In this inspiring episode of the Big Careers, Small Children podcast, Verena Hefti MBE speaks with Ahed Serhal, HR Director, La Prairie Switzerland, about how she transformed guilt into growth while building a global career and raising 10-year-old twins abroad.

Living without nearby family support, Ahed shares her honest reflections on balancing ambition and parenthood — from morning school selfies to open conversations with her employer and children. She reveals how learning to let go of guilt, plan with purpose, and communicate openly helped her find true balance and confidence as a working parent.

Together, they explore:

✔️ The mindset shift that helped Ahed turn guilt into growth

✔️ How to progress your career while living abroad without family support

✔️ Why being vocal about what you need builds trust and balance

✔️ How parenting can strengthen your leadership through empathy and structure

✔️ The power of partnership and planning when both parents travel for work

What You’ll Learn in This Episode

🔹 How to let go of guilt and define balance on your own terms

🔹 Why openness with your manager (and your children) is key to thriving

🔹 How to create systems that support both your career and your family

🔹 Why parenting can make you a more strategic, grounded leader

🔹 The one mindset shift that helps you progress without traditional support networks

Show Notes:

• Connect with Ahed Serhal on LinkedIn
• Learn more about beiersdorf.com
• Learn more about the Leaders Plus: Big Careers, Small Children podcast and explore additional resources at leadersplus.org.
• Follow Leaders Plus on LinkedIn, Instagram, and Bluesky.
• Connect with our CEO, Verena Hefti MBE on LinkedIn.
• Find out more about the work of Leaders Plus by signing up to our Newsletter.

Applications are closing in a few days for the Leaders Plus Cross-Sector Fellowship (Deadline: Tuesday 11 November). It is a nine-month leadership development programme supporting ambitious working parents in leadership or managerial roles to progress their careers while staying present for family life.

Our multi-award-winning Leaders Plus Fellowships support parents committed to career growth while enjoying family life. Expertly designed to keep parents on the leadership path, our programme tackles gender pay gap issues and empowers parents to thrive. Learn more here: Leaders Plus Fellowship.

More BCSC episodes you might love:

Episode 195: Control Isn’t Everything: Embracing Kindness in Life, Parenting, and Leadership

Episode 194: How to Create Counterbalance in Your Life & Career

Welcome to the Big Careers Small Children Podcast.

My name is Verena Hefti. I believe that no one should have to choose between becoming a CEO and enjoying their young children for much too long.

Amazing people like I'm sure you listening right now have found themselves stuck on the career ladder when they have children and that leads to gender inequality in senior leadership because. Because those people don't progress to senior leadership and the same stale, often male, middle class people leading our organizations.

We must change this together.

And I hope that many of you listening right now will progress to the most senior leadership roles that you like where you can make the decisions that make our world a better place. Outside of the podcast, I am the CEO and founder of the Social enterprise Leaders Plus.

We exist to help working parents progress their careers to senior leadership in a way that works for you and for your families.

We have free events and resources on leadersplus.org where you can download helpful toolkits such as on returning from maternity leave, share parental leave, securing a promotion, dealing with workload challenges, or managing as a dual career couple. We also have an award winning fellowship. Community which is global for working parents who have big dreams for their careers.

But don't want to sacrifice their family. You'll join an absolutely wonderful group of people, a very tight knit, supportive group of parents who have your back. Together.

You'll explore what your career aspirations are and you'll get advice from senior leaders who are also working parents about how to achieve those aspirations. You'll get new ideas to combine your hopes for your careers with your hope for your family.

And you are supported by people who are experiencing what you're experiencing yourself.

I'm really delighted that a larger majority of our fellows have made tangible changes following the program, be that becoming more senior in their roles, working shorter hours, having better flexible working arrangement.

They always impress me so much with the courage that they instill in each other to do what is right for them without apologizing for having a family or apologising for wanting that top job. Details are on leadersplus.org/Fellowship. Today I'm.

Talking to Ahed Serhal about combining a big career with twins, about traveling internationally, about how she came to peace with guilt, and what she's learned about progressing your career in an environment where you don't have family nearby. Enjoy the conversation. A very warm welcome ahead to the podcast.

