Forced Into Hope

She was a new mom, weeks postpartum, when she got fired. No warning. No plan. Just a career she’d spent 18 years building — gone.

Kathleen Borgueta wasn’t supposed to become a founder. She was supposed to go back to work at USAID, where she’d overseen global health programs across 15 countries in East and Central Africa, managed COVID vaccine rollouts, and built cold chain infrastructure in Somalia. She had a plan for what kind of working mother she was going to be.

Then the dismantling started.

In this episode, Kathleen joins host Leah Petit to talk about what it really feels like to be fired, publicly called a villain, and left to rebuild your identity — while keeping a newborn alive. She also talks about what she built from the rubble: Pivoting Parents, a 1,200-member global community for laid-off parents refusing to disappear quietly.

This is a conversation about agency — in foreign aid, in motherhood, and in deciding what you do when the thing you built your life around is taken from you.

“There are a lot of days that hope feels false. But having a child and being invested in my community and invested in the global community forces me to have hope for the future.”

Follow Kathleen: LinkedIn, Instagram, and www.pivotingparents.com

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