April 9, 2025 • 47 mins
Laura Modi’s decision to walk away from her career in tech and found Bobbie, her transformative baby formula company, came from personal experiences–and struggles–with feeding her own children. She set out with a goal to not just create a better baby formula, but to create a better conversation: one where moms could make the best choice for their families without guilt, without judgment, and with full confidence that their babies were getting the nutrition they needed. As a mom who struggled through the breastfeeding process, I’m personally thankful for Laura’s willingness to work to change the conversation and deliver quality, FDA-approved organic baby formula. Tune in to hear more about Laura’s decision to walk away from her career in tech, her experiences as a new mom that shaped her business, and how the pandemic impacted Bobbie - and how Laura responded.
Be sure to subscribe, leave us a rating, and share with your friends if you liked this episode!
She Pivots was created by host Emily Tisch Sussman to highlight women, their stories, and how their pivot became their success. To learn more about Laura, follow us on Instagram @ShePivotsThePodcast or visit shepivotsthepodcast.com.
Support the show: https://www.shepivotsthepodcast.com/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Emily Tisch Sussman (00:00):
Hey, she Pivots listeners at Emily. Before we hop into
today's episode, I have some very exciting news. She Pivots
has been nominated for not one, but two Webvy Awards.
These are a huge deal in.
The podcast world and the best part the winners are
decided by you.
(00:22):
That means we need you to help us win.
And we're up against some pretty big names, just some
little old guys named John Stewart and Anderson Cooper, and
I think I could retire early if we beat them, so.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Every vote counts. Here's what you can do to help.
Emily Tisch Sussman (00:39):
Head to the link in our show notes and click
on both the links, hit vote on she Pivots, enter
your infoh and bloom.
You're done.
Then, if you have time between school drop offs or
your next meeting, share it. Share it, Please post on social,
send to a friend, add it to your newsletter, whatever
helps spread the word. And before we jump into today's episode,
(01:00):
I want to just.
Say thank you.
You are what makes the show happen and why women
feel compelled to share their stories. I'm beyond grateful for
this honor and hope we can show the world just
how powerful these stories can be. It's all for now,
go Vote.
Laura Modi (01:19):
Welcome back to she Pivots. I'm Laura Modi.
Emily Tisch Sussman (01:32):
Welcome back to she Pivots, the podcast where we talk
with women who dare to pivot out of one career
and into something new and explore how their personal lives
impact these decisions. I'm your host Emily Tisch Sussman. Today
(01:52):
we're sitting down with Laura Mody, the CEO and co
founder of Bobbie, a woman who not only transformed her
own struggle into a groundbreaking business, but is actively working
to shift an entire conversation, one that so many women
have felt deeply, but often in silence.
Laura was just.
Like so many new moms, eager, exhausted, and determined to
(02:17):
do everything quote right, and for so many, the right
way is often presented as one thing breastfeeding. Bobby is
a company that's redefining what it means to feed our babies.
It is the first FDA approved organic baby formula that
is a go to choice for millions of parents.
But before Laura built Bobby.
(02:39):
Into a household name in infant formula, she had a
decade long career in tech, from Google to Airbnb.
Laura left behind her successful career to solve for a
problem that she herself experienced, and admittedly I did too.
In fact, this conversation was deeply personal for me. As
(03:00):
a mother of three, I also struggled with breastfeeding my
first child and was met with an overwhelming sense of
guilt and self doubt. Society had conditioned me to believe
that anything less than exclusively breastfeeding was a failure, and
I internalized that pressure. I remember feeling like I had to.
Justify my choice to use formula, as if I was
(03:21):
letting my baby down.
It took time and.
My experience with my other children to fully embrace that
feeding my baby in a way that worked for both
of us was not only okay, but the best decision
for my mental health. That's why Laura's work with Bobby
is so inspiring. She didn't just want to create a
better formula, She wanted to create a better conversation, one
(03:44):
where moms could make the best choice for their families,
without guilt, without judgment, and with full confidence that their
babies were getting the nutrition they needed. Laura is considered
one of the leaders of our time. In fact, Time
magazine honored her as Woman of the Year. She is
a force to be reckoned with, and in this episode,
we're going to talk about how she left behind her
(04:06):
career at Airbnb and turned her personal struggle into purpose
by founding Bobby. Laura's story is the perfect example of
how our most personal moments.
Lead to monumental pivots that can not only change our lives,
but thousands of others. Let's jump right in.
Laura Modi (04:28):
I am Laura Mody, I am the CEO of Bobby
and I'm Organic infant formula.
Emily Tisch Sussman (04:34):
You are from Ireland, I am What was it like
to grow up? How many siblings do you have?
Laura Modi (04:40):
Was it city country? It tell us about it. It
was deep country from the west of Ireland, a little
town called Westport in Mayo. I am the eldest of five,
which actually is a relatively small family. My dad is
one of thirteen, so even within the area there'd be
a lot of kids, a lot of cousins. Grew up
(05:01):
with forty eight first cousins around the area. It was
a quintessential Ireland upbringing. And are you the oldest of
all of the children? Oh so well, out of all
the cousins, I would be higher up. I think I'm
like eight of the forty eight, But I am the fifth,
I'm the eldest of the five kids at home, and
then you also need to be the role model child
(05:24):
as well, right, you know it's the eldest you are
in many ways. The experiment for is the school going
to work? You know, whatever trial and error the parents
wanted to have, like it was on you. Yeah, and
if it worked, then the rest followed. So like I
was the first to go to boarding school and it worked,
so all the other four after me followed.
Emily Tisch Sussman (05:46):
So your family had a business, your father was an entrepreneur.
Were you always involved in it was entrepreneurship kind of
in the in the blood of the family, like in
the family culture. Yeah, it's funny.
Laura Modi (05:57):
You never grow up thinking this is in the blood ever,
you know, like you're just at the dinner table and
you're always having conversations whether it's about risk or decision
making or to be honest, you're just consuming through osmosis
the ups and downs of what he's going through. So
at the time you never know it until you reach
(06:19):
a certain age and then you go, that's what that
was about, and you know it's just part of your
every day and you don't, like I said, you really
don't realize the benefits of it until you're in it yourself.
Was it truly a family business? Like?
Emily Tisch Sussman (06:33):
Were his siblings involved? Was your mom involved? The kids
get involved?
Laura Modi (06:37):
It was a family business with regards to him and
his two brothers, so there was thirteen kids. It was
third generation, so it's been passed on and it's obviously
evolved through multiple ways through every generation being passed down.
And now I want to say there is six of
(06:57):
between the cousins and my siblings who are now back
in the business involved as well.
Emily Tisch Sussman (07:01):
Wow, did you have a vision of what it would
be like to be a grown up? Like did you
think that you would grow up and be in the
business or do the opposite, like, did you have a
vision of what you thought it would be like?
Laura Modi (07:14):
God, do we ever have a vision of what we're
like as a grown up? I know, and no, I
don't think I ever had a vision of being in
the business. I think there was always just an assumption
that one day you will come back, and I never
thought otherwise until I left the country and it was
(07:35):
a few years after leaving Arland and I thought, I
don't know if I'm ever going to return. Wow.
Emily Tisch Sussman (07:40):
Yeah, what about it made you think that you wouldn't return.
Laura Modi (07:44):
You know. I think it was the first moment of
also just realizing I also can choose my own path
and forge my own way. And I was making decisions
and joining companies and doing things that were probably so
distant from the family business. You know. The family business
makes construction, clothing, ppe clothing, really sexy stuff, you know,
(08:06):
like hard hats and I've vins jackets, but very different
from the technology world that I had entered in Silicon Valley.
So I just grew further and further from I think
the core job itself, and I just loved the adrenaline
of starting new things and trying new things and disrupting,
(08:27):
you know, And then obviously evolved to a place where
I had children and they were American.
Emily Tisch Sussman (08:31):
Right, So when you took the first job outside of
the family business, was the first job Google, that's like
quite a first job. That's a big deal.
Laura Modi (08:42):
The first job was Google, And you're right, it was
a big job. I remember applying for it out in California.
I felt like such a dream.
Emily Tisch Sussman (08:51):
But Ireland's a big tech hub, right, Yeah, Ireland's a
big tech tech cup and they have a big Google
office there in Dublin too, just getting built out at
the time.
Laura Modi (09:02):
And yeah, I applied for a job out in America.
It felt dreamy and you didn't think twice really about it.
You do it, you go through the interview process. I
actually decided not to tell my parents I was applying
for it, because you know, you just don't know where
it's going to go. Go through the interview process. Anyway,
I get the job, and I'll never forget going out
(09:22):
for dinner at my parents in Dublin and my dad
just putting pressure on me, say I'm like, you know,
college is coming to you know, you got to figure
out what you're going to be doing. And I remember
saying like, okay, how am I going to break the
news like I am going to move to America. And
I don't know how I said it. I think I
casually said, you know, you guys should come out for Christmas,
(09:44):
come visit me out a in America. And he just
turned to me and he's like, sorry, what are you saying?
And yeah, I got the job out in California and
moved out there pretty promptly, And in my mind I
kept thinking, I will go for a year, I'll go
for a year or two, get.
Some experience, and I'll come back. And that was it.
Emily Tisch Sussman (10:07):
Soon Laura was on a plane all the way to California.
I want you to put yourself back in the mid
two thousands, while most companies still had their fax number
on their business cards and we were just beginning to
use tech, Google was making waves. They are in offices,
ping pong tables, flexible hours, They were changing the game,
(10:28):
and Laura was at the heart of it.