Let's start with you introducing who you are, what you do for work and who is in your family.

Thank you Verena for having me on this podcast.

So My name is Ahed and I am an HR director at La Prarie, looking after supply chain and R and D. I'm originally Lebanese, born and raised in Beirut city, but I have been out of my country for the past 13 years living as an expat in two different countries for 10 years in the UAE in Dubai and for three years in Germany. I am a working mother so I have twins who are 10 years old and since they were born I've always been working.

So I have lots to share with you about how do I handle my day to day activities as a working mom.

Wonderful.

Let me ask you a question that I'm asking all of our guests which is what did you used to believe about combining a big senior career with children that you've changed your mind on?

I always thought that it's not possible to grow and develop further within your career being a mother. I grew up in a family where my mom was a working mother.

So I had a working mom, she worked for the government and she stayed in the same job for 25 years. And that was the picture I had in mind of how does a working mom look like?

So it's a job that requires you to be out of the house while the kids are at school. By the time they're back, you should be back and you're available for them at all times and so on. No business, travel, nothing as such.

And I think as my kids started growing and I started reflecting on my childhood and on how I looked at my mom whom I really consider as my idol, I realized that she's done as much as she could, but what I needed was slightly different. So I do appreciate everything she has done.

But what I really needed was not that I needed someone that I can look up to, someone that I can learn from, someone that I can approach when I needed help.

Specifically work related, when I was going to university, what major do I want to go for, applying for my first job, how do I prepare myself for an interview, and so on. It was never my mom that I reached out to on these topics. And then I realized that I want my kids to reach out to me when they have such questions.

I want me to be their go to person or of course their dad.

So that's why I thought I need to make something about my career so that my kids can look up to me and always approach me for any questions they might have. And that was the shift to be very honest.

Interesting. Can you remind our listeners when you had the kids, at what level roughly were you at and obviously you are now an HR director in a global company.

So it was really difficult living as an expat, no family around, no support to go back immediately to work. So I had to take a career break for one year and then I went back to work afterwards.

I have to say I went back to work super motivated and excited to be back to work after one year. Not because I wanted to get rid of my kids or anything as such.

On the contrary, I really enjoyed that year with them, but because I really felt like I want to do something about my life as well for myself and for my kids. So I was really excited and super motivated to be back to the workplace. So I rejoined the workplace as an HR business partner.

Afterwards I developed into a head of rewards and performance for Middle east and Africa. And that is when I started traveling. So my kids always knew that mommy is on a business trip. And I made sure that they know.

So it's not like they wake up in the morning and they don't find me at home. They knew that tomorrow morning you're not going to see mommy for the next few days and so on.

Then I took over an HR director role for Global functions. And afterwards I moved to Germany where I took over an HRBP role.

The first two years in Germany were mainly focused on German market, so there was no travel required. But today with my role in La Prie, I'm constantly traveling. So they also know that mommy's on a business trip.

And I make sure to plan everything before I leave so everything is ready for them.

I'm interested. You might not feel like it, but statistically you are a bit of an outlier. Generally, there's an impact on working moms, sadly.

Specifically, they're less likely to progress to a senior level after having had children. And I'm just interested in your reflection.

Are there any decisions that you took or any things that you did that really led to you being where you are now with children in tow?

I mean, of course there's always decisions that you make that get you to where you are. And in my case, there are two things that I always think of. One, the decision to put yourself first sometimes and get that guilt feeling away.

It's a personal decision that you make. I mean, you can live with it or you can decide to let it go and just make sure that it's not haunting you at a certain point of time.

And the other one is to really think about your career and have that aspiration. So if you do not really aspire to develop further and grow within your career, it won't work. And in my case, it was both.

So at one point, I decided that it's okay if I'm not with my kids every single day. It's okay if I miss a certain activity at school while my husband joins it. It's still one of the parents are there.

So I do not have to live with that guilt feeling. And on the other side, I always wanted to develop further in my career and have a wider exposure and achieve lots of things throughout my journey.

