Sharon Kan is the co-founder and CEO of Pepperlane, the organization helping mothers turn their skills and ideas into businesses that fit into their lives. She’s also a serial entrepreneur whose startups have been acquired by Oracle, Microsoft, and Barnes and Noble. In this episode MBO Partners speaks with Sharon about how she is shaking up the patriarchal system of work and supporting a 20-million strong market of talented moms that has the power to reshape the small business economy.

Sharon talks about how denying our full identities at work—leaving the motherhood label at the door—adversely affected economic output even before the “She-cession” brought about by COVID-19 put many women out of work. She notes, however, how the current situation has also sparked great creativity among entrepreneurial mothers. She discusses how most professional gender gaps are motherhood gaps and the role that independent work plays in closing them. She also talks about the ways that organizations looking to educate and support new sectors of talent can work together to close entrepreneurial knowledge gaps and how a few pointed policies could aid working mothers and society as a whole.

About This Episode’s Guest

Sharon Kan is co-founder and CEO of Pepperlane, the organization helping mothers turn their skills and ideas into businesses that fit into their lives. She’s also a serial entrepreneur whose startups have been acquired by Oracle, Microsoft, Infor and Barnes and Noble. Additionally, she co-founded WIN, the Women Innovating Now Lab at Babson College to help female entrepreneurs start their businesses.

About MBO Partners®

MBO Partners is a deep jobs platform that connects and enables independent professionals and microbusiness owners to do business safely and effectively with enterprise organizations. Its unmatched experience and industry leadership enable it to operate on the forefront of the independent economy and consistently advance the next way of working. For more information, visit mbopartners.com.

Episode hosted by Aassia Haq; produced, edited, and engineered by Leslie Jennings Rowley. With music by Brian Burrows.

For more episodes, visit mbopartners.com/state-of-independence/podcast/.