Laura Modi (10:31):
I mean it was electric. It was, you know, landing
a dream job. You I mean, they had a rule
internally where you get to spend like eighty percent on
your core job and then twenty percent really ideating and
working in other functions or working on these side projects.
They allowed you to be an entrepreneur within the business
and obviously a lot of different perks and benefits that
(10:54):
were incredible at the time back in Silicon Valley. I mean,
the whole thing was really just a dream. It was
phenomen and I was there for four years. I learned
a lot. I was with exceptionally brilliant people. I mean truly,
and I say this all the time, like I pinched
myself every day. It was I am so lucky to
be here. How did I get here? You're constantly trying
(11:15):
to prove your value, But I never took it for granted.
It was an exceptional experience.
Emily Tisch Sussman (11:21):
So what were some of the entrepreneurial things you did
when you were at Google?
Laura Modi (11:25):
I mean there was you know, there was like side
projects that would come in from actually universities or even
small government type stuff, and it was like ideating on
new ways of driving efficiencies or new processes. I mean
there wasn't It wasn't like coming up with any like
radically new business in the company. It was just being
able to work on something different or even campaigns on
(11:46):
how to be able to promote something. But I was
still relatively junior, so I was more plugged into other
people's areas.
Emily Tisch Sussman (11:53):
Yeah, but it was great. Yeah, but that's super interesting,
and I feel I can give you a little bit
of a taste of different fields, like a different field
or a different function. Yeah, because what department were you
actually working in? So I worked on the Google Finance
product so op slash product management, and it was I mean,
(12:15):
I don't know how much how many times I've shared
this or not, but I would stare at financial information
every day essentially the stock.
Laura Modi (12:22):
Market, and over time, after staring at it for so long,
I became quite tapped into what was doing well, why
things were doing well. I found myself day trading, which
also advice for no one to ever do unless you
really really get to like focus on this and you
are trained enough on it. But I actually became almost
(12:45):
like addicted to the stock market, like in the job,
and it was if I felt like entering an old
boys club learning about the lingo of the stock market
to watch trades, and I found myself like deep in
these like subreddits of the world, no like truly, And
(13:09):
I also I think gained a major appreciation for just
investing as well, and the fact that women overall have
been left out of this world. And like I said,
in Old Boys Club, it has become this thing we're
just like men in general knew and understood it a
lot more. But the closer I got to the nucleus
(13:29):
of it, I realized it's actually not that complicated. It
just had become this world where men have predominantly spent
their time understanding and investing and playing in the stock
market and women hadn't. And it's not about understanding it.
It was more about just like your innate ability to
understand what you think might do well, how you gain
(13:50):
that research and understanding. Anyway, women are amazing.
Emily Tisch Sussman (13:53):
At We're going to take a short break and when
we come back, Laura tells us about her first mini
pivot out of the comfort of Google and into the
unknown of a very famous startup. When I talk to
(14:17):
women who want to make a pivot, there is often
a hesitation of leaving a comfortable job.
So how did you end up? Were you ready? I mean,
you loved the experience of Google so much. Were you
ready to move on? How did the next opportunity come
up
Were you looking?
Laura Modi (14:32):
Oh, this is a fun story. Speaking of the stock market,
I a lot of my team was here in New
York and I was out in the Berry. So the
engineering team was here and I would come out every
so often and we would do a lot of plugins
with the New York Stock Exchange or the NASDAC, and
I was out for some work trip. I don't know
what was going on in the city at the time,
(14:53):
but it was very hard to book hotels, and you know,
for everything that Google offered, you know, there was still
a travel limit to how which you could book? And
I'll never forget someone turning to me and they said, well,
if you can't find a hotel, why don't you just
book an airbed and breakfast. It's like, what the hell
is an arabed breakfast? And I looked it up and
(15:15):
I was floored. I mean floored. I remember that feeling
of being like, who the hell came up with this concept?
Are you telling me I can stay in like a
real apartment, like someone's home in the middle of New
York City? And I did. I booked a two bed
apartment in Soho where I was like working here for
the week. I was typically staying at like I don't know,
(15:37):
the Hilton, and you're going through a typical work experience,
you know, going back to your hotel late at night
and then into the office in the morning. Anyway, I
called my friends back in Dublin. I was like, guys,
I have an apartment in New York City for a week. Anyway,
they were on the first flight out and they met
me at the apartment and I did my work thing,
(15:58):
going in out of the office every day, and we
would come home in the evening and we would like
cook food and we would live in New York City
life and at the kid you not. At the end
of that trip, I remember being like, I have to
work for this company, and that feeling of just knowing
you know what you want, or you have that light
or trigger inside you that says, this is going to
be big.
(16:18):
This is going to be huge. I need to be
part of whatever this is. Yeah, what was it about
it that made you say I have to work with
this company? Okay, going back to be Irisha. Just the
hospitality of it all. I mean, the fact that you
could truly.
Just live in someone else's home and community and removing
that like stranger feeling. It's just the idea that you
(16:41):
could bring community together in a close way like that
and stay in a stranger's bed. That idea just blew
my mind. And you know, growing up in a country
where hospitality is its currency, be in bees and community
and family, people don't like call to say they're showing up.
They just show up. They knock on your door. The
US walk in that is. That's how I grew up
(17:02):
and I found you know, in many ways, I think
Airbnb pushing on this kind of next wave of belonging
in community in a texture of in way the whole
thing was just phenomenal. And then I also, to be honest,
I think the investor in me was also going, hold on,
hospitality is a huge business, and they are like truly
disrupting it from the ground up in a really unique way.
(17:25):
And remember this was also at a time where on
the back of two thousand and seven two thousand and
eight crisis, you're looking at this going, actually, people can
earn a living on this, like this makes a lot
of sense. So the investor in me was quickly doing
the calculation to realize this could be massive if done right,
and I want to be part of that. I'll never
(17:47):
forget though, going through the interview process and you know,
deciding I'm going to leave Google and go join this
and I say Airben and Breakfast because it was called
Airben and Breakfast at the time, and they were popping
up in the news here and there for like, you know,
there was a few things going wrong in the company.
And anyway, I'll never forget calling home and telling my
(18:07):
dad that I'm going to leave Google join this company,
and the response he was like, hold on a second,
you're telling me that you were going to leave Google.
And you're going to start at B and B. It's like, nope,
that's not what I'm doing. It's like it sounds like
you are like nope, but I remember having to explain
the concept over and over and they just they couldn't
(18:30):
get their head around. It just didn't make sense. And
you know, there was a lot of are you sure
this is crazy? But ultimately it got to like I
trust you if this makes sense, like you know, good luck,
good riddance, let's see how it goes, and very irish
like yep, sure, not quite sure, but okay, I'm behind you.
And it wasn't that long after where all of a sudden,
(18:50):
Airbnb was in every country, every town, every village, all
across the world. And then you know, the parents' script
flipped from you know, she's lost her mind leaving good
Google too she knew, yeah, yeah, she all made sense.
And when you had this revelation like this is the
company that I want to be involved with, how did
you literally take the step. I think that many of
(19:11):
us have had the feeling of, oh, I wish I
could be involved in this, but we don't often know
how to actually take the step to find them. Did
you just like look online for their job openings, Like
how did you actually connect with them? That's exactly it
found found a job opening.
Also, remember thinking there wasn't really an appropriate job that
really quite made sense. So I just applied to any
(19:33):
and I remember reaching out and they pulled me in
for an interview. And even during the interview process, there
were people in the interview process who were like, are
you sure you want to leave Google for this? I
was like, well, I'm not quite sure. Now didn't make
you question it a little bit, but I needed something new,
and I think that was always in me. There was
that desire or spark for for always wanting to do
(19:54):
something new. Yeah, I really wanted to be there. I
really believed in the concept. So no, I just I
reached out for some random role and then it just
turned into one interview after another, and I think I've
reached out to also one of the founders on Twitter.
I was like, I applied for a job. I really
want this, Yeah, And it was pretty swift.
Emily Tisch Sussman (20:17):
Actually, I did have a question about the role that
you went into because it wasn't like an exact next
step from the role that you had at Google.
Laura Modi (20:26):
I mean, Airbnb was a genius at hiring. Now in hindsight,
they looked for people who had deep, deep passion to
want to be there and people that they knew were
smart enough and hungry enough and a depth obviously, you know,
I mean early on, I sho'll say like, generalists make
the world go around, and for an early small company,
(20:47):
they do because there wasn't a month or a quarter
where every single person wasn't wearing multiple hats, and you
had to because so fast, you know. So I joined
technically in the world of operations, but over the course
of maybe the first year, I was leading growing and
scaling customer service operations, to growing call centers, to going
(21:10):
back to Europe and opening up offices, to trying to
reduce our contact rate from you know, bookings versus customer
service tickets. You are thrown into whatever the business needs.
And besides of some very few specialized roles, most people
were generalists. Again, now running and on my own business,
(21:33):
I can see that I can see that need. It's
really important, and it is those two things are the
most important, which is if you don't have the passion
and desire and hunger to be there also with that
owner founder mindset, then you're not willing to roll with
the punches.
You know.
You got to be there so like truly with that
(21:53):
feeling of like you want to see this succeed just
as much as the founders do. And now I see
how important that is.
And there was a different a change in the positioning
while you were there right that at first it was
really thought it was a tech platform, and then you
started to change the thinking about what the actual product was.
Oh, I love you asked this question. So one of
(22:16):
my all time favorite mentors idols, Chip Conley. He is
a hospitality guru. He grew the joa devive hotel chain
and Chip came into a fireside chat with the company
one day and really just speak to the world of hospitality.
And we decided to bring him on board as like
(22:36):
a part time reading guru and leader in the business.
