Mother of Fact: the podcast

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Podcast by Emily Sylvester

Mother of Fact: the podcast

Conversations with the clinicians, directors, and changemakers shaping the future of maternal and reproductive health and wellness. Hosted by Emily Sylvester, Founder & CEO of Mother of Fact, this podcast dives into the real-world strategies, challenges, and breakthroughs transforming care for moms and babies. From front-line clinical insights to system-level solutions, each episode offers practical takeaways and fresh ideas for improving outcomes, streamlining operations, and advancing health equity.

Latest episodes

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10 March 2026

Beyond the Diet: Why Nutrition Advice Alone Fails Women

In honor of National Nutrition Month, Emily sits down with Dr. Loneke Blackman Carr to explore why nutrition advice alone rarely changes health outcomes. As a behavioral scientist, professor, and registered dietitian, with Dr. Loneke shares how caregiving demands, structural barriers, and lived environments shape the way women eat, move, and care for their health. Dr. Loneke is currently Assistant Professor of Community & Public Health Nutrition at UCONN.

You’ll hear:

  • How clinicians can move beyond the word “diet” to build trust with patients
  • Why evidence-based nutrition programs often succeed in clinical trials but fail in real life
  • The structural barriers that shape nutrition behaviors and health outcomes for women
  • Why Black women experience significantly higher obesity rates despite equal health awareness
  • How stress, caregiving, and social context influence nutrition and lifestyle change
  • The importance of addressing context before expecting behavior change

This episode is for clinicians, dietitians, women’s health advocates, and healthcare leaders who want to understand how nutrition, equity, and context intersect in maternal and women’s health. If you’re working to improve patient outcomes and build care models that actually fit women’s lives, this conversation will change how you think about nutrition interventions.

Show Resources

✅ New episodes of the Mother of Fact Podcast drop on the second Tuesday of every month. Follow, subscribe, and share with a colleague who’s ready to help transform care at work and beyond.

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10 February 2026

From Screening to Showing Up: A Better Model for Women's Mental Health Care

In this episode, Emily sits down with Kristin McGregor, PhD — clinical psychologist and National Clinical Director of Integrated Behavioral Health at LifeStance Health — to unpack what integrated care really looks like when it centers women and families. From fertility to postpartum to menopause, they explore what happens when we stop treating mental health as separate and start embedding it where it belongs.

You’ll hear:

  • Why behavioral health must be embedded in OB/GYN and pediatric settings
  • How screening can fail patients if systems aren’t ready to act on the results
  • Real-world stories about missed flags, maternal mental health, and provider gaps
  • What Kristin means by “meeting people where they are, especially when they’re not doing great”
  • How stigma still shows up in healthcare systems (and how to dismantle it)
  • What integrated models like LifeStance are doing to intervene earlier and faster
  • The challenge of supporting moms who are expected to lead the conversation while struggling
  • Strategies for providers to talk about behavioral health without losing trust

This episode is for OB/GYNs, pediatricians, care teams, maternal health leaders and advocates who want to create care pathways that actually serve birthing people, especially when they’re most vulnerable. It’s also for anyone building systems that treat mental health as health, not a referral out.

Show Resources:

✅ New episodes of the Mother of Fact Podcast drop on the second Tuesday of every month. Follow, subscribe, and share with a colleague who’s ready to help transform care at work and beyond.

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13 January 2026

Smart Leaders Know: Women’s Health Isn’t Optional Anymore

When is the right time for employers to take women’s health seriously? According to Jim Hettenbach, VP and Head of Business Ventures at Unum, that time was yesterday — and the smartest companies are already catching up.

In this energizing and insight-packed episode, Emily sits down with Jim to explore how employer benefits are evolving beyond check-the-box wellness to whole-person care — including nutrition care, lactation support, postpartum recovery, and pelvic floor rehab (yes, even that!).

With humor and honesty, Jim shares what it was like to be one of the only men talking about maternal health in corporate rooms — and why that’s exactly what needs to happen if we want to scale meaningful change.

You’ll hear:

  • How Unum Ventures is bridging the gap between clinical care and employer support
  • Why outdated benefit models are breaking under the weight of real-world care needs
  • The shift from point solutions to platforms — and what that means for maternal care innovators
  • How employers can support health journeys before employees even ask for help
  • What employers are learning about AI, privacy, and trust in the digital health era
  • The growing role of employers in the care economy — and why it affects us all

Whether you’re a healthcare leader, policy advocate, HR decision-maker, or women’s health entrepreneur, this episode will give you a behind-the-scenes look at the real conversations happening around maternal health, innovation, and what it takes to build a better, more human-centered future of work.

