that support belonging, and what’s next: making flexibility a cultural norm and carving time for wellness and self-paced learning into the workweek.
Timestamps
[00:45] – Meet Laura Harmon and “people before policy”
[02:15] – Parenting as a leadership North Star: align what you do with what you allow
[03:47] – When a manager blocks flexibility: equity, retention, and coaching
[05:35] – RTO mandates, equity, and setting guardrails without managing to the exception
[09:32] – Designing inclusive benefits: caregiver leave, core hours, mental/financial wellness
[13:31] – A defining return-from-leave moment and the power of managerial grace
[16:33] – ERGs co-create solutions: piloting a childcare stipend and removing barriers
[19:50] – The next 5–10 years: making flexibility a cultural norm and embedding wellness
Takeaways
- Reframe “parental leave” as caregiver support to include aging parents and other family needs.
- Codify flexibility with clear core hours and role expectations; judge outcomes, not location.
- Coach managers not to manage to the exception; address outliers individually, not with blanket rules.
- Use ERGs to surface real barriers and co-design solutions (e.g., childcare stipends).
- Equip managers to respond with empathy during life transitions—it’s culture in action.
- Carve calendar time for wellness and learning; offer self-paced options and stipends to meet people where they are.
Sponsor
Parenting at Work is brought to you by Juno — the modern financial safety net for working families.
Juno helps employers offer affordable, impactful long-term financial coverage for children diagnosed with a severe illness or disability, giving parents peace of mind and flexibility when it matters most.
You can learn more about how Juno is helping companies build family-first benefits that truly make a difference at junokids.com.
Work and family aren’t two separate lives—they’re one reality. Welcome to Parenting at Work, the podcast exploring the human side of business. Join us for a warm conversation with leaders redefining employee support. Each episode offers stories and strategies for building workplaces that care. This is serious coverage with serious heart.
This podcast is brought to you by Juno, the modern safety net for working families.
Learn more at junokids.com
Max Tedaldi (00:01)
All right, ⁓ welcome to Parenting at Work. I'm honored and excited today to bring you Laura Harmon. She is a strategic and people-centered executive with over 20 years of experience in HR, currently serving as the Chief People Officer at One Workplace, a company that integrates construction, technology, and furniture design to create high-performing spaces for organizations ranging from startups to Fortune 500s. She spent her career progressing from specialist roles into global leadership, previously serving in roles at
Bristol-Meyer Squibb, Allstate, and Signet Health. ⁓ And today she's known for building inclusive cultures and championing a philosophy that puts people before policy. So today we're going to talk through her approach to infusing wellness and belonging into the employee journey and how her experience as a parent has shaped her approach to work life and everything in between. So Laura, welcome to Parenting at Work. We're super excited to have you here today.
Laura Harmon (00:53)
Thank you, Max. What a great intro, by the way. ⁓ I'm going to take you wherever I go.
Max Tedaldi (00:55)
love it. ⁓
can be the B-boy in the back. ⁓ So I think where I'd love to start is a fastball. ⁓ I think everyone has been very, very interested in learning how your Thanksgiving was.
Laura Harmon (01:03)
Yeah. ⁓
It was fantastic. was ⁓ my, so speaking of parents, my son is a freshman in college and he came home for the holiday. So it was everything I wanted. So.
Max Tedaldi (01:23)
Thank you.
⁓ I love it. I ⁓ was also
with my parents, my extended family. ⁓ I have a five-year-old and a two-and-a-half-year-old, and their cousin is right in between their ages. He just turned four. So a lot of mayhem. ⁓
Laura Harmon (01:45)
Yeah,
I can imagine.
Max Tedaldi (01:47)
I'm definitely more exhausted after the Thanksgiving holiday than I was prior to it. ⁓ Cool. Yeah, exactly. And ⁓ so, you know, I'm curious about your experience and your style ⁓ and what it is that sort of guides your decisions and your leadership as a chief people officer. And if you had to pick one sort of element or notion that
Laura Harmon (01:52)
I bet. More exhaustion to come too. Yeah.
Max Tedaldi (02:17)
is sort of your North Star, your guiding light, what you try to achieve every day. ⁓ What would you say that is?