And I was assigned to work closely with him to
really figure out how we were going to scale and
operationalize hospitality. And I'll never forget. I actually remember very
vividly what room I was sitting in at the office
and we were having a conversation about the product, and
(22:58):
people in the room they were talking about the product product.
This and we got to change the product, or like
there's bugs in the product, and you know, what are
the features of the product. And he's sitting there like
glazing over on this conversation. Anyway, the meeting ends and
he pulls me aside and he's like, they keep talking
about the product without the Irish accent. And he's like,
(23:18):
what do they mean? And I was like, well, you
know the technology. And I pull up you know, airbnb
dot com and I look at the homepage. He's like,
isn't the product the host? Isn't the product the person
who is giving the experience of hospitality and opening up
their home and keeping it clean and providing a memorable experience.
(23:39):
Isn't that the product? And it was like a light
going off. It's like, oh my god, you were absolutely right.
People are not buying or using Airbnb because the button
felt amazing to click on, or because it was such
an easy purchasing experience, Like that is your path to
great acquisition. Yes, it's your path to great discovery, but
(24:02):
that's not why people use it. And that mentality and
that triggering and you know, full credit to Chip for
really triggering that idea in the company. It then became
our mission to filter this across the whole business. Though,
if we could get that mentality to realize that we
(24:23):
need to make sure that every single experience across multi
million millions of homes all across this world, all have
to be able to provide a unique and credible experience
that matches expectations. That is the product, and it did,
it changed, and it's It's one piece of advice. I
mean to be fair in life, but for a lot
(24:43):
of early companies to really know what you stand for,
know why people are coming to, know your why, and
not to lose it because it's very easy just to
wake up and do your day to day and get
lost in the day to day operations of the business.
But then if you zoom out, you have to remember
that at the end of the day, people are coming
(25:04):
to you for one very particular reason. Know your why.
Emily Tisch Sussman (25:09):
After the break, we dive into Laura's personal experience that
ultimately led her to start Bobby and how she's fighting
on the front lines to change the way we think
about formula feeding.
(25:31):
Okay, so let's bring in your personal here. You were
at Airbnb for many years.
Laura Modi (25:37):
Well, it was at Airbnb when my now husband, then stranger,
had joined the company, and it was actually at a
company happy hour late on a Friday night, and he
was going through the consideration phase of joining and any
he was invited to the happy hour and we got
talking at the bar, and he we went on a
(26:00):
date or two, and I think, deep down I was like, oh, please,
don't join the company. But then he did join the company,
and we worked and dated together for the next two years.
I want to say.
Anyway, the source of it is was getting serious enough.
He ultimately ended up leaving, and then just as he left,
we got engaged. I stayed and then very quickly because
(26:24):
I'm Irish, got pregnant and was having my first kid,
and I was still at Airbnb, still loving my career,
still in a position where I thought I'm going to
go take leave and then I'm going to come back,
and everything changed.
Emily Tisch Sussman (26:42):
It's important to note at the time, not only was
Laura working for a fast paced startup, her husband was
also a founder.
Laura Modi (26:51):
So yeah, he had started his company on the outside.
I was still at Airbnb, and we had our first daughter,
and you know, first kidd, it's I mean, it's like
a honeymoon. You're enjoying every part of it. It's great
you're able to do it fairly easy with one kid. Bosh,
what I on think I had been fully prepared for
I knew I wasn't fully prepared for was how much
(27:15):
reality did not match expectations for a lot of the
really fundamental parts of having a child. And actually, to
bring it back to ship Conley, an equation that he
used to always use was that disappointment equals expectations minus
reality consumer.
(27:35):
That can apply on a lot of context, a lot
of context. And I went into motherhood and one of
those first things that I expected I would do and
that I expected would work, that I expected the skies
would open up, was going to be around how I
fed my daughter and Irish Catholic woman. I thought, I'm
(27:59):
going to walk in here and I'm going to be
up to breasted turn It's going to be beautiful. And
reality was just not that at all. I mean, I God,
I like even have PTSD thinking back to it now,
because I mean, if I had gotten the help, if
I had lactation support around me, you know, early on,
but no, I just the latch wasn't right. It just
(28:20):
wasn't working. It led to mastitis horrible. You know, my
my nipples were bleeding and bruised and blistered and I
ultimately couldn't get milk out. And this was a few
days in and I did. I had a fabulous alactation consultant.
She actually came to my house and she's like, you
need to turn to formula, like it's you need to
(28:43):
give your breasts a few days break. We need to
like work on this back up. This one will work,
this one. We went through the whole thing, and I
remember just thinking, man, I was completely unprepared for that.
And yeah, I found myself then turning to formula.
And had you thought specifically did you do actually contemplated breastfeeding,
Like I just didn't think about it. I felt like
(29:04):
they told me to breastfeeding, so I did, but I didn't.
That's a great question. No, Yeah, No, I just felt
like people told me I was supposed to do it. No,
I just assumed I would. Yeah, and I just assumed
it would work. But I didn't go through any steps
to go. Let me make sure I'm prepared for this.
Let me make sure that i'm I have the support
around me, I have a lactation consultant, I can call
(29:26):
I'm mentally prepared for the ups and downs, and I mean, honestly,
even the physical the physical pain was something no one
had ever talked about, yeah, at all.
So I was very taken back, very And it was
one of those first moments because obviously you start feeding
in the hospital, and it was one of those moments
(29:47):
being like, oh man, this is the first part of
motherhood that I feel completely in the dark on and
completely unprepared for.
Emily Tisch Sussman (29:56):
Laura and I are about the same age, and as
she was talking through all of this, I couldn't help
but feel those old feelings bubble up inside of me.
It's like she was speaking directly about my experience. I
remember that guilt and the doubt that started to become
about so much more than breastfeeding. It was about my
(30:17):
ability to be a mother, to care for my child,
that I was somehow doing a bad job, and I
think really terrified me that I felt like, I'm definitely
doing this very badly, Like it's not going well.
Can I keep a child alive? Like can I do
any of the parts?
Laura Modi (30:35):
And that's exactly it. If this is meant to be
one of the most easy, beautiful pieces of the job,
that is you start questioning yourself. Yeah, and that guilt
starts to come in where you're going, well, if I can't,
am I failing her? Am I failing motherhood? Am I failing?
You know? I'm just failing? And it's that it plays
on you and I hear it all the time with mothers,
which is, even if they do get their supply up
(30:57):
and it ends up working, you go through the early
days of questioning like are you able to do this?
Not just feeding, but are you able to take on
motherhood at large? Becomes a big question. But I also
remember that feeling taking me back where I had gone
through all of these moments in my life and my career,
where I could stare at the unknown and I could
(31:19):
still find myself in a confident position I can do this.
I had enough kind of mental strength to be able
to push through any unknowns. That was my life. In
many ways, it became my identity. So to be in
a position where I was now the most vulnerable mom
woman I had ever been in my life, that emotion
(31:41):
took me back.
Emily Tisch Sussman (31:42):
It's like who am I?
Laura Modi (31:44):
That identity crisis of questioning yourself and feeling guilty to
the point where you're making up a bottle. You're on
your way to the park to meet with your mom.
Friends you know are successfully breastfeeding and it's beautiful and
it's going great for them, and you're looking at the
formula in your bossy and you're like, will this pass
his breast moment because you don't want to have the conversation.
(32:05):
You don't want to get the sigh, you don't want
to get the I'm sorry, and yeah, the emotions are real.
Emily Tisch Sussman (32:13):
Often our guests cry on this show, but this is
the first time that I've cried on the show, Emily,
because that was exactly what I felt that my whole
identity was being really good in like really good in
conflict and really good finding a path forward through something
I didn't know and I couldn't find a path forward,
(32:36):
and it was so much bigger than just breastfeeding. Was like,
I can't figure out how to take care of this
baby that it really hits.
Laura Modi (32:44):
It does, and to think about let's get back to
the joys of parenting. You have just created the most precious,
most beautiful thing that you will ever have in life.
Like your heart explodes in ways that you had just
never ever, ever experienced, and the fact that you are
now not able to fully enjoy that exploding heart and
(33:05):
moment enjoy because you're also taking on the conflict of
failing her, failing you, failing society, and all these expectations
like that's unfair. This is a very special moment in time.
You should be enjoying every aspect of this without having
to take on all the guilts that comes with it
as well.
And obviously, I mean, we co down a rabbit hole
(33:28):
on this topic, but you zoom out. And I've spent
a lot of time studying where does that guilt come from?
Why is there so much pressure, or where does it
come from in society? And I don't think it is
and I truly believe this. I don't think it's that
your friend or someone who gave that sigh, that person's
not judging, they're not They truly want the best for you,
(33:49):
they want the best of the baby. They're not going
to bed that night going hm, I can't believe she's
feeding her baby formula. They're not. They're moving on. But
we have just built ourselves in society to believe that
there is one way two feet of baby and that's
what's best. That has just been a societal message over
and over and because of that, everyone around us and
(34:11):
sometimes it's, like I said, they're definitely not judging. It
could be a pediatrician, it could be the person who's
introducing you back to the office. It's just their natural
instinct is just to have a reaction to the fact
that you may not be doing what society has put
on a pedestal that is it. So now we're all
battling with the internal judgment in guilt, but that person
(34:33):
has already moved on. They're not thinking about it, they're
certainly not judging. And then the bigger question becomes in,
especially for a brand like Bobby, and we're trying to
shift that narrative, which is, how do you shift the
societal narrative that even though breast might be considered best,
that what's best is really whatever that personal situation or
(34:56):
dynamic is, and how you change that message.
