Thriving New Mama

“I already knew my impact in the world.”

When Jiezhen became a mom, she was already a leadership coach, Harvard graduate, and impact-driven entrepreneur.

But motherhood ushered her into an entirely new season—one where identity, purpose, and priorities were stretched, stripped back, and rebuilt.

“My daughter broke me in the best way possible,” she shares. “She broke all my ideas of who I needed to be… and helped me put it back together.”

Who Is Jiezhen? Beyond a wife, mother, leadership coach, community leader…

Today, Jiezhen is a wife, mother of two, and leadership coach. She is also the founder of Mindful Mama Walks, a ground-up community that began as a simple space for new moms to connect and walk together. What started as a few casual strolls has blossomed into a vibrant collective, where fellow moms initiate sub-groups around shared interests—like homeschooling, healthy meals, or simply doing life together.

But Jiezhen is more than the roles she plays. She is shaped by the values, attitudes, and lived experiences that fuel her work and motherhood.

“At the core of it all, I feel like I am someone that is really about how we can bring the best—whether that’s people, ideas, or goodness—together to really see how we can live our best and fullest lives… to live in alignment with our values and to have an impact in the world.”

Motherhood expanded her understanding of impact.

“Impact doesn’t have to be big. It’s also in the micro moments in between—with your family, with your partner, with yourself—about how we make a positive impact and how that ripples out to the world.”

This redefinition of impact challenged her to design her life in a more integrated, intentional way. The Possibility Playbook, her coaching practice, was birthed from this journey. It now helps women move beyond the binary of career vs. caregiving, guiding them to design their own “both/and” life—where parenting and your life’s work can co-exist in creative, expansive ways.

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What if we saw our motherhood journey as the greatest leadership training ground?

To Jiezhen, parenting is one of the greatest leadership development opportunities.

“How do we lead this newcomer into becoming the fullest version of themselves, without controlling or dimming their light? That’s leadership.”

She likens motherhood to the concept of “adaptive leadership,” where we confront what no longer serves us and let go of outdated stories about who we’re supposed to be.

“Who we think we are evolves from the stories we’ve been told about ourselves, and the stories we tell ourselves. As we think about how we lead, whether that’s our families or organizations, what kind of stories do we want to bring with us and what stories are we ready to leave behind?”

There is necessarily a process of letting go. For Jiezhen, this meant grieving the loss of independence and rewriting the story she had long feared—that motherhood would erase her.

“My fear around motherhood was always the loss of freedom and autonomy because I’ve always been very independent. I have always loved my own space. I used to travel a lot for work or just travel in general. Just get up and go do your own thing. You don’t really have to answer to anyone.

And then I knew with a new baby coming into the world that suddenly my life was going to be different. Was I ready for that?”

She wasn’t alone in that fear. Many high-functioning women—used to independence, movement, and ambition—grapple with the fear that motherhood will swallow them whole.

But Jiezhen chose a different story.

#1 Most POWERFUL Mindset Shift for Moms: From Default to Design

“In coaching and leadership, what we always talk about the difference between living life by default and living life by design.

When we live life by default, life happens to us. And when we live by design, we’re shaping the way life is happening, so that happens for us.

And I think it’s that shift that allows us to take radical responsibility for whatever circumstance we’re in, rather than to just accept that “I can’t just because,” you are tuned in to find new and creative solutions or pathways to create the life that we want to have.

There’s always a way.“

This is the shift so many mothers need—not more tips, but permission to believe that their needs, dreams, and motherhood can belong in the same life.

With that mindset, Jiezhen and her husband made a conscious decision:

“Our kids wouldn’t stop us from being who we are. Instead, we’d integrate them into our life.”

That choice didn’t just shape their parenting—it reshaped their family culture. They brought their firstborn along to events and conferences, made naps-on-the-go the norm, and built a rhythm that honored both the needs of their child and their own desires to keep growing, contributing, and living fully.

The Power of Partnership

One of the anchors in Jiezhen’s journey thus far has been her husband.

“I’m so grateful for my husband. We dream together, we reflect together. Having someone to bounce ideas off and evolve with has been invaluable.”

Their alignment in parenting and shared conversations about what kind of life they want to build as a family have laid the foundation for navigating change together.

Ready for a transformative episode on motherhood and leadership?

🎧 Listen to the full conversation with Jiezhen on the Thriving New Mama Podcast
📥 Download 12 powerful conversation prompts to reconnect with your partner

Together, these are small steps that can help you move from overwhelm to empowerment—and start designing your own version of thriving in motherhood.