I think these are two main decisions that I have made in my life that really got me to where I am today.

What I really find powerful about your story is that you seem to have come to peace with guilt. Am I misinterpreting that? But just speaking to you, that's the impression I get.

And one thing our listeners often tell me is that they feel a big sense of guilt around the decision to take roles that require international travel means mommy is not there in the morning, even though there is sometimes another half.

Yeah.

How did you come to peace with that? Or am I misinterpreting and you're still wrangling with it?

You're absolutely right. I think I got to peace with it. I'm a very reflective person, and at a certain point of time, I think you need to prioritize.

You cannot have everything. So it's either I need to be with my kids 100% so that I get that guilt feeling away, or I need to balance. And I think that's the key.

If you manage to balance, then everything should be fine. I can share with you one thing that I have done in the past that really made me feel much better.

At a certain point, I realized that I'm not spending enough time with my kids. They go to school in the morning. I don't go to work. I work long hours. I'm back in the evening, barely serve dinner and then they're in bed.

And I wanted to do something different. So what I changed. And it's a very minor change, but it really made a huge impact.

I started dropping them to school in the morning instead of my husband, and that dropped to school. We used to make lots of memories, so we used to put our own music. We used to take every day a morning selfie and send it to the grandparents.

We funny pictures and so on, and. And it was really a change maker.

It really made a huge impact because then we started building these memories and it really helped me to get away from that guilt feeling because I felt like I'm still doing something with my kids.

And I think that's where the guilt feeling comes in when you feel like you're totally disconnected, you're not giving them time, you're not really present and so on. So I think you really need to think about what works for you because what works for me might not necessarily work for everyone.

So you need to think about what really works for you, what is the balance that you can bring into your life and that's really what helps, helps you to get away from that guilt feeling.

I think you're right. And you mentioned the word balance there. I'm quite surprised that you mentioned that because you've got twins. I don't.

So I might have the wrong stereotype of how that looks like, but I'm imagining it's a full on and also obviously a very busy international job. What do you do to have balance in your life and also not just for those two, career and family, but also for yourself?

Yeah, I mean, I don't want to sound perfect. Of course. There are days where I feel like I'm unable to control everything. But I try as much as possible. I plan ahead of time.

So I'm a really good planner. So anything I have and it can be super, super small, like even a business trip for two days, I plan for it in advance and I consider everything.

Not only my business trip, what do I want to do on that trip and so on, but also what does my family need while I'm away and so on. I plan as well the timing. So I make sure that when I'm away, it's not a time that is important for my kids.

So if they have something at school or a special doctor's appointment or something like that, I make sure that I am present there. So I think planning is a very important aspect.

Making sure that you consider everything, you plan everything and try to minimize as much as possible the impact of you not being present. So I think that is the biggest thing I would say, of course, again, it's not always perfect, but I'm happy with an 80%, let's say.

I think that's a brilliant philosophy. That's exactly what we should do. I'm intrigued. So you mentioned you do the plumbing also for the family. Can you say a bit more about.

Are there any practical things that have helped you that you do now, but you didn't do five years ago.

Two things. One, I have a very supportive partner and we have this conversation regularly. So how do you want to balance? And so on.

And I always make sure that he is there to back me up when I need to. And two, I manage my calendar with my partner. So whenever I'm away, I make sure that he is informed ahead of time.

So he makes sure that he is present and available and the other way around. So if he is not there, he also makes sure that I'm aware and so on.

And that's how we make sure that at least one of us is there and we support each other. Communication is key as well, not only with my partner, but also with my kids. So when I'm not there, I make sure that they are aware ahead of time.

What is planned for this week? What do you want to have this week? Activities, food, you name it, anything. Play dates, etc.

So I make sure that everything is also planned and they are aware of it. They choose it so they don't feel like, oh, it didn't happen because mom is not there. So I think that's the other thing.

We constantly talk and communicate and one.

Fear some of our listeners have are that the children will say, well, actually I would rather have a mommy who does this. I mean, to be completely honest, my children certainly do say, well, X, Y and Z. Mom is coming on the school trip today. Why are you not coming?