Emily Tisch Sussman (35:01):
Laura didn't arrive at that incredibly helpful and encouraging message
quite so easily. She first went to the store to
find formula for her newborn baby and was mortified at
what she found, and slowly between all the diapers and
sleepless nights. She started to put the pieces together. We
as a society, we are sorely behind the ball when
(35:24):
it came to healthy, nutritious formula options. That here's the
key point. Parents felt confident buying for their baby.
Laura Modi (35:32):
It's also funny, there's this assumption that I with my
first child. I was in the pharmacy and I saw
the product, and there's an assumption. Then I was like, Aha,
I'm going to go start a formula company. No, no,
I was.
Emily Tisch Sussman (35:44):
I was quite impressed you were thinking about anything.
Laura Modi (35:46):
I don't know. Five days in, I was still like
in that emotional guilts and roller coaster. I was forty
pounds overweight, I was exhausted. I was like, who the
hell am I this is ever gonna work? And No,
it was like they were all little like steps towards
It's what I call my PhD at the time in
this market, industry and product where then I got home
when I read the back of the label, and then
(36:07):
I went on Google. Then I'm in the middle of
the night and I'm in my subreddits and I'm consuming.
I'm consuming and consuming, and that goes on for the
next year. Even while I returned back to Airbnb after leave,
and that was another moment. I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa.
You were telling me that the same government who says, hey, mom,
you should breastfeed for six months is also the same
(36:27):
government who's not giving us the paid leave to do so.
Everywhere I went, I was having these little epiphanies for
what needed to change, from the product to the message,
to policies across the board. And I was two weeks
pregnant with my second child, and it was at that
point I peed on the stick it said I was pregnant.
(36:50):
I turned to my husband, I said, I'm going to
start a formula company and there will be a better
formula on the market by the time I had this baby.
Emily Tisch Sussman (37:00):
Went to market immediately making waves.
Speaker 6 (37:02):
Well, there's a new style of organic formula called Bobby,
and it is changing the industry. Bobby had more than
eighteen million dollars in sales in its first year and
it is the fastest growing infant formula to enter the
American market in decades.
Speaker 7 (37:17):
Founder of Bobby, it's the first and only USDA certified
organic baby formula manufactured right here in the US. Bobby
It's named after her daughter's word for Bottle was founded
in twenty eighteen after Modi realized the only baby formulas
available in stores contained ingredients that she would not even
feed herself.
Emily Tisch Sussman (37:38):
So you had the initial hurdle of saying, I have
the answer to this problem, but you had an additional
hurdle of convincing everyone that there should be a solution, right,
because we have this societal problem that everyone thinks you're
just supposed to recue that you have.
Laura Modi (37:53):
My God, I've PTSD does say that, I know that
was exactly right. But let's start with the fact that
I was seven and a half months pregnant and I
was waddling around Silicon Valley meeting one investor after another.
And you know, I also PSA say like, not every
investor is made equal, you know, they all look at
(38:17):
problems and solutions very differently. But yeah, I was walking
into a predominantly male culture who had predominantly been investing
in technology, and just even CpG in general wasn't as
it just wasn't as predominant as tech. But here's what
(38:38):
really hit me when I went to go pitch the problem.
One of the challenges I had was being seven and
a half months pregnant. It was very hard for investors
not to look at me as a mom that had
a problem she wanted to solve for herself, versus an
entrepreneur who saw a really big opportunity. And I felt
(38:59):
that you got the questions. They're looking at your stomach,
they're questioning the why behind this, and you're trying to
get them to focus on the bigger picture. But it's
an emotional and extremely personal product. It's an extremely personal problem.
So if someone on the other side doesn't see the
(39:19):
problem with current formulas or ways of messaging and a
narrative that needs to change, it's very hard to break through,
very hard. And yes, because of societal problem, there was
really only a small percentage of them that the message
landed for. Did you find that there was one thing
in particular that broke through. I think when you're looking
(39:40):
to change or disrupt an industry, usually when it's predominantly
owned by a few players. So in this situation, the
infant formula market for decades was a duoptly and that duoptly,
you know, the same formula that you yourself probably consumed
as a child was the same one you remind for
your and no matter how much you believe in the
(40:04):
change or not, or this is the product that you
want to back, it was hard to deny that this
was a product in industry that hadn't changed in fourty
plus years.
Emily Tisch Sussman (40:15):
Bobby redefined what formula was and not without bumps in
the road. Early on in the business, the FDA came
knocking and it required Laura to think on her feet.
Speaker 7 (40:26):
It's not easy to go about FDA approval for anything.
I mean, you didn't just start a company. You started
a company that has to go through a lot of
regulatory processes.
Laura Modi (40:34):
What was it like to learn those.
Speaker 5 (40:36):
We actually got FDA greenrit a year ago, but we
spent that last year sourcing ingredients from partners that have
the same level of expectations and high quality standards.
Speaker 6 (40:47):
That we do.
Emily Tisch Sussman (40:49):
Then the formula shortage crisis happened and Bobby once again
was staring down a huge problem. But in true Laura fashion,
she turned what could've been a low point into one
of her most savvy business decisions yet, her decision to
buy a manufacturing plant.
Laura Modi (41:10):
I'm one year into the market and I woke up
to the President of the United States on the news
basically saying that America wasn't able to feed babies. We
had hit an infant formula crisis in this country. Think
about that. For forty plus years, this industry had really
never been in the news. No one ever talked about it.
(41:30):
In fact, they were looking for the exit any time
anyone spoke about infant formula. And now it's all over
the news. It was the second most talked about news
item outside of the Ukraine War. And it's true, America
wasn't resilient enough because of a lack of manufacturing it
had in this country, the lack of choice, the duopoly,
(41:52):
the concentration. We were not resilient enough to sustain a crisis.
And in that moment, I remember thinking, Wow, on one side,
I am sitting here and I'm watching the news, but
this is my industry. I am leading and in many
ways what I hope to be trailblazing and disrupting this market.
(42:13):
And this is the moment. It's in crisis, and you
have a choice in that moment, and I remember thinking
it was like, Okay, so we can either take a
step back and we can watch this on the sidelines
and see how it pans out, or we can actually
be part of this change, and you're right, only being
like one and a half years into actually being in
the market, it wasn't a very natural thing to go
(42:36):
and we should go buy manufacturing. You usually find that
a decade or two after a company has been in existence.
But it was one of those things I couldn't. I
went to bed every night going I know there needs
to be more manufacturing, and I strongly believe that Bobby's
going to be around in a big legacy company in
the future. We need to make this move now and
(42:57):
we can be part of the resiliency this country needs.
And I also I think like deep down then as
a mother also having American babies and everything in me,
I was like, we should get to a place where
America is able to make high quality infant formula and
feed it to its own American babies. We should be
proud of the food that we were able to make
(43:18):
for our babies. And it was just a big personal mission.
How did you really take those steps? Like did you
go out back to your funders and say, I know
that you funded us for Xemount, but I need, you know,
ten times more than that, because I'm buying a factory. Yes, great, Yeah, great,
I mean that was a bitch. Yes, there was also
swallowing a little bit of like there was some humility
(43:39):
as well in it, because it was it wasn't that
long before it I was like, we don't need to
buy manufacturing. No, we don't need to do that. You know,
there's enough manufacturing. We'll be fine. And then to get
to the place I was like, no, actually there's not.
And I also need to be malleable enough to be
able to change or pivot my decision for what I
(44:01):
believe is right and what needs to happen. And that
has also become a huge entrepreneurial learning on how important
it is even in the job to also be able
to build a plan and a direction towards a vision,
but know that sometimes your plan and direction are going
to have to change. And when a market changes like
that is your moment to also say, like, how does
(44:23):
your plan change to address it?
What is it going to have ten thousand million more questions?
What is something that happened? It can be something we
talked about is being totally different that at the time
you felt like was a real low, but now in
hindsight you see it as having really launched you into
the position that you are now, I'm going to regulated place,
(44:43):
So there's a lot of lows and uncertainties when you
are heavily regulated. I mean one of them was, you know,
the FDA. The FDA showed up early on during a
pilot of of Bobby and they questioned our product and
direction and they really really forced a major shift in
(45:08):
the business, Like we had to pull back our existing product,
We had to spend time reformulating manufacturing here in the US,
adjusting our supply chain. It took me back probably a
year or two, and it felt like a low at
the time. And yeah, I think you said it perfectly.
Now I look back and I think, no, that was
(45:30):
one of the best experiences and also catapulted us to
where we are.
Emily Tisch Sussman (45:34):
Do you think you'll pivot again?
Laura Modi (45:36):
Absolutely absolutely. I think there will be pivots within Bobby
as a company. I think there'll be pivots in my
own life, my career, I hope. So, I mean, life
without pivots is what's it living for?
You know?
Absolutely?
Emily Tisch Sussman (45:54):
Thank you so much, Laura, thanks for coming on. It's
been such an interesting conversation. I really really enjoyed it.
Laura Modi (46:00):
I've loved it. I mean, we could get into like
three seasons of this. Let me just keep going.
I know, like, do you want a whole season? Like?
We have so much want to talk about.
I'm sorry for making you cry. No, no, I felt
very scene good.
Emily Tisch Sussman (46:15):
Laura lives with her beautiful family and is still growing
Bobby and working to change the narrative around formula feeding
and making huge headway. I might add so that one
day the next generation hopefully won't have to feel the
same pressures and guilt we felt.
To stay up to.
Date with Laura, you can follow her on Instagram at
Laura Mody.
