I’m Deborah Porter, Workplace Parent Consultant and certified Fair Play Presenter. I partner with leading global organizations to address a critical gap in today’s workforce: retaining and optimizing the impact of working parents and caregivers—one of the most valuable and often overlooked talent groups. Through keynotes, workshops, and consulting, I equip organizations to build cultures of care that strengthen workforce stability and sustain performance across the caregiving life cycle. My background includes work as a criminal investigator, which shapes how I approach problems. I’m an empty nester with 3 adult children, so I bring both professional expertise and lived experience to the work I do around caregiving, the mental load, and family transitions. Originally from New York, my husband and I now live in Northern Virginia.
Don’t delay, do it now. Things can shift and change on the family calendar in an instant; a sick child, a forgotten commitment. So if I have something in front of me that can be completed in 20 minutes or less, I do it now.
Delegate, don’t abdicate. Hand over full ownership of a task, with clear standards and a check-in rhythm. This is the practical core of handing kids, or a partner, real responsibility rather than just tasks.
Ahhh. My family affectionately calls me “The General”.
I used to tell my kids that I wasn’t one of their friends. That they had plenty of friends and I needed to stand firm in my role as parent. Well, now that they are adults, I love being with them in fun and intentional ways, that leans and feels like friendship.
My background as a criminal investigator taught me to look at all the evidence before drawing conclusions — a skill that turned out to be just as essential in parenting as it was in the field. It’s also shaped how I coach other parents: where is the scene of the crime? Home or work? Who did (or is doing) what? These are all investigative skills that I apply to family life.
Becoming a parent — and navigating the mental load of running a household — fundamentally shaped how I think about leadership and ownership. I saw firsthand how easy it is for responsibility to default to one person simply because they’re tracking it, not because they’re the only one capable of doing it. That realization became central to my work: real leadership isn’t about doing everything yourself, it’s about making sure ownership is clear, visible, and fairly distributed. It’s the same principle I now teach organizations through Fair Play — whether it’s a household or a team, things run better when everyone knows exactly what they own, not just what they’re “helping” with.
We cannot leave our parenting hat at the door when arriving to work. The concerns, decisions and responsibilities of that role go with us right into the workplace. I think more employers understand this and are creating spaces for parents (and caregivers) through employee resource groups. The concern is the number of organizations that are dismantling their ERGs.
Right now, success looks like building something of my own that reflects everything I’ve learned — as a parent, as a former investigator, as someone who’s navigated the mental load firsthand. It’s less about proving myself and more about using this season, with a quieter house because of the empty nest phase and doing meaningful work that actually helps families carry their load a bit more fairly. Success also means giving myself permission to embrace and enjoy this chapter, not just survive it.
It’s hard to name just one, a “Named Backup” policy — every working parent has a designated, trained backup at work who can step in seamlessly, no scrambling, no guilt, when a kid is sick, a school calls, or a caregiving emergency hits. Right now, most workplaces treat these moments as individual crises the parent has to solve alone and apologize for. Building real backup coverage into how teams operate — the same way we plan for vacation or parental leave — would remove so much of the invisible stress working parents carry, and it would normalize caregiving as something the whole system supports, not just something one person quietly manages. If I could choose a second, it would be the reinstatement of Work From Home without any mandatory Return to Office policies.
As a criminal investigator, my work was in the field; looking for and interviewing potential witnesses, taking pictures of crime scenes, etc. At about 8 months pregnant I felt more vulnerable than I had at any other time. It was then that I decided to take a career pause.
I had a small but mighty (and amazing) community of friends throughout my early parenting years. Coordinating who was picking up my daughter (we only had her at the time), making sure the emergency contact list was updated and asking for their help when needed. When a friend picked up my daughter, they would feed and bathe her. I would get there as soon as I was able and once home, put her to bed. We cannot underestimate the power of community while parenting.