Well, actually I'm having a really interesting conversation with Ahed today, for example, a real life example from my life as of today. But what do you do to get the kids to be at peace?

Yeah.

Or are they happy? Are they proud of you? Would you say?

Yeah, my kids are very aware or they're very interested in what we do. So if you ask them today what does mommy do, they tell you that she works in hr and what is HR for them?

Or the way I have explained it, I take care of people who work for a company and that by itself is something that they're really happy with. You know, like my mommy takes care of other people. So I think it's about how you explain to them what you do and so on.

On the other side, again, it's about communicating. If they have an activity or these questions, Ex's mom is coming on a school trip, why aren't you coming? And so on.

I think explaining to them why you are unable to make it is very important. However, I think sometimes it's important that you are there.

So Every now and then, whenever I have the time, I try to drop by and do something with them, either me or my husband. We try as much as possible. It's not like we're not present at all. So we try when possible, to do something.

The move to Germany was actually a big move, big change maker for us as well, because when we moved it was because of my job. And the kids asked, why are we moving? I mean, we had a very nice life in Dubai. We had our friends, our school, etc, so why are we leaving?

And what we did is we explained to them exactly why. And I said it's because I have a good opportunity and because I want to develop and grow further. So does Daddy.

And we want to make sure that we give you the, the best life. If we stay in Dubai, then we all live happily ever after and so on.

We're not saying that it's not going to be a great life, but we're not going to be having the exposure that we will have in Germany. You will not get exposed to new cultures, new language, etc. Blah, blah. And it's exactly the same case for you.

If you stay in Dubai, you have your friends, but you do not learn German, you do not learn about the German culture, you do not experience the life in Europe and so on. So there is something in it for you as much as there is in it for us. And that's how we made peace with the move or the relocation to Germany.

And that's how they look into things now. There's always something for all of us in it.

Absolutely. And I love the way how you communicate that to the children. That's such a good way of putting it. I might try that at my end.

You are also in Germany without anyone helping you, and especially when you kid, you were in Dubai previously without any family nearby when the kids were young, and I'm sure there were multiple illnesses and dramas at nursery or school or wherever they were. What have you learned about thriving or sometimes just surviving with no help around or no family help around?

I can tell you, I mean, in Dubai I did have the support, to be very honest, but still not family support and so on. So at certain points, yes, you had to be present despite the fact that you have help at home.

Germany was, I would say, a better experience when it comes to how to handle things on my own, especially that my husband also is frequently traveling, so he is not always available to support and so on. And I think the key learning that I have is to be vocal about what you need and what you can do. I can give you an example.

When my husband took over his job and started traveling frequently, the first thing I did is I reached out to my direct monitor and I said, I need your support. My husband is going to be traveling frequently during the day. The kids are going to be at school, so I can easily be in the office and so on.

But I will need to leave every day early to pick them up and I will continue working from home. And we had that agreement. So I was in the office every day and in the afternoon I would continue working from home. And that really worked.

But if I think about it, if I have not really had that conversation, if I did not really openly share, it wouldn't have worked. And I think that is the biggest learning you need to share. You need to be open about some things, even if it's private or personal.

Sometimes it's okay to share so that you can make things easier for you and for others and to set the expectations right as well.

I completely agree. That's such an important point with our Fellowship programmes. Often that's the crux.

Getting people to think about what is it that they actually need and then supporting them to have the conversations.

In your experience, you're obviously seeing this from both perspectives in that you are working parents asking for the things, but you're also a senior leader who sees what lands well and what doesn't. I'm interested. Have you ever seen people asking for support in a way that didn't land well? What are the mistakes to avoid? Or you haven't.

Haven't seen that so much.

I mean, of course, everyone has his own way of doing things. What I would say, yes, I've seen things that didn't land well, but it was because people were not vocal or open about the exact situation.

And again, that is my biggest learning, not only from my own experience, but also from others that I have observed. Just be open about everything. You know, like, just be open, be vocal. Do not shy away from asking for what you need or sharing what you need.

And be open as well about what you can do. So don't set the expectations too high while it's not possible.