Laura Harmon (02:24)
⁓ so for me, the choice to become a mom was like...
the biggest decision I've ever made in my entire life. It's a huge, it's a lifelong commitment. ⁓ And so for me, coming into the workplace as a parent and now as a leader who has an older child, but still remembers what it felt like, you know, in early days, right up through now college, for me, it's really important that the things that we do line up with the things that we allow. ⁓ And so the flexibility, the ⁓ focus on mental health and
wellness, the ⁓ ability for parents to feel seen and heard in the workplace, ⁓ and to be able to attend to whatever it is that they need to do outside of work, whether it's concerts or class parenting or all of the things in between. For me, those were things that largely shaped who I've become as a leader, ⁓ both in and outside of work. And so for me, it's really important to create that space for other working parents so that they don't have to.
pay their dues or struggle in a way that ⁓ didn't exist maybe when I was ⁓ younger in my career.
Max Tedaldi (03:35)
Yeah, I love that. And I think that there's always a distinction between the policy and the actuality. How does that manifest in an employee's everyday life? And I'm curious if you either have some examples or ways that you've seen that really play out ⁓ within the employee experience.
Laura Harmon (03:44)
Mm-hmm.
So I'm going to tell a story, but I won't tell what company. ⁓ But in a past life, ⁓ I was an HR leader and we had an employee who...
Max Tedaldi (03:59)
Sure.
Laura Harmon (04:06)
announced their pregnancy and when they were getting ready to come back to work, they asked for some flexibility ⁓ in coming back part-time, moving to full-time, and then some flexibility around their hours. And their manager said no. And their manager had four kids of varying ages and said, well, I had to figure it out. They should figure it out. And so my question back to that manager was, do you want the employee to quit or do you want to fire them? Because one of those two things will happen if you
create space for that employee to come back and be the parent that they are going to be for their child. And also, it's not necessary for others to struggle because you did. You know better, you do better. And so I think those moments in my career have shaped how I show up, but also have given me opportunities because I'm in HR to impact what other working parents get to experience and feel to your point.
about the policies not aligning. We offered flexibility, but for some reason this manager thought that it shouldn't apply to this person because they weren't, it wasn't work related, it was related to their personal situation and that just wasn't fair, it wasn't equitable.
Max Tedaldi (05:23)
Yeah,
I mean, that's so interesting. I'm definitely curious about the timeline there. You know, how long ago it feels like things have shifted a little bit. ⁓ And but but also, you know, what was the underlying sentiment there? It does seem like I didn't get this. So this employee this employee shouldn't. ⁓ That's it. OK.
Laura Harmon (05:40)
Yeah, that's it, yeah. But
I think the other piece too, when you talk about the evolution, yes, that was years ago, but when we look at what's in the news today, companies that are mandating five days in the office, eight, nine hours a day in the office.
Max Tedaldi (05:49)
Mm-hmm.
Laura Harmon (05:57)
these policies become inequitable to not just working parents, but to people who need the flexibility. I'm now a dog mom. I have to pick up my dog from daycare or else he has to stay overnight because they lock the door. know, so all of these things that happen. And so it's just taking a step back to say, are we being fair to everyone that we're employing and are we excluding a specific group? And in a lot of times, in lot of cases, when we think about this, the mandates around being in the office for a final
amount of time, it does exclude groups and we're not, a lot of leaders are not taking that into consideration.
Max Tedaldi (06:32)
Yeah, yeah,
I mean, 100%. And I do think that there has been a shift recently and maybe the overall dialogue around it has shifted because people are more used to these things. And I can definitely see, you know,
five years ago, 10 years ago, where that wasn't as much of just in people's brain space of like, you know, oh, you're not gonna come into the office every day. I've never heard of that. And that now that post-COVID work from home was certainly the norm. Do you see employers trying to revert back or more accepting the new norm and the new culture that has come out of the work from home policies?
