The Roche Report

Like many of us, I spent a lot of time glued to the election results last week. However, I have to admit that until the election results were announced, I did not spend much time thinking about Kamala Harris' many firsts. This in itself is notable - it was almost a side note to me, which in years past, it would've stood out. But in recent elections, we have almost always had a female in the race (save 2012), and so the good news is that it felt like less of a big deal. When the race was called, and in particular, watching the video that she tweeted about her call with Biden when she learned that the race had been called, I was - quite unexpectedly - moved to tears at the gravity of her being the first female. Couple that with on the other side of the aisle, the GOP adding a record number of women to the house.  Without assessing Kamala Harris' policy beliefs or positions, I had noted that I - and others - responded in wildly different ways to her in ways that we don't t...

I've spoken with a number of my colleagues and clients recently - several with new babies - who were asking me what we ended up doing with respect to childcare and COVID and I thought it might be helpful to walk through our logic, process, and approach in a post. Without a doubt, the hardest part of COVID has been figuring out our new approach to childcare and dealing with the uncertainty of the ever evolving future outlook of what is going to happen with COVID. I've talked with many other working parents about how they are approaching this - and there have been as many different solutions as there are working parents. For context, pre-COVID, our kids were in daycare and we normally have our kids in daycare from like 7:30-5:15ish. We really had a great experience with daycare. They have taught us about being parents (shout out to learning about Boudreaux's Butt Paste for diaper rash!) and have taught our children things that we didn't know they were ready for like using...

One of my team members recently shared this article with me about what is really holding women back in progression. I have been thinking about this topic a lot recently as I've thought of my reaction to the race conversation we have been having and have worked on personal goals around increasing the diversity on my team. The truth is, my team is pretty evenly represented at junior levels but among leaders on the team there are very few women (or minorities, or LGBTQ). So I've thought a lot about the inflection points that we all have in our careers as well as what makes it more likely for women to opt out of "fast track" careers. While I have observed this a lot with a number of SUPER talented women who I have worked for, with and who have worked with me, I thought I would share some of my experiences with this. When I was an analyst, my mentor and boss encouraged me to read Lean In by Sheryl Sandberg - and throughout my career, she has regrounded me to different cha...

What day is it of this mess does it feel like to you? It generally feels like day 493 for me. When people ask me how I am, I joke (sort of) that I range from hanging in there (at my best) to my hair is on fire. I've drafted this post a couple of times and then have run into a dead end because I've wanted to have a positive "we can do it!" message, and most days, the truth is, I feel like I'm juggling a lot of things and catching some balls I drop on toes, elbows, and knees. I'm doing it, but it isn't super pretty or very coordinated. We each have very different personal, emotional, and mental challenges in dealing with our new normal. Some live alone and are dealing with how to mark the moments in time from a day alone; a lot of my team lives in small NYC apartments and are figuring out how to navigate a small space with their significant others, especially in a world where video calls are the new normal; others are trying to relearn geometry to ho...

For the past two years, I have worked from home a lot as part of an increased focus on limiting my travel to be home and present with my kids. As we all shift to an increased work from home schedule, I thought it would be helpful for me to join the chorus of posts on my own tips about work from home. #1 - Try to mimic a workday schedule and workplace environment-- or, with child care being dynamic, be intentional about when you are available for work and when you aren't. The easy answer (if you don't have kids) is try to have an 8-6 schedule where you have a time for lunch and have a time to get an afternoon snack, coffee, etc. It can be really easy to lose structure that a workday provides - and can be really easy to be hunched over your computer for 10 hours without moving (more on this in a minute) - so focus on getting up at the same time every day, getting dressed ACTUALLY for work (maybe not business casual but jeans, nice shirt, etc.-- again more on this in a minute)....

Last year, I wrote an impassioned blog post about why getting to equality is so hard; this year, I have a bit of a different flavor for International Women's Day. A couple of weeks ago, I attended a conference where one of the panels (for all attendees) was an interview with senior female leaders in utilities. One of the panelists spoke about the need for men to proactively sponsor junior female talent, highlighting how women and men sometimes have different styles in seeking mentorship relationships and so to be successful, men need to take an active role in seeking out these relationships too. After watching the panel, several male colleagues and I had a very interesting conversation about it. They mentioned that many of the industry events and conferences that they go to have sessions for women in {insert conference topic here}; but in general, the sessions are not open to men. Our conversation then continued about (my summary, not theirs) the perils of this subject as a man...

I haven’t written on this blog as much as I would like because the past several months have been pretty hectic .  This is primarily because things have been great busy at work, but the reality is that one of our challenges has been that as soon as we hit November, we entered the season of sickness, and seem to have been juggling one member of our family being sick. And when I say sick- I’m not talking about a runny nose- we’ve had two stomach viruses, Johnny and Charlie got the flu, two ear infections, and jack recently had hand / foot / mouth virus ( non parents : I don’t really suggest googling images of this, it’s a pretty gross kid virus). Johnny and I have kind of an evolving system of calendar scheduling of who has what work commitments and who is primary- when one of us has early / late meetings, work events, or travel; but at a time where both of us could basically be working most hours of the day (and sometimes are), we’ve also been forced to slow do...