Jessica Wilen
Jessica Wilen writes about the collision between working parenthood and modern workplace demands, focusing on how ambition, caregiving, and organizational culture shape people’s daily lives. She is a regular columnist for Fast Company, where she covers working parents, workplace psychology, and women in leadership as part of the masthead’s Creator Network. Her pieces combine a coaching lens with reported insight, turning complex emotional dynamics at work and at home into clear, practical guidance for employees and leaders.
Working parenthood as a second job
On her parenting beat, Wilen treats caregiving as a demanding second job layered on top of paid work, including in her coverage of how summer functions as an extra shift for employees who are also parents when school and childcare routines fall apart. She writes directly about “mom guilt” and the pressure on mothers to meet impossible standards, describing how workplaces and culture reinforce these feelings and outlining concrete steps to move past them. She also reports on how employers handle parental leave, highlighting the specific policies and support that help parents return to work without burning out or derailing their careers.
Across these stories she frames working parenthood as a systemic workplace issue that affects performance, retention, and wellbeing, rather than a private problem for individual families to solve.
Workplace psychology and the cost of overachievement
Much of Wilen’s Fast Company column examines the psychological toll of modern work, especially on high performers. In one piece she challenges the idea that worth is tied to productivity, encouraging readers to decouple self-respect from output and to recognize the narratives that drive overwork and self-criticism.
In another she explores how competence can become a liability, showing how being the “go-to” person traps people in roles that exhaust them and block their growth. She writes about jobs that trigger old fears, connecting workplace reactions to past experiences and offering ways to notice and manage those emotional echoes. She also delves into moments of ambivalence, such as being asked to apply for a promotion while doubting whether it actually serves one’s values or desired life, and outlines how to make decisions that honor both ambition and wellbeing.
This strand of her work consistently focuses on the inner life of professionals and the hidden psychological costs of success.
Trust, communication, and harm at work
Wilen frequently addresses the interpersonal side of work, particularly the line between discomfort and real harm.
In her coverage of workplace bullying, she emphasizes documenting patterns rather than impressions, keeping key communication in writing, and reducing exposure where possible, while also acknowledging the emotional strain that targets experience. She writes about how sparing someone’s feelings can undermine trust, showing that avoiding hard conversations can damage relationships and team cohesion more than direct, respectful honesty. Her approach tends to break down messy scenarios into specific behaviors, decisions, and scripts, giving readers language and frameworks to navigate conflict without minimizing its impact.
Women’s leadership, ambition, and identity
Another recurring thread in Wilen’s work is the experience of women in leadership and the tension between ambition, caregiving, and identity.
Her author bios and columns describe her focus on women’s leadership, working parenthood, and the psychology of work, positioning these as interconnected themes rather than separate beats. In her newsletter A Cup of Ambition, she writes for working parents and uses stories - from everyday career dilemmas to cultural references like Dolly Parton - to explore achievement, motherhood, and building a life that fits. Her coaching and consulting practice extends these interests beyond journalism, and her writing also appears in outlets including National Geographic and The Bump, carrying her perspective on work-life dynamics to broader audiences.
Across these platforms, she returns to questions of how women define success, claim authority, and sustain ambition within systems that often assume uninterrupted careers and limitless availability.
Taken together, Wilen’s body of work centres on the lived experience of working parents and high performers inside contemporary organizations, with a strong emphasis on emotional honesty, clear language, and actionable steps. She writes in a direct, compassionate style that foregrounds the human cost of workplace norms while still speaking to leaders about culture, trust, and sustainable performance.
4 more parenting journalists.
Abigail Shrier
Abigail Shrier is a journalist, columnist at The Free Press, and bestselling author whose work centers on parenting, family relationships, and the cultural forces shaping childhood. She writes the weekly “Tough Love” advice column, where readers send hard personal and family dilemmas and she focuses on concrete situations and practical choices for parents, partners, and adult children. She also publishes essays and reported features on parenting that examine how institutions and professionals influence everyday family life, including criminalization of ordinary parental decisions and therapeutic advice that leads to “no contact” with parents. Her books “Bad Therapy: Why the Kids Aren’t Growing Up” and “Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters” extend her reporting on therapy, gender medicine, and youth. She also covers education, gender, speech, activism, and censorship, approaching these subjects as reported arguments.
Alesandra Dubin
Alesandra Dubin uses parenting to examine how travel, independence, and everyday logistics shape family life. She is a digital travel and lifestyle journalist with more than 15 years’ experience covering parenting, travel, food, events, fashion and beauty, entertainment, home, and viral content for consumer and business outlets. Her work has appeared in Insider, Good Housekeeping, Parents, Esquire, Woman’s Day, Prevention, Glamour, Shondaland, AFAR, and TODAY. Her parenting beat centers on family travel, including flights, camps, hotels, destinations, and the ways parents protect their identity and relationships while caring for children. She also covers practical planning, from room layouts and prices to crowds, tickets, transit, pacing, and family-friendly dining. She reports through candid first-person stories, then draws out clear service advice and emotional insights about care, autonomy, stress, and family dynamics.
Alyson Krueger
Alyson Krueger is a freelance journalist who covers how people live, parent, gather and chase status in contemporary culture through reported narratives anchored in specific communities, events and social scenes. She writes for The New York Times and other publications and has contributed to The New York Times since 2013. Her parenting work centers on fatherhood and family rituals, using observed behavior and everyday routines to show changing family roles. She often reports on urban social life and leisure, including how people socialize and find rest in demanding environments, from city winters to shifting ski seasons. Her business and fashion stories examine the social meaning of wellness practices, marketing with superheroes, playful luxury food and gifting. She also covers major events, weddings and fan culture, paying attention to atmosphere, crowds and what draws people together.
Amie Windsor
Amie Windsor links parenting and everyday family life directly to local policy, community crises and governance decisions. She is the Opinion Editor at The Press Democrat and is described by the masthead as the Community Journalism Team Lead, drawing on nearly a decade in community journalism with sustained coverage of city hall and school boards. She writes opinion columns and reported pieces on parenting under democratic stress, wildfire displacement, transportation planning, law enforcement technology and major energy infrastructure decisions. Her parenting work treats raising children as part of civic life under political instability, showing how structural shifts enter routines, emotional labor and family conversations. Her reporting on biking and walking projects, hybrid police cruisers and dam decommissioning keeps policy and infrastructure grounded in specific projects, residents and public processes, emphasizing civic engagement, community resilience and resident-first coverage.