Laura Harmon (07:18)
I think it's a mixed bag. think there are employers that are trying to push back because it's what they know the same way, you know, pre-COVID, that's what we knew. So I think that they don't know what the world.
or what their working place looks like if people are not physically present with some regularity. So I think there's a of a pendulum swinging. I think we're starting to see things normalize where more companies are offering more flexibility ⁓ and being okay with that and then just putting some guardrails around that versus mandating where we have seen companies who've mandated. A lot of those employees have self-selected to go work somewhere else to start their own business. ⁓
Et cetera. And so I think if companies listen to their employees and kind of met them somewhere in the middle, ⁓ I think it would be a much better situation all around. Employees get the flexibility that they need. Employers get the full engagement and productivity that they are looking for as a company.
Max Tedaldi (08:21)
Yeah. And I'm curious about that balancing act, right? Because it seems like employers want, they want flexibility for their employees, ⁓ but that comes with accountability, right? That comes, there's always a cost to that. ⁓ And I'm curious if that's something that you've seen or that sentiment being some of the underlying sort of guardrails around work from home policy.
Laura Harmon (08:47)
Yeah, I think sometimes we as leaders manage to
the one or two people that might violate a policy or make it, you know, make it bad for everyone else instead of thinking about the greater good. And so I do think that there is the balance. ⁓ And I think those one off situations are conversations that need to be had, but shouldn't change the direction of the flexibility and the, you know, focus on mental health and the ability to learn and grow in your career and not use time away from office or working from home as some kind of
Max Tedaldi (08:56)
Yeah.
Laura Harmon (09:23)
⁓ consequence.
Max Tedaldi (09:26)
Yeah,
yeah, no, I love that. I definitely come from the camp of, you know, a conversation can usually solve about 90 % of the problems. ⁓ So I love hearing that. ⁓ And when you think about sort of, you you mentioned there, you know, the one or two people that might have issue with it. When you're designing benefits for a group. ⁓
you know, what does your philosophy around that look like? Are you looking to cater to some of the exceptions? Are you trying to view, you know, all the employees as one large group and, you know, optimize for what that group might need? I'm really curious about what that looks like for you.
Laura Harmon (10:07)
I think there are a lot of policies that we have.
put in firmly in the category of like for parents, but they really translate across. So for example, parental leave, if we called it caregiver leave, we've got folks with aging parents and other family members that they're caring for. So you kind of start to broaden the terminology. You think about flexible or core hours. They're not just parents that need that. Other people have other obligations outside of work, whether it's in their community or other things that they're doing.
Max Tedaldi (10:14)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Laura Harmon (10:41)
with family and friends and so giving them the opportunity to have that flexibility. Financial wellness helps everyone, mental health helps everyone. So I think as we start to think about what's good for one group, if we can apply a through line, now there will be certain things that will be completely applicable to just parents because you've got like dependent care accounts and stipends that you can put into place to help with daycare and other childcare and camps and things. But largely a lot of policies that
Max Tedaldi (11:02)
Mm-hmm.
Laura Harmon (11:11)
and help and support working parents will support and help all of your other employees.
Max Tedaldi (11:17)
Yeah, yeah, I love that. ⁓
And, you know, as I mentioned, I have a five-year-old son, a two-and-a-half-year-old daughter. And, you know, my current company, we have flexibility. And I think about just the volume of doctor's appointments, know, ⁓ PTA meetings, ⁓ you parent-teacher conferences, things like that. And how...
how could that possibly be managed in the pre-COVID world? How was that even done? And I'm obviously like, I don't know what that looks like because, you my son was born in 2020, very much a COVID child. And I'm curious sort of what that shift has felt like for you, who's been on sort of both sides of that moment.
Laura Harmon (11:53)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, so for me, think I've been very fortunate in my career to work for companies that walk the talk. So letting me have the flexibility that I needed, I was able to make those choices. So for me, I was class mom all through elementary school, all through middle school, until they told me I couldn't do it anymore. ⁓
I was class mom. I was at all of the activities. I was at all of the events. I went to all of the sporting events. I did all of it. ⁓ And that was largely because for me that was a huge core to my values. ⁓ And I made that very clear as I onboarded at different companies. I asked questions during the interview process to see.
What does work-life balance look like here? But also, I've also been very fortunate to work with a lot of managers, a lot of leaders who also saw the value and importance in having that balance and being able to have the flexibility to be where your child needs you to be when you need them. To your point about doctor's appointments, mean, I don't know how many times I got a call saying, you know, my kid coughed and needs to come home or, you know, soil discoloration.
clothes or all of the things that happen with children that are unpredictable.
