In Finding Time for Her Kids, She Honored Her Parents

Our CEO Stacy DeBroff has been featured in Fast Company, sharing how the loss of her parents proved transformative in how she later viewed work/life balance.

In 1974, when Stacy DeBroff was 12 and her brother was 10, her parents died suddenly. Her mother and father were visiting relatives in New Zealand, and their Pan Am flight landed for a refueling stop. Though the plane had landed safely, a store of illegal chemicals caused it to explode. DeBroff and her brother went to live with their aunt, uncle, and cousins, “plunged into a really bad Disney B-movie,” says DeBroff, with “lots of kids, lots of tension.”

The experience was unutterably tragic, but it did give DeBroff an early clarity about how to live her life. “When something really dramatic happens—in this case, the loss of two parents I adored, you question what it is you’re doing, and what it is that’s really important to do,” says DeBroff. “At 12, I saw people summarizing my parents’ lives. And at the end of the day, people remembered them based on relationships. So as you watch a life being remembered, and as you take forward the qualities you most admire in someone you lost, it gives you an entirely different view on what you’re doing professionally.” More than anything, it set DeBroff on a lifelong path of asserting balance between her career and her family.

Read the entire article on FastCompany.com:
http://m.fastcompany.com/3051573/second-shift/in-finding-time-for-her-kids-she-honored-her-parents

(ThinkStock) Photo Credit: Bruce Stanfield

Stacy DeBroff

Stacy DeBroff, founder and CEO of Mom Central.com and social and digital consultancy, Influence Central, is a social media strategist, attorney, and best-selling parenting author. A sought-after expert for national media, she trend-spots regularly with national brands and speaks frequently to national and international audiences on a wide range of subjects, including influencer marketing, social media, entrepreneurship, and consumer trends. A passionate cook, gardener, reader, and tennis player, she adores this new chapter of post-college-age parenting.