The Parental Leave Problem Healthcare Can't Ignore | Michelle Yu of Josie
Episode Description
What happens to working healthcare parents — and their careers — before, during, and after parental leave? It's a question Michelle Yu couldn't stop asking, even after more than a decade at the top of healthcare consulting.
In this episode of No Operating Manual, host Erin O'Brien sits down with Michelle Yu, co-founder and CEO of Josie, a company that partners with organizations to support working parents through parental leave coaching and return-to-work transitions. Named after Michelle's daughter, Josie was born out of Michelle's own raw and honest reckoning with what it meant to return to the road — pumping breast milk in airport bathrooms, feeling resentful, watching talented colleagues quietly exit careers they'd spent years building.
Michelle and Erin discuss the real cost of treating parental leave as a logistical formality rather than a strategic imperative. They explore why the healthcare industry, which sets the clinical standards for parental leave, so often fails its own employees, and what the difference looks like between a lactation room stocked with snacks and a hospital OB-GYN pumping in a bathroom between patients.
They also get into the founder journey itself: the pivot from polished consultant to vulnerable storyteller, the slow build of confidence that no pitch deck can fast-track, and why Michelle believes the best founders are the ones building something they can't imagine not doing.
In this episode:
- The parental leave data that should alarm every HR leader
- How Josie's B2B model evolved through listening to customers
- Why clinical settings lag behind corporate in supporting new parents
- The guilt, the joy, and the identity shift of returning to work
- What it means to lead with lived experience as your credibility
Sources:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37096124/
https://www.aamc.org/news/why-women-leave-medicine
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