And then on the flip side, have you seen flexible working requests that just get waved through? And everyone, even though it's a new request, it hasn't been done before, and everyone says, yes, of course, that's neat you're doing.

Is there anything that can be learned from those moments?

Again, everything has limits. You know, like, flexibility is great, but as a person I think you need to set your own boundaries. Don't overdo things.

And as a company you also need to set the boundaries. Yes, we're super flexible or as a leader, I would say you're super flexible and so on, but you also have certain boundaries.

If we agree on these boundaries as an employer or as a leader and as an employee, things should work really smoothly.

It makes me think you've also. You're quite pioneering. I think with job shares, which is not.

When we talk flexibility, often people think, yeah, you're allowed to go home five minutes earlier. Job share is a different situation that is challenging norms of what a senior leader looks like.

I'm just curious about how you make people feel that it's okay to try a job share in an environment where that's not common.

Again, I think it's communication. It is providing the right tools to the people to make sure that this works. It is supporting where needed.

You can implement a job sharing concept anywhere around the world, but it really has to be supported by the right tools, the right mindset, the right culture. So there are lots of things that you need to put in place to make sure that people really feel supported and comfortable to step into such a role.

Sharing the same job with someone else and the way you communicate it, the way you position it is definitely key.

I think there is something about the performance management element that scares people, doesn't it? Especially managers who are not used to doing that. Do you have any advice on how to performance matter?

So if there's someone and even some of our listeners will be unsure of, should I allow a job sharing my team, how am I going to manage it if one person underperforms? I know you've worked in different or the law is different in every country.

Yeah, but just as a principle, is there something that can be done to alleviate that fear of not being able to performance manage a job share well?

I think the key is to find the right partner. You know, like if you want to step into a job sharing concept, you need to find the right partner.

A partner that backs up or supports with your areas of development and needs your areas of strength. So the two of you would basically be the perfect match in terms of like we cover all the strengths and the weaknesses. Let me say.

I don't know if that makes sense, but I think it's very important to make sure that you have the right partner. You are aligned on the way you want to work together on the way you want to communicate. If you have a team on the way you want to lead your team.

Who does what? You know, like, we don't want to both jump into certain topics, what I'm interested in versus what you are interested in.

So I think there are lots of things. It's like, for me, it's like a contract that you put in place, you know, so I do this, you do that. We are aligned and we keep each other informed.

There's a certain tool that we use, or there's a certain routine that we put in place to keep each other updated and so on. But. But the key is to make sure that you have the right partner. And if you do, I think everything then is going to be much easier.

I completely agree.

I want to come back to your experience again with raising twins and take you back a few years when they were still very young and you decided to go back to work.

Is there anything that you've done differently in terms of setting up your home environment that really helped you balance your career with twins, specifically compared to what your friends might have done who just had one toddler running around?

I mean, I can't say I've done something differently. I think I've done what every single parent does, you know, So I worked a bit around my life to make sure that everything is done in the right way.

Working hours, planning ahead of time.

At a certain point, I moved houses to be closer to school and make sure that it doesn't take me like an hour to drop them to school every day, because that hour can be used for something else with them. So I think I've done what every single parent would think of.

But again, the most important thing for me is that I was always open and vocal about my situation. So I have twins today. My son is sick. I need to be there for them. So I think that was the biggest thing.

I think that is true about being open because so often we're not brave enough to do that. And actually, the support pours in very often when you are saying, what do you need?

And also what you're willing to give, because very often you need to say that you're still ambitious and you want to progress your career. People may make assumptions if you don't do that and if you're not very clear about your hopes for the future.

I obviously have an agenda with this podcast, which is I want more people who have care and responsibilities to get to senior leadership level.

I don't think it's right that statistically you're less likely if you are a woman and have children, definitely has, especially looking at UK data that has a massive impact. It's 26% in the UK for a mother with two children. That is the pay gap on top of the normal pay gap, which is in the UK is about 13% median.

And we don't quite know the data for that. We've taken parental leave or work flexibly, but there are some factors there as well.

So taking all this into account, do you have a big wish of what needs to change?