(46:36):
Thanks for listening to this episode of she Pivots. I
hope you enjoyed it, and if you did, leave us
a rating and tell your friends about us. To learn
more about our guests, follow us on Instagram at she
pivots the Podcast, or sign up for our newsletter where
you can get exclusive behind the scenes content on our
website at she pivots thepodcast dot com. Special thanks to
(47:03):
the she pivots team, Executive producer Emily eda Velosik, Associate
producer and social media connoisseur Hannah Cousins, Research director, Christine Dickinson,
Events and Logistics coordinator Madeline Snovak and audio editor and
mixer Nina pollock I endorse Che Pivots
Hey, she Pivots listeners at Emily. Before we hop into
today's episode, I have some very exciting news. She Pivots
has been nominated for not one, but two Webvy Awards.
These are a huge deal in.
The podcast world and the best part the winners are
decided by you.
(00:22):
That means we need you to help us win.
And we're up against some pretty big names, just some
little old guys named John Stewart and Anderson Cooper, and
I think I could retire early if we beat them, so.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Every vote counts. Here's what you can do to help.
Emily Tisch Sussman (00:39):
Head to the link in our show notes and click
on both the links, hit vote on she Pivots, enter
your infoh and bloom.
You're done.
Then, if you have time between school drop offs or
your next meeting, share it. Share it, Please post on social,
send to a friend, add it to your newsletter, whatever
helps spread the word. And before we jump into today's episode,
(01:00):
I want to just.
Say thank you.
You are what makes the show happen and why women
feel compelled to share their stories. I'm beyond grateful for
this honor and hope we can show the world just
how powerful these stories can be. It's all for now,
go Vote.
Laura Modi (01:19):
Welcome back to she Pivots. I'm Laura Modi.
Emily Tisch Sussman (01:32):
Welcome back to she Pivots, the podcast where we talk
with women who dare to pivot out of one career
and into something new and explore how their personal lives
impact these decisions. I'm your host Emily Tisch Sussman. Today
(01:52):
we're sitting down with Laura Mody, the CEO and co
founder of Bobbie, a woman who not only transformed her
own struggle into a groundbreaking business, but is actively working
to shift an entire conversation, one that so many women
have felt deeply, but often in silence.
Laura was just.
Like so many new moms, eager, exhausted, and determined to
(02:17):
do everything quote right, and for so many, the right
way is often presented as one thing breastfeeding. Bobby is
a company that's redefining what it means to feed our babies.
It is the first FDA approved organic baby formula that
is a go to choice for millions of parents.
But before Laura built Bobby.
(02:39):
Into a household name in infant formula, she had a
decade long career in tech, from Google to Airbnb.
Laura left behind her successful career to solve for a
problem that she herself experienced, and admittedly I did too.
In fact, this conversation was deeply personal for me. As
(03:00):
a mother of three, I also struggled with breastfeeding my
first child and was met with an overwhelming sense of
guilt and self doubt. Society had conditioned me to believe
that anything less than exclusively breastfeeding was a failure, and
I internalized that pressure. I remember feeling like I had to.
Justify my choice to use formula, as if I was
(03:21):
letting my baby down.
It took time and.
My experience with my other children to fully embrace that
feeding my baby in a way that worked for both
of us was not only okay, but the best decision
for my mental health. That's why Laura's work with Bobby
is so inspiring. She didn't just want to create a
better formula, She wanted to create a better conversation, one
(03:44):
where moms could make the best choice for their families,
without guilt, without judgment, and with full confidence that their
babies were getting the nutrition they needed. Laura is considered
one of the leaders of our time. In fact, Time
magazine honored her as Woman of the Year. She is
a force to be reckoned with, and in this episode,
we're going to talk about how she left behind her
(04:06):
career at Airbnb and turned her personal struggle into purpose
by founding Bobby. Laura's story is the perfect example of
how our most personal moments.
Lead to monumental pivots that can not only change our lives,
but thousands of others. Let's jump right in.
Laura Modi (04:28):
I am Laura Mody, I am the CEO of Bobby
and I'm Organic infant formula.
Emily Tisch Sussman (04:34):
You are from Ireland, I am What was it like
to grow up? How many siblings do you have?
Laura Modi (04:40):
Was it city country? It tell us about it. It
was deep country from the west of Ireland, a little
town called Westport in Mayo. I am the eldest of five,
which actually is a relatively small family. My dad is
one of thirteen, so even within the area there'd be
a lot of kids, a lot of cousins. Grew up
(05:01):
with forty eight first cousins around the area. It was
a quintessential Ireland upbringing. And are you the oldest of
all of the children? Oh so well, out of all
the cousins, I would be higher up. I think I'm
like eight of the forty eight, But I am the fifth,
I'm the eldest of the five kids at home, and
then you also need to be the role model child
(05:24):
as well, right, you know it's the eldest you are
in many ways. The experiment for is the school going
to work? You know, whatever trial and error the parents
wanted to have, like it was on you. Yeah, and
if it worked, then the rest followed. So like I
was the first to go to boarding school and it worked,
so all the other four after me followed.
Emily Tisch Sussman (05:46):
So your family had a business, your father was an entrepreneur.
Were you always involved in it was entrepreneurship kind of
in the in the blood of the family, like in
the family culture. Yeah, it's funny.
Laura Modi (05:57):
You never grow up thinking this is in the blood ever,
you know, like you're just at the dinner table and
you're always having conversations whether it's about risk or decision
making or to be honest, you're just consuming through osmosis
the ups and downs of what he's going through. So
at the time you never know it until you reach
(06:19):
a certain age and then you go, that's what that
was about, and you know it's just part of your
every day and you don't, like I said, you really
don't realize the benefits of it until you're in it yourself.
Was it truly a family business? Like?
Emily Tisch Sussman (06:33):
Were his siblings involved? Was your mom involved? The kids
get involved?
Laura Modi (06:37):
It was a family business with regards to him and
his two brothers, so there was thirteen kids. It was
third generation, so it's been passed on and it's obviously
evolved through multiple ways through every generation being passed down.
And now I want to say there is six of
(06:57):
between the cousins and my siblings who are now back
in the business involved as well.
Emily Tisch Sussman (07:01):
Wow, did you have a vision of what it would
be like to be a grown up? Like did you
think that you would grow up and be in the
business or do the opposite, like, did you have a
vision of what you thought it would be like?
Laura Modi (07:14):
God, do we ever have a vision of what we're
like as a grown up? I know, and no, I
don't think I ever had a vision of being in
the business. I think there was always just an assumption
that one day you will come back, and I never
thought otherwise until I left the country and it was
(07:35):
a few years after leaving Arland and I thought, I
don't know if I'm ever going to return. Wow.
Emily Tisch Sussman (07:40):
Yeah, what about it made you think that you wouldn't return.
Laura Modi (07:44):
You know. I think it was the first moment of
also just realizing I also can choose my own path
and forge my own way. And I was making decisions
and joining companies and doing things that were probably so
distant from the family business. You know. The family business
makes construction, clothing, ppe clothing, really sexy stuff, you know,
(08:06):
like hard hats and I've vins jackets, but very different
from the technology world that I had entered in Silicon Valley.
So I just grew further and further from I think
the core job itself, and I just loved the adrenaline
of starting new things and trying new things and disrupting,
(08:27):
you know, And then obviously evolved to a place where
I had children and they were American.
Emily Tisch Sussman (08:31):
Right, So when you took the first job outside of
the family business, was the first job Google, that's like
quite a first job. That's a big deal.
Laura Modi (08:42):
The first job was Google, And you're right, it was
a big job. I remember applying for it out in California.
I felt like such a dream.
Emily Tisch Sussman (08:51):
But Ireland's a big tech hub, right, Yeah, Ireland's a
big tech tech cup and they have a big Google
office there in Dublin too, just getting built out at
the time.
Laura Modi (09:02):
And yeah, I applied for a job out in America.
It felt dreamy and you didn't think twice really about it.
You do it, you go through the interview process. I
actually decided not to tell my parents I was applying
for it, because you know, you just don't know where
it's going to go. Go through the interview process. Anyway,
I get the job, and I'll never forget going out
(09:22):
for dinner at my parents in Dublin and my dad
just putting pressure on me, say I'm like, you know,
college is coming to you know, you got to figure
out what you're going to be doing. And I remember
saying like, okay, how am I going to break the
news like I am going to move to America. And
I don't know how I said it. I think I
casually said, you know, you guys should come out for Christmas,
(09:44):
come visit me out a in America. And he just
turned to me and he's like, sorry, what are you saying?
And yeah, I got the job out in California and
moved out there pretty promptly, And in my mind I
kept thinking, I will go for a year, I'll go
for a year or two, get.
Some experience, and I'll come back. And that was it.
Emily Tisch Sussman (10:07):
Soon Laura was on a plane all the way to California.
I want you to put yourself back in the mid
two thousands, while most companies still had their fax number
on their business cards and we were just beginning to
use tech, Google was making waves. They are in offices,
ping pong tables, flexible hours, They were changing the game,
(10:28):
and Laura was at the heart of it.
Laura Modi (10:31):
I mean it was electric. It was, you know, landing
a dream job. You I mean, they had a rule
internally where you get to spend like eighty percent on
your core job and then twenty percent really ideating and
working in other functions or working on these side projects.
They allowed you to be an entrepreneur within the business
and obviously a lot of different perks and benefits that
(10:54):
were incredible at the time back in Silicon Valley. I mean,
the whole thing was really just a dream. It was
phenomen and I was there for four years. I learned
a lot. I was with exceptionally brilliant people. I mean truly,
and I say this all the time, like I pinched
myself every day. It was I am so lucky to
be here. How did I get here? You're constantly trying
(11:15):
to prove your value, But I never took it for granted.
It was an exceptional experience.
