Mums in Tech ft. Dr Shivani Shourie

As part of the ‘Mums in Tech’ series, MotherBoard caught up with Dr Shivani Shourie, Product & Strategy leader at Stealth.

The purpose of our ‘MotherBoard’ content series is to highlight incredible working mums within tech, as well as individuals and businesses that are supportive and progressive within their approach to creating more inclusive tech teams for women.

Firstly, can you please introduce yourself and tell us a bit about your current role?

I’m Dr. Shivani Shourie, and right now, I’m in what I call my ‘builder phase’. Very recently, I took a tough decision of intentionally stepping away from my role in product strategy to build something of my own. My background is a bit of a mixed bag—I’ve worked in edtech, tech startups, medical operations, and before all that, spent years in clinical practice. I am using this pause to reset, recalibrate, and really dig into problems I’m passionate about solving. As both a physician and a woman, I’ve spent years noticing gaps in how healthtech serves us, and I decided it was time to stop complaining and start experimenting! So right now, I’m taking time to do proper discovery work and figure out what I want to build. It’s the first time in my career I’m not answering to anyone else’s priorities, which is quite exciting and occasionally terrifying!

If you could sum up what it’s like being a working mum in tech in one sentence, what would it be?

It is like juggling while riding a unicycle and when you don’t drop anything, people just assume juggling isn’t that hard.

How do you find the balance between your career and motherhood?

I’ll let you in on a secret—there is no ‘balance’, it is more of a managed wobble! Some days, I am absolutely crushing it at work and at home and some days, I am the mom who completely forgot the Parent Teacher Meeting at my child’s school. What has helped me is dropping the Instagram-perfect fantasy of having it all together at all times and learning to embrace strategic imperfection—not everything needs to be perfect, some things just need to be done. Making mistakes, taking a pause, are all human and all normal.

Taking this intentional break to build something of my own is also part of trying to find that balance—knowing when to step back from the race to take care of yourself and create something that aligns best with your life. The fact that my teenager now needs me less gives me more time to focus; it is kind of liberating and heartbreaking at the same time.

What has been your greatest challenge as a working mother in tech?

The guilt. Oh, the incessant and absolutely unnecessary guilt! You are always oscillating between ‘Am I not ambitious enough?’ or ‘Am I working too much?’ Tech culture can be brutal and exhausting as there is this expectation of always hustling. Having a child has made me more efficient, more empathetic and frankly, better at prioritising things and filtering out the noise. But having to prove that constantly has been a challenge.

What skills have you developed as a mother that have helped your work life?

Motherhood, in my honest opinion, is the ultimate crash course in management. I can make a big decision in under a minute, steer a conversation back on track without breaking a sweat, and keep going on nothing but coffee and determination. Once you’ve navigated teenage mood swings and late-night existential debates, then a tough stakeholder meeting feels like a walk in the park.

But beyond the humour, motherhood has made me far more empathetic. It has sharpened my instincts for spotting pain points, and it has taught me to pay attention to what people aren’t saying. And maybe most importantly, parenting a teenager has taught me patience and the wisdom to know which battles are worth fighting. Those are pretty useful skills when you’re trying to get alignment with an engineering team or deciding which problem is truly worth solving.

When you were returning to work, what one thing helped you / would have helped you the most?

I think a mentor or a community for support in the transition back to work would have really helped. Having someone who can say, ’You’re doing fine. The messy middle is normal. Your career isn’t over because you had a kid, it’s just evolved.’ Instead, I felt like I was making it up as I went along. A structured support system, not just HR policies, but actual humans who had been there themselves, would have been transformative.

What do you feel should be the top priority for employers who want to support working mothers better?

The top priority for employers who want to support working mothers is to support flexible working and judge the impact of one’s work instead of the hours being put in. Trust people to manage their own time, don’t micromanage. Measure what they deliver, not when they’re online or whether they made every meeting. Real flexibility isn’t just a policy, it’s a fundamental shift in how you define productivity. When employers trust mothers (or any employees for that matter) to structure their work around outcomes rather than optics, they get better results and retain people who can actually drive the business forward.

Any final words of advice for other mothers in the Tech Industry?

Trust what you know and don’t lose your confidence but also give yourself permission to be human—it is okay to not have everything together all the time, it is okay to take a break and it is okay to slow down. Women are expected to be superheroes but they shouldn’t be. Ask for help where needed, fight for your seat at the table and speak out for yourself. And most importantly, find your people. Connect with other mothers in tech—celebrate each other’s wins, help each other through hard times and build the community we all wish we had from the start.

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