World's most powerful mums in tech share how they manage work-life balance

Most powerful mums in technology

These 10 mothers in technology are not to be trifled with — Find out how these supermums juggle home matters while reigning in the world’s technology field.

Chua Sock Koong, Group CEO, SingTel

Ranked number 3 on the 2015 Fortune's list of Asia's Power Businesswomen, this Singaporean mother of 2 daughters oversees SingTel's domestic, Australian and international businesses. A trained accountant and chartered financial analyst, she worked her way up from treasurer to CFO and eventually Group CEO.

On Parenting

In an interview with the Straits Times, Chua shared that she believed that the future is bright for women who work hard. She however highlighted that. "women should also recognise that they may need to prioritise what they want to do at different stages of life." Chua herself left a job which required heavy travel, to join SingTel, so that she could spend more time with her 2 children.

Dong Mingzhu, Chairwoman and President of Gree Electric Appliances Inc.

Known as one of the toughest businesswomen in China, this mother of 1 boy is ranked 4th on the 2015 Fortunes's list of Asia's Power Businesswomen. The youngest of a large working class family in Nanjing, Dong, rose to the top through her own sheer will and with no man by her side. She married after graduation from university, but her husband passed away when their son was two years old. As a young widow, she left her son with her mother in Nanjing and travelled to the more economically developed city, Zhuhai, where she began her career at Gree by selling air conditioners and soon rose through the company. Now she is leading Gree on a much watched foray into China's smartphone market.

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In an interview with New York Times, she shared, "People say I neglected (my son) for my career...what they don’t know is that when he was small, I carried him everywhere. He was with me sometimes 24 hours a day in those early years."

"Having children is an additional hardship that women have and men don’t," she said, adding: "Not everyone has the chance to experience this hardship. I was very happy."

Cher Wang, CEO & Co founder of HTC

This 56-year-old mother of 2 boys, co-founded not one, but TWO, major global tech companies - Via Technologies and HTC. Fortune has named her the 14th on Asia's Power Businesswomen list.

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When Wang started HTC, her kids were just babies so she would usually bring them along with her to work. If had to go on a business trip, she would bring her kids along and make them stay in the hotel with her mother or a nanny.

She says in an interview with Marie Clare, "It’s very important to have that support network. It can be hard work getting the balance right, but it’s something that people have got to get used to."

Marissa Mayer, Yahoo!’s CEO & President

Ranked sixth on Fortune 's 40 under 40 list and the 16th most-powerful businesswoman in the world, Marissa Mayer is a mum to 3 children and has been the president of Yahoo! since her first pregnancy days. The current CEO was also formerly the first female engineer hired at Google (and employee no 20!) and although she was criticised for doing away with telecommuting in Yahoo!, in 2013 she increased paid maternity leave for working mums in the company, lengthening its time allowance and providing a cash bonus to parents.

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In a 2013 interview with Today, Mayer shared, "it does take a lot of focus (juggling being CEO and a new mum), you need to make sure you are really prioritizing. There is not a lot of room for anything else."

Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook

Author of bestseller "Lean In", Sheryl Sandberg is the Chief Operations Officer of Facebook and a mother of 2 children.

On Parenting

In a video for Makers.com, Sandberg shared "I walk out of this office every day at 5:30 so I'm home for dinner with my kids at 6." To make up for ducking out early, she would "send emails to colleagues late at night and early in the morning as proof" that she was still giving her all to work.

Susan Wojcicki, CEO of YouTube

Besides being the CEO of YouTube, Susan Wojcicki was the woman behind all of Google’s ad products, which accounted for 96% of Google's billions of annual revenues. Mummy to 5 kids in a busy household, Wojcicki’s relationship with the Google family goes way back to 1998 when its creators borrowed her garage for their experiments when building the search engine.

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Wojcicki believes that having children makes her better at her job. She says that, "having the sum of both of those things going on in my life makes me a better mom at the end of the day, and I think it gives me really important perspectives in the workplace as well."

Anne Wojcicki, Founder & CEO, 23andMe;

The CEO of 23andMe, a privately held personal genomics and biotechnology company is a mother of 2, Benji and Chloe. She is also the ex-wife of Google Cofounder Sergey Brin and the sister of Susan Wojcicki.

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In an interview with Genetics journal, Plos, Wojcicki shares, " I definitely set boundaries for when I get to see the kids. I try to spend at least one day a week where I volunteer in the school, and I encourage others to do that too. It makes a world of difference, and then it doesn’t really matter if I say, "I can’t see you for two days" because I came to school that one day."

People here at the office definitely take that children time—when you pick up your kids, you’re with your family for dinner, you put the kids to bed—and then people are very active online afterwards. There is a prolific amount of email after 10 p.m.

Julie Larson-Green, Chief Experience Officer, Microsoft

With her good old fashioned grit and tenacity, this persevering woman and mother of 2 worked her way up to leading engineering efforts for Microsoft Office after 22 years in the company. Proving that dedication can be equally invested at home and at work, her determination and diligence at Microsoft tells a success story that every working mum can strive for.

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"There’s no such thing as work-life balance. There’s only life," shares Larson in an interview with Wall Street Journal. She advices her team to look at their careers as a long arc—no single moment is make or break, so they can take a six-month maternity leave or, in the case of a male employee whose children travel the country to play soccer, take Fridays off much of the year.

Katie Jacobs Stanton, VP, Global Media, Twitter

As if raising 3 kids isn’t demanding enough, Stanton was a special advisor to the White House’s Office of Innovation before heading one of Twitter’s largest departments. One of Forbes’ 100 most powerful women in the world, she has been working with the popular microblogging site since 2010.

On Parenting

In an interview with NPR news, Stanton recounted an incident that had happened when she got home from work, "We've had a really intense week at Twitter, which is great and it's sterling, but it's meant that I've come home from work late every night. And last night, I got back. And my daughter said, well, mom, I owe three dozen cookies, homemade - and they have to be homemade. And we need to bring them in tomorrow.

And it was about 8:30 p.m. I thought, oh, my God. I felt so bad. And, you know, there's nothing that a quick batch of Toll House can't solve. So that seemed to work out OK. So you have to take, you know, each day in stride and enjoy what you have."

Meg Whitman, CEO of HP

A mother of 2 sons and the former leader of eBay, Whitman is indeed a power mum with massive influence in the tech industry. In addition, this mother also ran for Governor of California in 2010 and named her children her inspiration for doing so. With big ambitions as well as a big heart, Whitman and her neurosurgeon husband have their own charity foundation and often donate large sums to different causes.

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In an interview with Makers she shared, "I don't know if I can be the perfect CEO, the perfect wife, the perfect mother, the perfect hostess, and have my house look fabulous all the time. That's a lot for one person. And finally, I sort of gave up the notion that I could be perfect at all those things. I told myself I was going to focus on the children, my husband and my job and everything else would have to go. You just have to figure out what is most important, what you are good at and what you can let go off. That's the only way to manage all of this."