Emily Tisch Sussman (11:21):
So what were some of the entrepreneurial things you did
when you were at Google?
Laura Modi (11:25):
I mean there was you know, there was like side
projects that would come in from actually universities or even
small government type stuff, and it was like ideating on
new ways of driving efficiencies or new processes. I mean
there wasn't It wasn't like coming up with any like
radically new business in the company. It was just being
able to work on something different or even campaigns on
(11:46):
how to be able to promote something. But I was
still relatively junior, so I was more plugged into other
people's areas.
Emily Tisch Sussman (11:53):
Yeah, but it was great. Yeah, but that's super interesting,
and I feel I can give you a little bit
of a taste of different fields, like a different field
or a different function. Yeah, because what department were you
actually working in? So I worked on the Google Finance
product so op slash product management, and it was I mean,
(12:15):
I don't know how much how many times I've shared
this or not, but I would stare at financial information
every day essentially the stock.
Laura Modi (12:22):
Market, and over time, after staring at it for so long,
I became quite tapped into what was doing well, why
things were doing well. I found myself day trading, which
also advice for no one to ever do unless you
really really get to like focus on this and you
are trained enough on it. But I actually became almost
(12:45):
like addicted to the stock market, like in the job,
and it was if I felt like entering an old
boys club learning about the lingo of the stock market
to watch trades, and I found myself like deep in
these like subreddits of the world, no like truly, And
(13:09):
I also I think gained a major appreciation for just
investing as well, and the fact that women overall have
been left out of this world. And like I said,
in Old Boys Club, it has become this thing we're
just like men in general knew and understood it a
lot more. But the closer I got to the nucleus
(13:29):
of it, I realized it's actually not that complicated. It
just had become this world where men have predominantly spent
their time understanding and investing and playing in the stock
market and women hadn't. And it's not about understanding it.
It was more about just like your innate ability to
understand what you think might do well, how you gain
(13:50):
that research and understanding. Anyway, women are amazing.
Emily Tisch Sussman (13:53):
At We're going to take a short break and when
we come back, Laura tells us about her first mini
pivot out of the comfort of Google and into the
unknown of a very famous startup. When I talk to
(14:17):
women who want to make a pivot, there is often
a hesitation of leaving a comfortable job.
So how did you end up? Were you ready? I mean,
you loved the experience of Google so much. Were you
ready to move on? How did the next opportunity come
up
Were you looking?
Laura Modi (14:32):
Oh, this is a fun story. Speaking of the stock market,
I a lot of my team was here in New
York and I was out in the Berry. So the
engineering team was here and I would come out every
so often and we would do a lot of plugins
with the New York Stock Exchange or the NASDAC, and
I was out for some work trip. I don't know
what was going on in the city at the time,
(14:53):
but it was very hard to book hotels, and you know,
for everything that Google offered, you know, there was still
a travel limit to how which you could book? And
I'll never forget someone turning to me and they said, well,
if you can't find a hotel, why don't you just
book an airbed and breakfast. It's like, what the hell
is an arabed breakfast? And I looked it up and
(15:15):
I was floored. I mean floored. I remember that feeling
of being like, who the hell came up with this concept?
Are you telling me I can stay in like a
real apartment, like someone's home in the middle of New
York City? And I did. I booked a two bed
apartment in Soho where I was like working here for
the week. I was typically staying at like I don't know,
(15:37):
the Hilton, and you're going through a typical work experience,
you know, going back to your hotel late at night
and then into the office in the morning. Anyway, I
called my friends back in Dublin. I was like, guys,
I have an apartment in New York City for a week. Anyway,
they were on the first flight out and they met
me at the apartment and I did my work thing,
(15:58):
going in out of the office every day, and we
would come home in the evening and we would like
cook food and we would live in New York City
life and at the kid you not. At the end
of that trip, I remember being like, I have to
work for this company, and that feeling of just knowing
you know what you want, or you have that light
or trigger inside you that says, this is going to
be big.
(16:18):
This is going to be huge. I need to be
part of whatever this is. Yeah, what was it about
it that made you say I have to work with
this company? Okay, going back to be Irisha. Just the
hospitality of it all. I mean, the fact that you
could truly.
Just live in someone else's home and community and removing
that like stranger feeling. It's just the idea that you
(16:41):
could bring community together in a close way like that
and stay in a stranger's bed. That idea just blew
my mind. And you know, growing up in a country
where hospitality is its currency, be in bees and community
and family, people don't like call to say they're showing up.
They just show up. They knock on your door. The
US walk in that is. That's how I grew up
(17:02):
and I found you know, in many ways, I think
Airbnb pushing on this kind of next wave of belonging
in community in a texture of in way the whole
thing was just phenomenal. And then I also, to be honest,
I think the investor in me was also going, hold on,
hospitality is a huge business, and they are like truly
disrupting it from the ground up in a really unique way.
(17:25):
And remember this was also at a time where on
the back of two thousand and seven two thousand and
eight crisis, you're looking at this going, actually, people can
earn a living on this, like this makes a lot
of sense. So the investor in me was quickly doing
the calculation to realize this could be massive if done right,
and I want to be part of that. I'll never
(17:47):
forget though, going through the interview process and you know,
deciding I'm going to leave Google and go join this
and I say Airben and Breakfast because it was called
Airben and Breakfast at the time, and they were popping
up in the news here and there for like, you know,
there was a few things going wrong in the company.
And anyway, I'll never forget calling home and telling my
(18:07):
dad that I'm going to leave Google join this company,
and the response he was like, hold on a second,
you're telling me that you were going to leave Google.
And you're going to start at B and B. It's like, nope,
that's not what I'm doing. It's like it sounds like
you are like nope, but I remember having to explain
the concept over and over and they just they couldn't
(18:30):
get their head around. It just didn't make sense. And
you know, there was a lot of are you sure
this is crazy? But ultimately it got to like I
trust you if this makes sense, like you know, good luck,
good riddance, let's see how it goes, and very irish
like yep, sure, not quite sure, but okay, I'm behind you.
And it wasn't that long after where all of a sudden,
(18:50):
Airbnb was in every country, every town, every village, all
across the world. And then you know, the parents' script
flipped from you know, she's lost her mind leaving good
Google too she knew, yeah, yeah, she all made sense.
And when you had this revelation like this is the
company that I want to be involved with, how did
you literally take the step. I think that many of
(19:11):
us have had the feeling of, oh, I wish I
could be involved in this, but we don't often know
how to actually take the step to find them. Did
you just like look online for their job openings, Like
how did you actually connect with them? That's exactly it
found found a job opening.
Also, remember thinking there wasn't really an appropriate job that
really quite made sense. So I just applied to any
(19:33):
and I remember reaching out and they pulled me in
for an interview. And even during the interview process, there
were people in the interview process who were like, are
you sure you want to leave Google for this? I
was like, well, I'm not quite sure. Now didn't make
you question it a little bit, but I needed something new,
and I think that was always in me. There was
that desire or spark for for always wanting to do
(19:54):
something new. Yeah, I really wanted to be there. I
really believed in the concept. So no, I just I
reached out for some random role and then it just
turned into one interview after another, and I think I've
reached out to also one of the founders on Twitter.
I was like, I applied for a job. I really
want this, Yeah, And it was pretty swift.
Emily Tisch Sussman (20:17):
Actually, I did have a question about the role that
you went into because it wasn't like an exact next
step from the role that you had at Google.
Laura Modi (20:26):
I mean, Airbnb was a genius at hiring. Now in hindsight,
they looked for people who had deep, deep passion to
want to be there and people that they knew were
smart enough and hungry enough and a depth obviously, you know,
I mean early on, I sho'll say like, generalists make
the world go around, and for an early small company,
(20:47):
they do because there wasn't a month or a quarter
where every single person wasn't wearing multiple hats, and you
had to because so fast, you know. So I joined
technically in the world of operations, but over the course
of maybe the first year, I was leading growing and
scaling customer service operations, to growing call centers, to going
(21:10):
back to Europe and opening up offices, to trying to
reduce our contact rate from you know, bookings versus customer
service tickets. You are thrown into whatever the business needs.
And besides of some very few specialized roles, most people
were generalists. Again, now running and on my own business,
(21:33):
I can see that I can see that need. It's
really important, and it is those two things are the
most important, which is if you don't have the passion
and desire and hunger to be there also with that
owner founder mindset, then you're not willing to roll with
the punches.
You know.
You got to be there so like truly with that
(21:53):
feeling of like you want to see this succeed just
as much as the founders do. And now I see
how important that is.
And there was a different a change in the positioning
while you were there right that at first it was
really thought it was a tech platform, and then you
started to change the thinking about what the actual product was.
Oh, I love you asked this question. So one of
(22:16):
my all time favorite mentors idols, Chip Conley. He is
a hospitality guru. He grew the joa devive hotel chain
and Chip came into a fireside chat with the company
one day and really just speak to the world of hospitality.
And we decided to bring him on board as like
(22:36):
a part time reading guru and leader in the business.
And I was assigned to work closely with him to
really figure out how we were going to scale and
operationalize hospitality. And I'll never forget. I actually remember very
vividly what room I was sitting in at the office
and we were having a conversation about the product, and
(22:58):
people in the room they were talking about the product product.
This and we got to change the product, or like
there's bugs in the product, and you know, what are
the features of the product. And he's sitting there like
glazing over on this conversation. Anyway, the meeting ends and
he pulls me aside and he's like, they keep talking
about the product without the Irish accent. And he's like,
(23:18):
what do they mean? And I was like, well, you
know the technology. And I pull up you know, airbnb
dot com and I look at the homepage. He's like,
isn't the product the host? Isn't the product the person
who is giving the experience of hospitality and opening up
their home and keeping it clean and providing a memorable experience.
