# Motherhood and career can be on the same side of a choice

I started working at 12.

- Section: Culture & Management
- Published: October 28, 2026
- Address: https://ceoone.com.br/en/article/motherhood-and-career-can-be-on-the-same-side-of-a-choice
- Em português: https://ceoone.com.br/artigo/maternidade-e-carreira-podem-ser-o-mesmo-lado-de-uma-escolha.md

![Emanuela Ramos in a white shirt with long hair, arms crossed, in front of a blue-grey backdrop](https://pub-b80e49b2737940b3ab5d3f20d0578192.r2.dev/artigos/maternidade-e-carreira-podem-ser-o-mesmo-lado-de-uma-escolha-foto-horizontal.webp)

Photo: Courtesy

## Key points

- Emanuela Ramos, Chief of Business Officer at Nava, writes at 38, close to meeting her first child, after 26 years of accelerating her career.
- In her view, many companies say they are prepared for motherhood but, in practice, are only prepared to administer maternity leave.
- Instead of asking women how they will cope, she proposes asking organizations what they are doing so that women do not have to choose.

*By Emanuela Ramos*

At 18, I already held a management position at a large retail company, surrounded by peers who were, for the most part, over 30 at the very least. At 26, I became an executive director at a large Brazilian technology company.

At 33, in the middle of the lockdown and the Covid pandemic, I decided to give up a stable position and become an entrepreneur at Nava to take on a huge challenge: helping with the company's turnaround and pivoting it with new lines of business. Since then, we have grown fourfold, won major clients and significant contracts and deeply transformed the business. Today, I lead more than half of the company, including the Software Engineering, Applications, Data & Analytics and Artificial Intelligence areas.

That makes 26 years of accelerating. Now, at 38, as I get ready to meet my first child, I face a challenge for which no executive experience could fully prepare me: slowing down and stepping away for a very few months, just enough to leave me even more energized than I already am.

My body is clearly getting ready for my son's arrival. In this final stretch, it asks for rest, changes its pace and sets limits that are less and less negotiable. My head, apparently, was not copied on that email. It keeps thinking about clients, goals and results, the team, deliverables, the next challenge and that one last thing "I'll sort out quickly" before I leave. Spoiler: it is never the last thing.

I have always been intense. I like working, I like people, results and making things happen. I don't have much patience for fuss, and I have developed an almost sporting relationship with every challenge: it shows up, let's solve it. That trait brought me here. But motherhood put a new question on the table: what happens when a woman trained her whole life to accelerate realizes that her own body is asking her to slow down? I am piecing together that answer little by little, and not always with the grace I would like.

There is an enormous vulnerability in this phase that we still talk little about, especially among women in leadership positions. We have learned to play the character of the woman who copes with everything very well. She works, delivers results, leads, takes care of people, solves the crisis, runs the house, walks into the difficult meeting, answers the message and moves on. If she is pregnant, she adds a belly to the equation and carries on. We became women of iron, but the problem is that nobody asked whether we wanted to be made of iron.

And we started to believe that any crack in that armor could cast doubt on everything we spent years building. I know that feeling. There is a part of me that would like to reach the last day before my leave saying: everything is sorted, all the clients are happy, all the decisions have been made and my team knows exactly what to do.

Besides the fact that a 100% perfect scenario is impossible, I realized it would be a terrible display of leadership. After all, when you prepare a team, you have to trust that they will rise to the task and have competent people who follow the same score without losing the rhythm of the business. Trusting my team, the leaders we helped develop, means understanding that decisions will be made without me, some different from the ones I would make, and that the world will keep turning.

This experience has also made me look differently at a much larger discussion: why do motherhood and career still so often appear as opposite sides of a choice? A woman should never have to choose between being a mother and continuing to build a meaningful career. She can choose whether she wants to have children. She can choose the career she wants. She can slow down at certain moments, speed up at others, change priorities and even change direction completely. What she should not have to do is give up one part of herself to be entitled to the other.

Motherhood and career need to coexist with security, peace of mind and, above all, naturalness. Women will have children, and that should not come as a surprise to any organization. Even so, many companies say they are prepared for motherhood when, in practice, they are only prepared to administer maternity leave. There is an enormous difference between the two.

Policies, benefits and programs are essential, but a truly prepared company builds an environment in which a woman can say she is tired without feeling that her competence is being questioned. An environment in which pregnancy does not silently make her a less likely candidate for the next promotion, the most important project or a new leadership position. In which she can step away for a short time without spending the months before trying to prove that she will remain indispensable, and where the return happens with intelligence, flexibility and humanity, without her having to apologize because there is now also a mother in that professional.

We need to understand a fundamental difference: a few months of leave should not cause fear or put a career on hold. For a short time, I will be away from meetings, clients and the routine of the business, because I want to live this period fully. But my ambition does not go on maternity leave. My ability does not disappear. My career does not go back a few squares on the board. I am still passionate about business, clients, technology, people, growth and results, only now there will be a new dimension in me.

We talk a lot about how women manage to "balance" motherhood and career, but perhaps we should start questioning the question itself. Because when we ask only the woman how she will make everything fit, we place on her the responsibility for solving an equation that also belongs to companies, leaders, families and society. Instead of asking only women "how are you going to cope?", perhaps it is time to ask organizations: what are you doing so that they don't have to choose?

That question matters to me as a woman, as a future mother and also as an executive responsible for hundreds of people. I want to help build environments in which nobody has to put on armor every day to be respected. In which vulnerability is not mistaken for fragility. In which a professional can say "today I can't" without erasing all the days she could and delivered far more. In which motherhood is understood for what it is: an absolutely normal part of the lives of millions of extremely talented women.

I am very close to meeting my son and, the closer that moment gets, the more I realize that I am not in control of everything. For someone who started working at 12, spent much of her life taking on responsibilities and developed an almost inconvenient taste for challenges, I admit it: accepting this does not exactly come naturally. I am still ambitious. I still want to grow, transform businesses, develop people, win clients and deliver extraordinary results.

But I am coming to understand that strength and vulnerability can occupy the same space. That taking a few counted months out of a year does not mean giving up the race. That delegating does not mean losing relevance. That being a mother will not make me less of an executive, and that being an executive should not force me to live motherhood by halves.

Soon, for a while, my whole world will fit in a lap. I want the right to live that without feeling I have to choose between the woman I took 38 years to build and the mother I am about to meet. The two will coexist, sometimes in harmony, at other times probably in the most absolute chaos. And that's fine.

After all, perhaps true progress is not creating women capable of coping with everything, but building companies and a society in which they finally understand that they do not need to cope with everything to keep getting wherever they want. Today I feel even more responsible for opening up this space more and more, eliminating the structural sexism that still surrounds this subject and building an environment that drives each person's competence, without giving up the humanity and empathy that each phase demands.

My head still resists. My ambition? That remains exactly where it has always been, but it will now also gain a very special new chapter: being a good mother and raising a good human being for this world.

*Emanuela Ramos is Chief of Business Officer at Nava. An executive and entrepreneur in the technology sector, she leads the company's Software Engineering, Applications, Data & Analytics and Artificial Intelligence areas.*

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