Max Tedaldi (13:15)
out of here.
Yeah, it feels impossible sometimes, right? And I think about ⁓ the week prior to Thanksgiving, my son got sick. We kept him home. We sent him to school on Wednesday. He got sent back. ⁓ And you have those moments where it's like, Jack ⁓ has a temperature. And you're like, really? checked this morning. I could have sworn. ⁓
Laura Harmon (13:22)
Mm-hmm.
Yes.
Max Tedaldi (13:41)
And then
he got sent back again on Friday. And then you're going through this moment of like, how am going to manage this? I've got to take him to urgent care. I've got to see what's actually going on with my kid.
But I'm in the middle of the work day and you have those moments where you're like, how am I going to manage this? And I'm curious if there was any one specific standout moment for you where you felt that, where you felt that, where you felt how am I going to manage showing up for my company while also showing up for my kid and those often feeling at odds with one another.
Laura Harmon (14:19)
Yeah, the moment still sticks with me. ⁓ The day I returned from maternity leave, I forgot to drop my child off at daycare.
and he was in the back of the car and I pulled into the parking garage and when I went to get out of my car I realized he was back there. And I immediately had a meltdown and I called my boss, she came down to the garage and she said, here's what I want you to do. I want you to go drop your child off. I want you to go home and take a warm shower and I want you to come back tomorrow and let's try this again. And I feel like that moment for me, that whole day, I I spun out of control the whole day because I was like how could I forget that I
a kid? How could I forget that I was going to work? Like all of the things. And I think her grace and tenderness in that moment was exactly what I needed. But I understand, and she had a team of people. I wasn't the only person.
Max Tedaldi (15:11)
Yeah.
Laura Harmon (15:12)
on the team. And I think her allowing me the space to figure out how to be a new mom and how to re-enter the workforce after some time off. I think that was a moment that stuck with me for the last 18 years. ⁓ And it's how I try to show up, not just for the team that works with me, but also for the people in the organizations that I support. those are the moments, or those are make or break moments, not just as human beings, but like culturally. How do we
⁓ how do we walk the talk? How do we create a space where people feel that they're supported? And so for me, that moment was so defining that it's how I've kind of modeled my own leadership style on instead of what's in it for me, like what if it were me and how can I do better than what I received or what others are ⁓ giving to those employees during that time.
Max Tedaldi (16:11)
Yeah, what a great moment. it's, you know, that could have gone one of two ways, right? And it sounds like, you know, she really showed up with a lot of empathy. And I...
Laura Harmon (16:17)
Mm-hmm.
Max Tedaldi (16:25)
You know, when Jack was probably two, I had my sort of yearly review with my boss and he crashed the meeting. And it's, you in those moments as a leader, you can sort of go one of two ways, which is like, hey, this happens. Like, this is something that we're all, you know, that sort of division between work and home life has blurred over the course of the past couple of years. And that's okay. ⁓ And, you know, I don't need to sort of reprimand in that moment.
sure that my employee feels bad enough that this is happening. And one thing that stuck with me about what you were saying is that that's something that you try to bring to the way that you show up. ⁓ I'm curious, it obviously feels apparent to me that that definitely shows up in your day to day. And I'm really curious about how you feel that shows up in sort of the almost at a more thematic level, right? How does that influence the decisions that you make, ⁓ particularly as it pertains to take
Laura Harmon (16:56)
Mm-hmm.
Max Tedaldi (17:24)
in care of the employees at your business.
Laura Harmon (17:27)
So
I think, we have employee resource groups and we have a working parents employee resource group. And for me, part of the beauty of these groups is that they're able to bring back solutions to problems. And when we were coming back into the office in, I think, 2022, well, 2022.
