Helping Women Thrive Through Motherhood and Career Transitions – An Interview with Isabel Theissen
Isabel Theissen is the founder of &BEYOND, the maternity transition consultancy. She supports organizations in creating more structured and sustainable maternity transitions, while guiding women through the personal and professional shifts that accompany motherhood. Her approach combines professional expertise, research, and lived experience of navigating motherhood alongside a corporate career, giving her a grounded understanding of the realities of this transition. Isabel challenges the idea of a simple “bounce back” after maternity leave, instead defining the return as a leadership transition that requires structured processes and intentional support. Through &BEYOND, she helps organizations move from well-intentioned policy to meaningful implementation, supporting talent retention, strengthening leadership pipelines, and creating more inclusive, sustainable ways of working.
Isabel Theissen, Motherhood & Leadership Coach
Who is Isabel Theissen?
I’m a German living in Portugal, a mother, a coach, and the founder of &BEYOND, a maternity transition consultancy helping women and organizations navigate the transition into motherhood and back to work in a more structured, sustainable way.
Motherhood has reconnected me with a more authentic version of myself. It has expanded me in ways I didn’t expect. Moving from Amsterdam to Porto was one of those decisions that was inspired by motherhood. We wanted to be closer to my partner’s family, and I’m so glad we made that move. Portugal offers the perfect base for the lifestyle I love, especially during this chapter of my life. I love slow mornings, particularly when they start with a walk along the beach with our dog, good coffee, and a relaxed family breakfast before we all start our day.
Professionally, motherhood inspired a significant career shift. After more than a decade in corporate marketing, working with global fashion and lifestyle brands, I moved into coaching. Today, I bring both worlds together through &BEYOND, advising organizations on how to create more structured and sustainable return-to-work processes that support and retain talent while guiding ambitious women through their maternity transition so they can grow into motherhood without putting their careers on hold.
What inspired you to start your business and help others in the way you do?
Founding &BEYOND is very much rooted in my own experience of becoming a mother.
When I returned to work after five months of maternity leave, I constantly felt torn between my responsibilities at work and at home. I felt guilty for being away from my son, but at the same time, I still wanted to express myself through my work and maintain a sense of professional identity.
Coaching helped me enormously during that period. It gave me the space to reassess how I wanted to balance my professional and personal life and, more importantly, to reconnect with who I was while embracing this new version of myself as a mother. That experience became the starting point for the work I do today.
Through my work with women, I’ve learned that the return-to-work phase is often much more challenging than expected and remains largely under-supported. One reason is the deeply ingrained assumption that women will simply “bounce back” to who they were before becoming mothers and pick up where they left off. But that’s not how motherhood works. Women evolve through motherhood, their identities, perspectives, and priorities can shift. The organization they return to may have changed too. People leave, new colleagues join, teams are reorganized, and priorities evolve.
That’s why I now work at the intersection of individuals and organizations. I want us to acknowledge the changes that happen throughout the maternity transition and create the structure and support women need to reintegrate sustainably.
How do you define success in your field, and how do you help your clients achieve it?
When it comes to maternity transitions, I like to think of success as something continuous rather than a single moment. I call this sustainable success, being able to maintain a meaningful level of professional excellence while also creating a joyful life that is aligned with your values and priorities.
That is the kind of success I want to help women create and the kind of environment I want organizations to enable.
What challenges do your clients typically face, and how do you assist them in overcoming those obstacles?
The return-to-work phase tends to be the most challenging and often harder than women expect.
Even when the practical and logistical aspects have been carefully planned, it’s much harder to prepare for the emotional transition. Guilt can play a significant role, particularly when leaving your child in someone else’s care. On top of that are new routines and responsibilities while reconnecting with the pace of work. It can lead to overwhelm, feeling constantly torn between the demands of work and home, and hence feeling as though you’re not doing either role well enough.
That’s why I believe maternity reintegration needs to be approached as a phased transition, rather than expecting someone to return at full speed within a matter of weeks. I like to think of it as “going slow to go fast,” meaning a slow and sustainable return enables faster readjustment and growth beyond the first months back.
For organizations, I help design reintegration processes that give women the space and structure to readjust sustainably while laying the foundation for continued leadership and career development.
For women, I provide the coaching and practical tools to navigate this transition, reconnect with what matters to them, and build a way of working and living that allows them to embrace motherhood while continuing to develop their careers.
Can you walk us through a recent success story where you helped a client achieve their goals?
With pleasure.
Although I support women throughout the entire maternity transition, from preparing for leave through to returning to work and beyond, many women come to me once they have already returned.
Juggling an ambitious career and motherhood can be tough. Often, the challenge isn’t simply pressure or overwhelm. It’s figuring out how to make both parts of your life work in a way that actually feels aligned with who you are and what matters to you now.
I recently worked with Ellen, a mother of three young boys and a driven and successful marketer.
