Co-founder and chief people and experience officer, Bobbie
Read the full list of Charter 30 honorees here, and learn more about Charter Pro here.
In addition to designing industry-leading parental leave policies for her baby-formula company, including 12 months of leave for new parents and 16 additional weeks of NICU leave for parents whose newborns spend time in the neonatal intensive care unit, Hardy has spearheaded campaigns to make the same kinds of policies available to all new parents. For example, Bobbie’s Take Our Leave initiative includes a downloadable playbook detailing the company’s own leave policy and challenges leaders to adopt similar policies at their own organizations, and a recent campaign with professional athlete Naomi Osaka appealed directly to lawmakers to pass federal paid leave legislation.
Right now, what is your biggest question or curiosity about the future of work?
When are business leaders and corporations going to admit that unequivocally requiring employees to return to work in-person isn’t right for everyone? Leading a majority-remote team, I see the immense value that remote work brings daily to our team of mostly parents and firmly believe the future of work comes down to a level of flexibility that in-office work will never offer, especially when it comes to hiring a diverse workforce, supporting working parents, and fostering an inclusive culture.
What is one problem leaders should be focused on solving in the year ahead?
In the year ahead—an election year—business leaders need to step outside their comfort zone and start advocating for paid leave at a federal level. Part of this is implementing policies internally that support paid leave at their organization, but that’s only half the battle. We need to seize the moment and create noise to ensure paid leave is passed nationwide and this is the time to do so.