They said, this is a barrier for some of us because daycares had closed. There were waiting lists. The cost was prohibitive. Like there was a lot of things happening during that time. And so they came forward and said, what if we use some of our budget dollars towards creating a stipend for employees who wanted to put their child in daycare? And so it worked and we've adopted it and now I pay for it. ⁓ And so
It's like, how do we remove the barriers? We have to listen. We have to ask the questions. And so what worked for me as a young mom is not the same thing that's going to work for another young mom or young dad or a parent that's, you know.
having to navigate either being a new parent, and also I think we take for granted that because someone has been a parent before, that it's gonna be the same experience, and no two children are the same, even twins, and I know that because I am a twin. ⁓ And so I think we have to ask the questions and meet people where they are as best as we can so that we create a space where everyone feels encouraged and supported to be their best version of themselves and be able to disconnect.
when they're in the office and not worry about, well, now I have to make all of my appointments on Saturday because it's the only day that I have the flexibility or I can only do evenings or all of these things that really just cloud people's minds during the day and created an environment where they're not giving their best work because they're so preoccupied with all of the other stuff they have to do outside.
Max Tedaldi (19:07)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah,
I love that. ⁓ And ⁓ Laura, I'm a twin as well. ⁓ what an interesting coincidence. ⁓ Yeah, my twin lives in Brooklyn. I live in Manhattan. But I say this often to other twins that I meet, which is there's something about just having almost like a mirror shown to you from the time that you are born.
Laura Harmon (19:29)
What? my gosh.
Max Tedaldi (19:49)
And there's just a level of understanding that I think most twins experience that shows up. It has ripples throughout the rest of their lives. So I love hearing that and I love meeting other twins as well.
Laura Harmon (19:54)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
That's awesome.
We have to meet in Twinsburg, Ohio for the TwinFest one year.
Max Tedaldi (20:07)
I've heard cool things. I think I would probably find it little overwhelming, but
yeah, I always get a kick out of meeting twins in the wild and I kind of do the little tap and like, you know, I'm in the club too.
Laura Harmon (20:17)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah,
awesome.
Max Tedaldi (20:23)
Cool. So I'm also really curious about, you've been in this industry for a while. You've seen the ebbs and flows and the shifts, I think particularly post COVID, but I'm curious about what you see as the future of benefits. And I think particularly as it relates to supporting families and parents, what do think it is that we'll see a year from now, five years from now as things shift?
Laura Harmon (20:50)
⁓ Hopefully, we see companies leaning more into more flexibility.
meeting people where they are and creating, I'm going to call them cultural norms. So right now we have a lot of policies. We have leaves and we have ⁓ flexibility around some of our PTO usage and things like that. I'm hoping that in the future, in the next five years, 10 years, we see this just become the norm and this is just how we work. I still remember early in my career when people working from home was a privilege and only a select few, typically an executive got to do that. And so now it's become more of the norm.
Max Tedaldi (21:00)
Hmm.
Laura Harmon (21:25)
I think we're going down the same path with flexibility and I hope that the companies see the value in what we offer to working parents actually benefits the greater good of all employees because there's no rule that says other employees can't take advantage of such ⁓ benefits or ⁓ initiatives that we put into place.
I think the future looks more flexible. I think it looks more supportive. I hope.
Max Tedaldi (22:00)
Yeah. And I'm also curious about how you see your own sort of personal philosophy fitting into that. ⁓ And particularly as it relates to sort of infusing wellness into the employee journey. How do you see yourself looking out for your employees over the course of the next five, 10 years?
Laura Harmon (22:22)
⁓ I think creating more space for employees to take care, not just take care of what they need to take care of outside of work, but carving out space during their week to attend a webinar on...
you know, financial planning, ⁓ take care of their mental health, maybe do some meditation or something along those lines, ⁓ making sure that they have the ability to learn in a space that's good for them. instead of maybe sitting in a classroom or being sent to a formal ⁓ learning curriculum, maybe there's some online self-paced learning, maybe there's a stipend. So I think, I think for me, it's really
Trying to create enough variety in how I show up for the employees on my team so that I could meet each of them where they are because going back to what I said earlier, what benefits one will likely benefit the masses, but instead of solving for one person, I'm trying to think of how can I be more inclusive overall and not just how can I be more inclusive just to working parents.