(23:39):
Isn't that the product? And it was like a light
going off. It's like, oh my god, you were absolutely right.
People are not buying or using Airbnb because the button
felt amazing to click on, or because it was such
an easy purchasing experience, Like that is your path to
great acquisition. Yes, it's your path to great discovery, but
(24:02):
that's not why people use it. And that mentality and
that triggering and you know, full credit to Chip for
really triggering that idea in the company. It then became
our mission to filter this across the whole business. Though,
if we could get that mentality to realize that we
(24:23):
need to make sure that every single experience across multi
million millions of homes all across this world, all have
to be able to provide a unique and credible experience
that matches expectations. That is the product, and it did,
it changed, and it's It's one piece of advice. I
mean to be fair in life, but for a lot
(24:43):
of early companies to really know what you stand for,
know why people are coming to, know your why, and
not to lose it because it's very easy just to
wake up and do your day to day and get
lost in the day to day operations of the business.
But then if you zoom out, you have to remember
that at the end of the day, people are coming
(25:04):
to you for one very particular reason. Know your why.
Emily Tisch Sussman (25:09):
After the break, we dive into Laura's personal experience that
ultimately led her to start Bobby and how she's fighting
on the front lines to change the way we think
about formula feeding.
(25:31):
Okay, so let's bring in your personal here. You were
at Airbnb for many years.
Laura Modi (25:37):
Well, it was at Airbnb when my now husband, then stranger,
had joined the company, and it was actually at a
company happy hour late on a Friday night, and he
was going through the consideration phase of joining and any
he was invited to the happy hour and we got
talking at the bar, and he we went on a
(26:00):
date or two, and I think, deep down I was like, oh, please,
don't join the company. But then he did join the company,
and we worked and dated together for the next two years.
I want to say.
Anyway, the source of it is was getting serious enough.
He ultimately ended up leaving, and then just as he left,
we got engaged. I stayed and then very quickly because
(26:24):
I'm Irish, got pregnant and was having my first kid,
and I was still at Airbnb, still loving my career,
still in a position where I thought I'm going to
go take leave and then I'm going to come back,
and everything changed.
Emily Tisch Sussman (26:42):
It's important to note at the time, not only was
Laura working for a fast paced startup, her husband was
also a founder.
Laura Modi (26:51):
So yeah, he had started his company on the outside.
I was still at Airbnb, and we had our first daughter,
and you know, first kidd, it's I mean, it's like
a honeymoon. You're enjoying every part of it. It's great
you're able to do it fairly easy with one kid. Bosh,
what I on think I had been fully prepared for
I knew I wasn't fully prepared for was how much
(27:15):
reality did not match expectations for a lot of the
really fundamental parts of having a child. And actually, to
bring it back to ship Conley, an equation that he
used to always use was that disappointment equals expectations minus
reality consumer.
(27:35):
That can apply on a lot of context, a lot
of context. And I went into motherhood and one of
those first things that I expected I would do and
that I expected would work, that I expected the skies
would open up, was going to be around how I
fed my daughter and Irish Catholic woman. I thought, I'm
(27:59):
going to walk in here and I'm going to be
up to breasted turn It's going to be beautiful. And
reality was just not that at all. I mean, I God,
I like even have PTSD thinking back to it now,
because I mean, if I had gotten the help, if
I had lactation support around me, you know, early on,
but no, I just the latch wasn't right. It just
(28:20):
wasn't working. It led to mastitis horrible. You know, my
my nipples were bleeding and bruised and blistered and I
ultimately couldn't get milk out. And this was a few
days in and I did. I had a fabulous alactation consultant.
She actually came to my house and she's like, you
need to turn to formula, like it's you need to
(28:43):
give your breasts a few days break. We need to
like work on this back up. This one will work,
this one. We went through the whole thing, and I
remember just thinking, man, I was completely unprepared for that.
And yeah, I found myself then turning to formula.
And had you thought specifically did you do actually contemplated breastfeeding,
Like I just didn't think about it. I felt like
(29:04):
they told me to breastfeeding, so I did, but I didn't.
That's a great question. No, Yeah, No, I just felt
like people told me I was supposed to do it. No,
I just assumed I would. Yeah, and I just assumed
it would work. But I didn't go through any steps
to go. Let me make sure I'm prepared for this.
Let me make sure that i'm I have the support
around me, I have a lactation consultant, I can call
(29:26):
I'm mentally prepared for the ups and downs, and I mean, honestly,
even the physical the physical pain was something no one
had ever talked about, yeah, at all.
So I was very taken back, very And it was
one of those first moments because obviously you start feeding
in the hospital, and it was one of those moments
(29:47):
being like, oh man, this is the first part of
motherhood that I feel completely in the dark on and
completely unprepared for.
Emily Tisch Sussman (29:56):
Laura and I are about the same age, and as
she was talking through all of this, I couldn't help
but feel those old feelings bubble up inside of me.
It's like she was speaking directly about my experience. I
remember that guilt and the doubt that started to become
about so much more than breastfeeding. It was about my
(30:17):
ability to be a mother, to care for my child,
that I was somehow doing a bad job, and I
think really terrified me that I felt like, I'm definitely
doing this very badly, Like it's not going well.
Can I keep a child alive? Like can I do
any of the parts?
Laura Modi (30:35):
And that's exactly it. If this is meant to be
one of the most easy, beautiful pieces of the job,
that is you start questioning yourself. Yeah, and that guilt
starts to come in where you're going, well, if I can't,
am I failing her? Am I failing motherhood? Am I failing?
You know? I'm just failing? And it's that it plays
on you and I hear it all the time with mothers,
which is, even if they do get their supply up
(30:57):
and it ends up working, you go through the early
days of questioning like are you able to do this?
Not just feeding, but are you able to take on
motherhood at large? Becomes a big question. But I also
remember that feeling taking me back where I had gone
through all of these moments in my life and my career,
where I could stare at the unknown and I could
(31:19):
still find myself in a confident position I can do this.
I had enough kind of mental strength to be able
to push through any unknowns. That was my life. In
many ways, it became my identity. So to be in
a position where I was now the most vulnerable mom
woman I had ever been in my life, that emotion
(31:41):
took me back.
Emily Tisch Sussman (31:42):
It's like who am I?
Laura Modi (31:44):
That identity crisis of questioning yourself and feeling guilty to
the point where you're making up a bottle. You're on
your way to the park to meet with your mom.
Friends you know are successfully breastfeeding and it's beautiful and
it's going great for them, and you're looking at the
formula in your bossy and you're like, will this pass
his breast moment because you don't want to have the conversation.
(32:05):
You don't want to get the sigh, you don't want
to get the I'm sorry, and yeah, the emotions are real.
Emily Tisch Sussman (32:13):
Often our guests cry on this show, but this is
the first time that I've cried on the show, Emily,
because that was exactly what I felt that my whole
identity was being really good in like really good in
conflict and really good finding a path forward through something
I didn't know and I couldn't find a path forward,
(32:36):
and it was so much bigger than just breastfeeding. Was like,
I can't figure out how to take care of this
baby that it really hits.
Laura Modi (32:44):
It does, and to think about let's get back to
the joys of parenting. You have just created the most precious,
most beautiful thing that you will ever have in life.
Like your heart explodes in ways that you had just
never ever, ever experienced, and the fact that you are
now not able to fully enjoy that exploding heart and
(33:05):
moment enjoy because you're also taking on the conflict of
failing her, failing you, failing society, and all these expectations
like that's unfair. This is a very special moment in time.
You should be enjoying every aspect of this without having
to take on all the guilts that comes with it
as well.
And obviously, I mean, we co down a rabbit hole
(33:28):
on this topic, but you zoom out. And I've spent
a lot of time studying where does that guilt come from?
Why is there so much pressure, or where does it
come from in society? And I don't think it is
and I truly believe this. I don't think it's that
your friend or someone who gave that sigh, that person's
not judging, they're not They truly want the best for you,
(33:49):
they want the best of the baby. They're not going
to bed that night going hm, I can't believe she's
feeding her baby formula. They're not. They're moving on. But
we have just built ourselves in society to believe that
there is one way two feet of baby and that's
what's best. That has just been a societal message over
and over and because of that, everyone around us and
(34:11):
sometimes it's, like I said, they're definitely not judging. It
could be a pediatrician, it could be the person who's
introducing you back to the office. It's just their natural
instinct is just to have a reaction to the fact
that you may not be doing what society has put
on a pedestal that is it. So now we're all
battling with the internal judgment in guilt, but that person
(34:33):
has already moved on. They're not thinking about it, they're
certainly not judging. And then the bigger question becomes in,
especially for a brand like Bobby, and we're trying to
shift that narrative, which is, how do you shift the
societal narrative that even though breast might be considered best,
that what's best is really whatever that personal situation or
(34:56):
dynamic is, and how you change that message.
Emily Tisch Sussman (35:01):
Laura didn't arrive at that incredibly helpful and encouraging message
quite so easily. She first went to the store to
find formula for her newborn baby and was mortified at
what she found, and slowly between all the diapers and
sleepless nights. She started to put the pieces together. We
as a society, we are sorely behind the ball when
(35:24):
it came to healthy, nutritious formula options. That here's the
key point. Parents felt confident buying for their baby.
Laura Modi (35:32):
It's also funny, there's this assumption that I with my
first child. I was in the pharmacy and I saw
the product, and there's an assumption. Then I was like, Aha,
I'm going to go start a formula company. No, no,
I was.
Emily Tisch Sussman (35:44):
I was quite impressed you were thinking about anything.