Show Resources:

Learn more about Unum.

Connect with Jim Hettenbach on LinkedIn.

Follow Mother of Fact for more episodes, tools, and updates.

New episodes of the Mother of Fact Podcast drop on the second Tuesday of every month. Follow, subscribe, and share with a colleague who’s ready to help transform care at work and beyond.

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09 December 2025

Designing Care That Works: How AI & Motivational Interviewing Strengthens Families and Frontline Teams

AI is changing healthcare — but Modality is proving that the most powerful innovations start with people.

Emily Sylvester sits down with Laura Vitale, Founder & CEO of Modality, for an honest conversation about how we train, support, and retain the frontline workers who form the backbone of our care systems. Laura shares how Modality uses AI-powered “practice conversations” to help staff build real motivational interviewing and trauma-informed skills—skills that can be measured with nuance, tracked over time, and seamlessly brought into supervision to strengthen teams from the inside out.

Together, they explore how Modality is transforming clinical environments by reducing training time, supporting compliance, improving fidelity to evidence-based practices, and reducing burnout by giving staff renewed confidence and support. They also dig into the realities of workforce turnover, Medicaid-centered care settings, and what it truly takes to design innovation with overstretched teams instead of adding to their burden. From replacing day-long trainings with six-minute challenges to embedding skill-building directly into workflows, Laura explains why Modality’s flexible, human-centered design resonates so powerfully on the front lines.

This episode is a thoughtful look at the future of training, the emotional weight of clinical work, the cost of burnout, and the creativity required to build products that genuinely support people doing incredibly hard jobs.

To learn more about Laura and Modality visit findmodality.com.

Follow Laura's journey on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/laura-vitale-87980916/

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11 November 2025

Between a Birth and a Board Meeting: The Untold Story of Postpartum Leadership

What does real postpartum support look like when you’re running a startup, healing from birth, and parenting a NICU baby — all at once?

In this powerful, raw, and heart-hitting episode, Emily sits down with Sam Gardner, founder of Continuity Co. and Happy Pillar), to talk about building mental health infrastructure for working moms — while barely surviving her own postpartum experience.

This conversation is a must-listen for women’s health providers, maternal care innovators, clinical champions, entrepreneurs and investors who want to learn how the system is broken — and want to be part of reshaping it.

You’ll hear:

  • Why supporting women at work is essential to improving outcomes in pregnancy and postpartum

  • How capacity ≠ capability, and why we need to stop glorifying over-functioning mothers

  • The medical realities of postpartum recovery — and the gaps in continuity of care even for health-literate moms

  • The real mental load of being a CEO and a mom, and what it looks like to actually put care infrastructure in place

  • Why working through postpartum can tank both business and wellbeing — and what resilient, long-game leadership really looks like

This is the real talk no one gives you in a training. If you’re advising patients returning to work, leading teams of mothers, or building maternal health programs — you need to hear this.

Plus: Learn how Continuity KoE is flipping the script for founders, building embedded leadership so mothers can take real leave without blowing up their businesses.

Resources + Links:

Don’t miss upcoming episodes! Follow @motheroffact for new drops, tools, and stories at the intersection of clinical care, equity, and maternal health innovation.

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08 October 2025

Power in Connection: Amy VanHaren on Storytelling, Tech, and Maternal Health

In this episode of Mother of Fact: the podcast—conversations with leaders transforming women’s health—host Emily Sylvester, Founder & CEO of Mother of Fact, sits down with Amy VanHaren, founder of Pumpspotting.

Amy has spent the past decade redefining how mothers connect and find support through technology, storytelling, and community. From her journey across the country in the Breast Express bus—a roving space for breastfeeding awareness and connection—to scaling digital platforms that reach hundreds of thousands of parents, Amy has built a movement centered on belonging and care.

Together, Emily and Amy explore the power of storytelling in maternal health, how digital tools can strengthen—not replace—human connection, and what it takes to build systems that truly support parents and families.

If you’ve ever wondered how technology can make maternal care more human, this episode offers both inspiration and practical insight.

Key Topics Discussed

  • Amy’s journey from startup founder to national maternal health advocate
  • The origins and impact of the Breast Express bus
  • Why storytelling is essential to changing the maternal health narrative
  • The role of technology in building real connection and community
  • Lessons learned from scaling Pumpspotting and empowering parents
  • What the future of maternal health innovation could look like

Guest Links & Mentions

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