How to Keep Working Parents In & Innovating
Tech innovation is a pervasive theme at SXSW, and people are key to innovation. An ongoing challenge for our industry is how to keep working parents in, instead of dropping out, as they give birth to the next generation of digirati. The time is right for a tech-talent revolution, and are the media and tech industries are uniquely positioned to lead it? Join Lisa Belkin, Senior Columnist on Life/Work/Family at The Huffington Post, and Sara DeWitt, Vice President of PBS KIDS Digital for a solutions-driven discussion about why career and family don’t have to be mutually exclusive and how organizations can help redefine what “having it all” means for a future of tech innovators.
Presenters
Lisa Belkin is the Huffington Post’s Senior Columnist on Life/Work/Family. She joins HuffPost Parents after a multi-decade stint at The New York Times, where she was variously a national correspondent (based in Houston), a medical reporter, a Contributing Writer for The New York Times Magazine, and the creator of the Life’s Work column and the Motherlode blog.
The author of several books (including “Life’s Work, Confessions of an Unbalanced Mom”) Belkin has also been the host of “Life’s Work with Lisa Belkin”, on XM Radio, as well as a regular contributor on parenting topics to Public Radio’s The Takeaway and NBC’s Today Show.
Her own personal life/work balance includes her husband, Bruce, her two sons (who are highly amused that anyone thinks she is a parenting “expert”) and her Wheaten terrier, Riley, (who thinks her is her third child.)
As Vice President of PBS KIDS Digital, Sara DeWitt leads strategic development and day-to-day production of immersive educational experiences for kids across media platforms. Sara’s core portfolio includes the Kidscreen- and Webby-award winning PBSKIDS.org. She has led the extension of PBS KIDS content into new frontiers from mobile apps and interactive whiteboard games, to augmented reality and 3D-rendered gaming experiences.
As the mother of a 1 year old and wife of a US Air Force officer, Sara also lives an extreme teleworking life, commuting between Honolulu, HI, and PBS’ Arlington, VA, headquarters. She has developed new expertise in transforming hotel rooms into remote nurseries, taking cross-continental flights with an infant on her lap, and has mastered the TSA regulations for traveling with liquids and dry ice.
Sara holds a BA and an MA in English from Stanford University, and a certificate from Stanford’s Children, Society, and Public Policy program. She is a former preschool teacher.
Sunday, March 10