Max Tedaldi (23:29)
Yeah,
I so, love that. And I think one of my biggest takeaways from this conversation is you're designing benefits for a group.
but that still comes with attention to the individual and making sure that individuals feel heard, feel seen, and that they have flexibility to take care of what they need to, how they want to progress their career. acknowledging that flexibility comes with some accountability, with ways and thinking about the way that you show up and how the business is still able to
⁓ even given that flexibility. So ⁓ Laura, I so, appreciate your time and this conversation. was great to speak with you.
Laura Harmon (24:21)
Likewise, thank you so much for having me. I appreciate the space.
Max Tedaldi (24:24)
Love
it.
⁓ And for every parent listening, think ⁓ Laura has given some really incredible advice. And just remember that one voice can bring forth change. I think whether you're joining an ONERG, you schedule a meeting with your HR leader, or you're just sharing ways that leaders can better support their employees and their parents, ⁓ one voice ⁓ can spark the change. And one voice can bring about change. So thank you so much for listening. ⁓
So appreciate it and let's get back to work. Cool. Laura, thank you so much again. I really, really enjoyed our conversation.
Laura Harmon (25:01)
Thank you.
Likewise, are you the older twin or the younger twin?
Max Tedaldi (25:05)
I'm the older twin, although it ⁓ was a C-section, so it was like, you know, ⁓ two minutes maybe. ⁓ How about yourself? Okay, by three minutes. Okay, and are you an identical twin or a fraternal twin? Okay.
Laura Harmon (25:08)
Mm.
Who's, gotcha. I'm the younger twin by three minutes, same. I'm a fraternal. My brother,
my twin is a boy. He is like twice my size. So I like to say I got the brains and he got the brawn. So. Yeah.
Max Tedaldi (25:29)
wow, okay.
That's so funny. And do
you guys live close to each other? Are you guys still close?
Laura Harmon (25:40)
He's still in New Jersey. He's still in
New Jersey. ⁓ So we get to see each other, I mean, via video chats mostly, but we try to see each other at least a couple times a year. Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Max Tedaldi (25:52)
Yeah, you've got to. When
I hear about either like a strange twins or twins that can't spend time together, ⁓ it makes me feel just general sadness. ⁓
Laura Harmon (26:05)
Same. Yeah, it's like
even though we're very different people, we still share such a bond that I can't imagine never not communicating with my brother.
Max Tedaldi (26:08)
Mm-hmm.
Yep.
Yep. I, and I actually, we talk about this all the time that like on the surface when people meet us, they're like, you guys are like the same person. And then actually when they get to know us a little, a little better, they realize that we're very, very different. ⁓ And I don't know if you've heard of like two, two ticket theory. ⁓
Laura Harmon (26:29)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
No.
Max Tedaldi (26:37)
It's basically like in any given scenario, right? There's two tickets available and they are like opposing tickets And when one ticket gets taken It's not available for the other person ⁓ and so in any, you know scenario, right you can be sort of like introverted or extroverted Okay, and we'll say and what if one twin snatches the extroversion ticket no longer available And so I I think about that a lot ⁓ when
Laura Harmon (26:42)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Max Tedaldi (27:05)
think about just the way that Luke and I operate ⁓ and he's very, very extroverted and when I'm around him I kind of tone it down a little bit and then when I'm not around him I get a little bit more, a little bit more social.
Laura Harmon (27:11)
Mm.
Yeah.
I've never
heard that, now that you've said it, makes like, it's my brother and I as well. are opposite ends of all of the spectrums, literally and figuratively.
Max Tedaldi (27:31)
Yep. Yep.
And yeah, it's so much of your existence, your personality is like a reaction to what you're, you know, how you're interacting with that person who, you know, the two of you are doing everything, particularly when you're kids, it's like, you're same classes, same extracurriculars. But anyway, I love meeting other twins and what a fun moment.
Laura Harmon (27:37)
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, yeah, me too. Awesome.
Max Tedaldi (27:57)
Well,
thank you. I'm sorry we went over. I again, so, so appreciate your time and I'll let you know as soon as the podcast goes up, it'll likely either be later this week or early next. Cool. I'll send you links and everything. Yeah, yeah, it was really, really wonderful to meet you. Thank you, Laura. Bye.
Laura Harmon (27:59)
No, that's okay.
Okay.
perfect. Thank you so much. was such a pleasure. Likewise. All right. Take care.
Bye.