Laura Modi (35:46):
I don't know. Five days in, I was still like
in that emotional guilts and roller coaster. I was forty
pounds overweight, I was exhausted. I was like, who the
hell am I this is ever gonna work? And No,
it was like they were all little like steps towards
It's what I call my PhD at the time in
this market, industry and product where then I got home
when I read the back of the label, and then
(36:07):
I went on Google. Then I'm in the middle of
the night and I'm in my subreddits and I'm consuming.
I'm consuming and consuming, and that goes on for the
next year. Even while I returned back to Airbnb after leave,
and that was another moment. I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa.
You were telling me that the same government who says, hey, mom,
you should breastfeed for six months is also the same
(36:27):
government who's not giving us the paid leave to do so.
Everywhere I went, I was having these little epiphanies for
what needed to change, from the product to the message,
to policies across the board. And I was two weeks
pregnant with my second child, and it was at that
point I peed on the stick it said I was pregnant.
(36:50):
I turned to my husband, I said, I'm going to
start a formula company and there will be a better
formula on the market by the time I had this baby.
Emily Tisch Sussman (37:00):
Went to market immediately making waves.
Speaker 6 (37:02):
Well, there's a new style of organic formula called Bobby,
and it is changing the industry. Bobby had more than
eighteen million dollars in sales in its first year and
it is the fastest growing infant formula to enter the
American market in decades.
Speaker 7 (37:17):
Founder of Bobby, it's the first and only USDA certified
organic baby formula manufactured right here in the US. Bobby
It's named after her daughter's word for Bottle was founded
in twenty eighteen after Modi realized the only baby formulas
available in stores contained ingredients that she would not even
feed herself.
Emily Tisch Sussman (37:38):
So you had the initial hurdle of saying, I have
the answer to this problem, but you had an additional
hurdle of convincing everyone that there should be a solution, right,
because we have this societal problem that everyone thinks you're
just supposed to recue that you have.
Laura Modi (37:53):
My God, I've PTSD does say that, I know that
was exactly right. But let's start with the fact that
I was seven and a half months pregnant and I
was waddling around Silicon Valley meeting one investor after another.
And you know, I also PSA say like, not every
investor is made equal, you know, they all look at
(38:17):
problems and solutions very differently. But yeah, I was walking
into a predominantly male culture who had predominantly been investing
in technology, and just even CpG in general wasn't as
it just wasn't as predominant as tech. But here's what
(38:38):
really hit me when I went to go pitch the problem.
One of the challenges I had was being seven and
a half months pregnant. It was very hard for investors
not to look at me as a mom that had
a problem she wanted to solve for herself, versus an
entrepreneur who saw a really big opportunity. And I felt
(38:59):
that you got the questions. They're looking at your stomach,
they're questioning the why behind this, and you're trying to
get them to focus on the bigger picture. But it's
an emotional and extremely personal product. It's an extremely personal problem.
So if someone on the other side doesn't see the
(39:19):
problem with current formulas or ways of messaging and a
narrative that needs to change, it's very hard to break through,
very hard. And yes, because of societal problem, there was
really only a small percentage of them that the message
landed for. Did you find that there was one thing
in particular that broke through. I think when you're looking
(39:40):
to change or disrupt an industry, usually when it's predominantly
owned by a few players. So in this situation, the
infant formula market for decades was a duoptly and that duoptly,
you know, the same formula that you yourself probably consumed
as a child was the same one you remind for
your and no matter how much you believe in the
(40:04):
change or not, or this is the product that you
want to back, it was hard to deny that this
was a product in industry that hadn't changed in fourty
plus years.
Emily Tisch Sussman (40:15):
Bobby redefined what formula was and not without bumps in
the road. Early on in the business, the FDA came
knocking and it required Laura to think on her feet.
Speaker 7 (40:26):
It's not easy to go about FDA approval for anything.
I mean, you didn't just start a company. You started
a company that has to go through a lot of
regulatory processes.
Laura Modi (40:34):
What was it like to learn those.
Speaker 5 (40:36):
We actually got FDA greenrit a year ago, but we
spent that last year sourcing ingredients from partners that have
the same level of expectations and high quality standards.
Speaker 6 (40:47):
That we do.
Emily Tisch Sussman (40:49):
Then the formula shortage crisis happened and Bobby once again
was staring down a huge problem. But in true Laura fashion,
she turned what could've been a low point into one
of her most savvy business decisions yet, her decision to
buy a manufacturing plant.
Laura Modi (41:10):
I'm one year into the market and I woke up
to the President of the United States on the news
basically saying that America wasn't able to feed babies. We
had hit an infant formula crisis in this country. Think
about that. For forty plus years, this industry had really
never been in the news. No one ever talked about it.
(41:30):
In fact, they were looking for the exit any time
anyone spoke about infant formula. And now it's all over
the news. It was the second most talked about news
item outside of the Ukraine War. And it's true, America
wasn't resilient enough because of a lack of manufacturing it
had in this country, the lack of choice, the duopoly,
(41:52):
the concentration. We were not resilient enough to sustain a crisis.
And in that moment, I remember thinking, Wow, on one side,
I am sitting here and I'm watching the news, but
this is my industry. I am leading and in many
ways what I hope to be trailblazing and disrupting this market.
(42:13):
And this is the moment. It's in crisis, and you
have a choice in that moment, and I remember thinking
it was like, Okay, so we can either take a
step back and we can watch this on the sidelines
and see how it pans out, or we can actually
be part of this change, and you're right, only being
like one and a half years into actually being in
the market, it wasn't a very natural thing to go
(42:36):
and we should go buy manufacturing. You usually find that
a decade or two after a company has been in existence.
But it was one of those things I couldn't. I
went to bed every night going I know there needs
to be more manufacturing, and I strongly believe that Bobby's
going to be around in a big legacy company in
the future. We need to make this move now and
(42:57):
we can be part of the resiliency this country needs.
And I also I think like deep down then as
a mother also having American babies and everything in me,
I was like, we should get to a place where
America is able to make high quality infant formula and
feed it to its own American babies. We should be
proud of the food that we were able to make
(43:18):
for our babies. And it was just a big personal mission.
How did you really take those steps? Like did you
go out back to your funders and say, I know
that you funded us for Xemount, but I need, you know,
ten times more than that, because I'm buying a factory. Yes, great, Yeah, great,
I mean that was a bitch. Yes, there was also
swallowing a little bit of like there was some humility
(43:39):
as well in it, because it was it wasn't that
long before it I was like, we don't need to
buy manufacturing. No, we don't need to do that. You know,
there's enough manufacturing. We'll be fine. And then to get
to the place I was like, no, actually there's not.
And I also need to be malleable enough to be
able to change or pivot my decision for what I
(44:01):
believe is right and what needs to happen. And that
has also become a huge entrepreneurial learning on how important
it is even in the job to also be able
to build a plan and a direction towards a vision,
but know that sometimes your plan and direction are going
to have to change. And when a market changes like
that is your moment to also say, like, how does
(44:23):
your plan change to address it?
What is it going to have ten thousand million more questions?
What is something that happened? It can be something we
talked about is being totally different that at the time
you felt like was a real low, but now in
hindsight you see it as having really launched you into
the position that you are now, I'm going to regulated place,
(44:43):
So there's a lot of lows and uncertainties when you
are heavily regulated. I mean one of them was, you know,
the FDA. The FDA showed up early on during a
pilot of of Bobby and they questioned our product and
direction and they really really forced a major shift in
(45:08):
the business, Like we had to pull back our existing product,
We had to spend time reformulating manufacturing here in the US,
adjusting our supply chain. It took me back probably a
year or two, and it felt like a low at
the time. And yeah, I think you said it perfectly.
Now I look back and I think, no, that was
(45:30):
one of the best experiences and also catapulted us to
where we are.
Emily Tisch Sussman (45:34):
Do you think you'll pivot again?
Laura Modi (45:36):
Absolutely absolutely. I think there will be pivots within Bobby
as a company. I think there'll be pivots in my
own life, my career, I hope. So, I mean, life
without pivots is what's it living for?
You know?
Absolutely?
Emily Tisch Sussman (45:54):
Thank you so much, Laura, thanks for coming on. It's
been such an interesting conversation. I really really enjoyed it.
Laura Modi (46:00):
I've loved it. I mean, we could get into like
three seasons of this. Let me just keep going.
I know, like, do you want a whole season? Like?
We have so much want to talk about.
I'm sorry for making you cry. No, no, I felt
very scene good.
Emily Tisch Sussman (46:15):
Laura lives with her beautiful family and is still growing
Bobby and working to change the narrative around formula feeding
and making huge headway. I might add so that one
day the next generation hopefully won't have to feel the
same pressures and guilt we felt.
To stay up to.
Date with Laura, you can follow her on Instagram at
Laura Mody.
(46:36):
Thanks for listening to this episode of she Pivots. I
hope you enjoyed it, and if you did, leave us
a rating and tell your friends about us. To learn
more about our guests, follow us on Instagram at she
pivots the Podcast, or sign up for our newsletter where
you can get exclusive behind the scenes content on our
website at she pivots thepodcast dot com. Special thanks to
(47:03):
the she pivots team, Executive producer Emily eda Velosik, Associate
producer and social media connoisseur Hannah Cousins, Research director, Christine Dickinson,
Events and Logistics coordinator Madeline Snovak and audio editor and
mixer Nina pollock I endorse Che Pivots
Popular Podcasts
40s and Free Agents: NFL Draft Season
Daniel Jeremiah of Move the Sticks and Gregg Rosenthal of NFL Daily join forces to break down every team's needs this offseason.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.