After having her third baby, she found herself forced into freelancing. She desperately wanted a permanent, in-house role and the stability and protections it would offer her family. But despite actively applying, she struggled to find a position that offered the flexibility she needed around her children’s schedules and allowed her to spend the amount of time with them that she wanted.
When we started working together, she believed she would inevitably have to compromise somewhere.
As she put it, “I began my initial chat with Isabel certain that I'd have to compromise somewhere in my job hunt if I wanted to go fully back into work and still hold my core principles as a parent. But by the end of our time, I had a new confidence that the flexibility I require in order to be a working mum is not too much to ask. This month I signed my contract for a perm, in-house role, with all of the flexibility I had been hoping for and no compromise.”
What changed wasn’t that her needs became smaller. Her confidence in those needs became stronger. Ellen kept believing in herself and in the fact that what she was looking for was out there. She didn’t settle until she found and signed a role that met her needs without compromise.
That captures a big part of what I help women with, becoming clear on what they want and what they need, in their careers, as mothers, and as individuals, and then turning that clarity into reality.
What is the most rewarding aspect of your work?
For me, the most rewarding part is helping women align their professional and personal ambitions so that they can feel genuinely connected to their values and priorities.
Within organizations, I find it equally fulfilling to create the conditions that make this possible, implementing structured processes and support systems that enable smoother and more sustainable reintegration and ultimately support career development and growth beyond the return.
That’s where I see the potential for systemic impact, creating workplaces where women don’t have to choose between thriving in their careers and thriving in motherhood.
What unique qualities or methods do you bring to the table that set you apart from others in your industry?
Through my work, I developed the Motherhood & Leadership Framework™, which provides a structured approach to supporting women and organizations through the four critical phases of the maternity transition:
Pre-leave, preparing the foundation
On leave, navigating the transition
Re-entry, reintegrating with clarity and confidence
Beyond, fostering leadership and career direction
The framework reflects something I strongly believe, the maternity transition continues way beyond the return-to-work phase, since women develop crucial leadership skills through motherhood, such as efficiency, prioritization, and fast decision-making, that can support their professional development.
No matter what stage a woman finds herself in, it’s never too late to reshape her circumstances so she can thrive in both motherhood and her career.
How do you stay current with trends and best practices in your field?
For me, staying current is less about following trends and more about listening, to research, to organizations, and most importantly, to the lived experiences of working mothers.
I’m also part of a growing network of experts advocating for what working mothers actually need to navigate ambitious careers alongside family life.
What would you say to someone who is considering working with you but is unsure if it's the right fit?
Follow your instinct.
If my work resonates with you, let’s have a conversation. I offer a free introductory consultation where we can explore your challenges, what you’re hoping to change, and whether there is a good fit for us to work together.
My biggest piece of advice would be not to wait until things are already too hard.
The earlier you prepare yourself for the transition into motherhood, or prepare to support a team member through it, the more intentional and sustainable the experience can be, both personally and professionally.
What are some common misconceptions about your work or industry, and how would you address them?
There are two misconceptions that I believe are particularly damaging to the maternity transition, especially during the return-to-work phase.
The first is the “bounce back” myth. It assumes that women return to work as the same person they were before becoming mothers and simply continue where they left off. But motherhood doesn’t simply add another role to a woman’s existing identity. It fundamentally expands who she is. Her priorities, perspectives, and ambitions may shift while she is simultaneously taking on a whole new set of responsibilities.
The second misconception is that women return to work as usual and simply “pick up where they left off.” But the workplace has often changed while they were away. Reorganizations happen. Colleagues leave and join. Projects are dropped or taken on. Priorities shift. Many women I work with describe the experience of returning to what feels like a different organization.
It takes time to process and integrate all of these changes, to embrace the new role of being a mother, adjust to new routines and responsibilities, and find a new rhythm both at home and at work.
This process of becoming and adapting is part of matrescence.
If we can let go of the expectation that women should simply “bounce back” and instead acknowledge that motherhood evolves them, we can create a much more realistic and supportive approach to maternity transitions.
Looking ahead, what are your goals for the future?
Looking ahead, I want to contribute to changing the way we think about motherhood and work altogether.
Through &BEYOND, I help organizations move from having policies on paper to creating meaningful processes and cultures that support women before, during, and beyond maternity leave. That means creating the conditions for women to return with clarity and confidence and, importantly, to continue growing once they are back.
I want to see a future where motherhood is not viewed as a disruption to a woman’s career or leadership trajectory, but as a life transition that can bring new perspectives, strengths, and ways of leading. A future where women don’t have to choose between being ambitious and being present, and where organizations understand that supporting mothers isn’t simply the right thing to do, but essential to retaining and developing valuable talent.
That is the change I want to be part of creating, workplaces where women can thrive in their careers and in motherhood, and where returning to work isn’t the end of the maternity transition, but the beginning of what comes next.
Read more from Isabel Theissen
