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The hiring process feels broken, but MomUp is here to fix it. Meet Boston-based recruiter Michelle Keefe and the company making connections for moms and great companies!
On this week’s episode of When Mommy Grows Up, I had the absolute joy of welcoming my friend Michelle Keefe to the show.
If you haven’t met Michelle yet, she’s the powerhouse co-founder and CEO of MomUp, a Boston-based recruitment firm dedicated to connecting companies with exceptional, often overlooked talent (yes, that means you).
Michelle is a Harvard-educated leader who has been recognized by the Boston Business Journal as a Woman Who Means Business, featured in Fast Company and NPR’s Marketplace, and is known for championing equitable workplaces for parents. Beyond the accolades, Michelle is a mom, a dog lover, a yoga enthusiast, and someone who truly gets the lived experience of caregivers navigating career and identity.
And she’s on a mission to change the way hiring happens.
🎧 Listen to the conversation on the When Mommy Grows Up podcast
⬇️ Or read the recap below!
The Origin Story: Why MomUp Exists
Michelle founded MomUp with her co-founder, Reem Papageorgiou, after hearing the same story again and again:
Women were ready to return to work—but the on-ramps were broken.
Moms with degrees, experience, and ambition were hitting wall after wall. Their resumes didn’t fit neatly into chronological boxes. Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) filtered them out before a human ever saw their name. Their skills were wide-ranging but not easily categorized.
Michelle thought: There is an opportunity here to tap into incredible talent.
So MomUp became the conduit, matching companies that needed smart, adaptable people with candidates who were being systemically overlooked.
And here’s the key: MomUp doesn’t work with just any employer.
They partner with small and mid-sized companies that want to think differently, that value humanity over automation, and that are willing to get creative about how roles are structured and filled.
Why Hiring Is Broken and What Needs to Change
If you’ve ever applied for a job online and heard nothing but crickets, Michelle explains exactly why.
Hiring has become overly automated.
“We’ve taken the humanity out of a very human process,” Michelle shared.
ATS systems weed out anyone whose resume doesn’t follow a rigid path. But the world doesn’t work that way anymore. Career paths are nonlinear. Caregiving happens. Illness happens. Industry changes happen. Life happens.
More than ever, people have resumes full of pivots, pauses, and reinventions.
And that requires a human set of eyes, someone who can read between the lines, see a candidate’s strengths, and imagine how they could thrive in a company.
Enter: MomUp.
Small and Mid-Sized Companies: The Hidden Career Gems
One of my favorite parts of this conversation was Michelle’s perspective on the best-kept secret of job searching: small and medium companies.
So many job seekers ignore them because:
- They’ve never heard of them
- They assume they’re unstable
- They think “small” = “startup in a garage”
But as Michelle explains:
“Small and mid-sized companies are often far more flexible, innovative, and aligned with what parents need.”
These aren’t all early-stage tech startups with ping pong tables and beer on tap. Many are decades-old companies (e.g., insurance firms, tech organizations, service providers) that offer stability, great benefits, and much more freedom.
Freedom to negotiate flexibility.
Freedom to combine skills across functions.
Freedom to create roles that fit actual humans.
In other words? A dream for many moms.
Creativity Is the Future of Work
When employers are willing to be creative about job descriptions, about backgrounds, and about work structures, magic happens.
Michelle shared a story of a woman who’d applied for jobs for two years with no luck. Her resume was “nontraditional.” It was broad. Multifaceted. Hard to categorize.
But MomUp saw her strengths. A company saw her strengths. And she landed a role she was perfect for.
Why? Because someone took the time to look beyond the keywords.
And I loved Michelle’s line here:
“We’re not buying t-shirts. We’re trying to build teams.”
YES. YES. YES.
What Moms Want in a Workplace (Spoiler: It’s Not a Beanbag Chair)
Ping pong and happy hours? That might’ve been appealing pre-kids. But Michelle is seeing a very clear set of priorities from parents now:
- Real flexibility
- Hybrid or remote options
- Strong parental leave
- The ability to leave at 3 p.m. and finish work later
- Humanity
Company culture means something different when you’ve got a toddler on your lap during a Zoom call or a kid who needs to be picked up at 2:58 p.m. on the dot.
And MomUp helps assess all of that, including what candidates want, what companies offer, and where the mutually beneficial matches exist.
How Moms Can Tell Their Career Story
We ended our conversation by talking about a topic I LOVE: translating your life and caregiving skills into career language.
Michelle said something I want every mom to hear:
“The traditional resume doesn’t tell your whole story. You need a career narrative that shows who you are and what you bring.”
This is your permission slip to stop trying to squeeze your beautifully messy, rich, varied experience into a narrow box.
Your story is your superpower.
Sometimes you need help polishing that story (hi, that’s me!). Sometimes you need someone like MomUp to share it with employers who are open to hearing it.
But either way, you are not behind. You are not “starting over.” You have so much to offer, and the right company will value exactly what you bring.
Final Takeaway: There Is a Place for You
If you’re a caregiver re-entering the workforce or making a career shift, I hope this episode reminded you:
You’re not alone.
You’re not invisible.
You’re not “less than.”
Your skills are real, valuable, and needed.
There are companies out there that understand. And organizations like MomUp are making those connections happen every day.
If you want to connect with MomUp as a candidate, or if your company is looking to hire incredible talent, definitely check them out at momup.com.
And if you want help crafting your career story, you know where to find me!
Becca Carnahan is a Career Coach, author, and mom of two. Her company, Next Chapter Careers, specializes in helping mid-career parents land fulfilling jobs they love without giving up the flexibility they need.
Becca trained as a career coach at Harvard Business School and has 16 years of experience in the career and professional development field. Find her sharing elder Millennial laughs and career advice on her podcast and in her book both named When Mommy Grows Up!