To have more people with caring responsibilities accessing senior decision making roles in the same way that people without caring responsibilities do?

I think we're slowly heading there. To be very honest, today's world is quite different than how it used to be in the past.

You have more flexibility, there's more talks and targets around diversity, equity and inclusion. So all companies are really working on that at the moment and so on.

We still have a long way to get there, but I think think we're slowly making good moves and we're in the right direction there.

What needs to happen, I mean, or my wish of course is to move away from this stereotype that a working mother is not capable of doing this or she's busy with kids or she cannot do it because of her kids or anything as such. I think I wish that we can move away from this idea that kids are actually binding or hindering their moms from developing further.

Because in my point of view, having kids is actually the toughest job that one can have. And that's where you learn how to be organized.

That's how you learn how to plan, that's how you learn, you know, how to put things in place and get things done and prioritize and so on. So I think it's a great learning and people should look at it more as, as a positive thing rather than a negative thing.

Somewhere in the back of my mind there is a blog post that I've wanted to write for three years of these are all the skills you can learn and this is how you can sell them. And actually that's why you should be proud of all the things that you learned.

Not to say that people without children can't be fantastic leaders, but it makes you more strategic, it makes you less focused on worried about the small detail and actually look up and focus on what really matters. And that is what adds value to the company quite often.

We're coming towards the end of our podcast, so I would like to invite you to reflect on two or three practical things that someone who is listening to this conversation today and wants to progress their career but is working away from, doesn't have to.

Family help perhaps is like you five, seven years ago, if you have two or three things that you think they could try out this week to set their career path up for progression.

I think three things. One, accept that there will be ups and downs. I think that's the first thing that I would say.

And it might sound that it's perfect on my end, but I can tell you it's not. Of course you will have days where you feel like, I don't want to do this anymore. And I, you know, like, I don't want to be a working mother anymore.

I just want to lay in bed the whole day and do nothing.

So of course there will be ups and downs, but it's important that these downs or after these downs, you come back stronger and make sure that you get the learnings from them and reflect. So one, accept that there will always be ups and downs. It's not always perfect. So that's the first.

The second one is, as I said, be vocal about what you can do and what you cannot do and about what you need, because that's key. Be open, be vocal, be transparent. Make sure that you get your things done while you also deliver on what's expected from you.

So set the expectations right, let me say. And three, is to make sure that you have the right setup. And the right setup is not a rule that works for everyone.

It's something that is very specific to you as an individual. You need to think about what really works for me and what doesn't work and what I need to get rid of.

I can tell you, for example, with my husband traveling frequently in the evenings after my kids go to bed, I really have some me time.

Or sometimes I just sit on my laptop and focus on things that I really want to think of or, you know, like presentations or brainstorming certain things and so on. Does that work for everyone? Definitely not. Not every mom can do that in the evening. They have other responsibilities or other things to take care of.

But for me, it works. That's the time I have for myself to really think about these things that I need my me time on.

I would say really think about what is the setup that I want to put in place, what is the structure that I want to have in my life and how do I want to manage my personal life versus my work requirements and accordingly move forward.

There's a lot of wisdom in there. So thank you very much. Ahed, it's really appreciate that you took the time to share your reflections with us.

If people want to find out more about your company, more about yourself, where should they head?

You should head to barsurf.com and that is where you find all the information on our Careers page. And in case you have any further question, you can always reach out to us on LinkedIn to any of the HR team.

Thank you very much.

My pleasure.

I really appreciate you listening. Thank you so much and I always.

Love to hear from our listeners. If you want to connect with me on link LinkedIn just go to Ferina Hefti and I'll be delighted to hear your feedback and your suggestions or just. Have you say hi.

Likewise, if you do feel passionately about gender equality and you want to support a female led podcast, then please do leave a review and share it with a friend. Just because at the moment podcasting is still a very very male dominated environment and most of the top charting podcast. Are led by men.

I really love all the people who've joined from the podcast our fellowship program and if you want to do the same then please head over to leadersplus.org/Fellowship in order to get access to a community of support to help you combine an ambitious career with young children. Together with people who have your back. See you next week.