How Sheila Marcelo is Making Women's Issues Everyone's Issues

who found success their own way. Consider this your real world n b A designed for the new now. I'm Kim Azarelli and thanks so much for joining us today. If you've ever worried about finding care for a child or an elderly relative, Sheila Marcello knows what you're going through and she created a solution. And if you're a woman who wants to rise in her career, Sheila has

the tools and guidance for you. I'm Milan Vervie and I'm talking today to Sheila Marcello, the visionary entrepreneur who founded care dot com, the world's largest online destination for finding and managing family care. Sheila is also the co founder of Landed, a career platform focused on women. Both companies combine her passion for technology with solutions to very contemporary problems. Success might seem a foregone conclusion for Sheila.

After all, in twenty fourteen, she became the youngest ever person to receive the Alumni Achievement Award from Harvard Business School, and just a few years later, care dot Com was acquired by I A c. For five hundred million dollars. But every business journey has its challenges and lessons. Let's get some insights now from Sheila Marcello. Sheila, it is such a pleasure to have you with us today, so excited.

You are truly an extraordinary entrepreneur, and we want to talk about how that came to be uh and all of the things that you've learned along the way that you can impart to our wonderful audience. You have created, founded, co founded several successful companies, including care dot com to help people find elder care and childcare and Landed to help women advance in their careers. Both are critically needed helps today, and you have two companies that you've been

intimately involved in responding to those needs. What has it been in your personal background that enabled you to contribute to the kind of success that you have had as an entrepreneur. Thanks Milan. I'm so excited to be here. As you know you've known me for a long time. I was born and raised in the Philippines, and um interestingly, I have what I call a tiger mom very proudly and a teddy bear dad, so sort of the counter stereotypes.

But what makes it so unique is that the Philippines, as you know, you and I have been very involved in helping the world economic form with their gender reports that the Philippines is one of the top ten countries in the world with the narrowest gender gap. It's unique for an Asian country. And so my parents always allowed my sister and I and I have four other brothers along with my sister, to pursue our passions. There was

never a sense of stereotypes. I remember as a young girl, my father was teaching me math to Gray Aids earlier than my older brothers, and we were doing the same math class because he just believed in us and was always encouraging. And my father even taught me to read early at a very young age and had to read in front of friends and guests. So it was always sort of highly encouraged to pursue education and our passions. The second thing I think my parents imparted in me

was their very entrepreneurial We owned trucking company. Uh we distributed sugar grow coconuts, had rice mills, you name it, duck farms, mangoes, bananas, and so through through our lives growing up, my parents never wanted us to be entrepreneurs. It was a hard life. So at six kids, everybody had designated professions. There was going to be a doctor, a dentist, and accountant and engineer, a lawyer. You know. My younger brother got Scott free whatever he wanted to do.

But I was a designated lawyer, and interest ly enough, out of undergrad I got into Harvard Law School. I actually paused it for a little bit, and I didn't want to disappoint my parents, but I fell in love with business, and amongst everyone in my family, I ended

up becoming the entrepreneur. And the reason for that, Milan, was because I started teaching at HBS and I got introduced to grading internet business plans, and I decided that, like, this is really interesting and it could create impact in the world. Because the last sort of thing around what my parents taught me was, um, you know, one of the most memorable experience I had my life was we had went back and forth between the United States and

the Philippines because my parents were entrepreneurs. And so in fifth grade they sent me back to a provincial school in the Philippines because I had forgotten the language, and and I remember how hard that was. They made us stand up and read Intagalog and I was embarrassed. And but but we also learned a lot of different things. We cleaned the classroom floors with our hands. We would get down on our hands and knees and scrub it with the husk of a coconut. I'm really good at

cleaning floors today. It's a really good lesson. But they really exposed us to hard work and a sense of humility and probably something my friend Brian Stevenson always emphasizes, which is proximity that at a young age, inclusiveness was really important for my family and a life dedicated to impact.

And so I would say that combination of that unique experience growing up in the Philippines, being exposed to the province, and just having this sort of tenacity and grit that my parents had as entrepreneurs I think really has been indelible in my life. You know, it's such an interesting story of one person's ascent in many ways. And while you did become that lawyer they had hoped you'd become,

you certainly became an extraordinarily successful businesswoman. And it's fascinating to hear how these very fundamental lessons like those you just conveyed that you inherited from your parents have had this lasting impact on you. So let's fast forward just a tiny bit from those years, uh to your starting care dot com. You did that in two thousand and six,

and I wonder where did the idea come from? Because what you undertook was something truly exceptional, I think, and it was seeing the need and responding to that need through technology. What did it take to get there? How did care dot com work? What steps did you take to create just an enormous business? You know? I I wish that I had the vision in the road map at a young age and knew that I was going to build care, But actually what end up happening is

I got pregnant in college. I wanted to be an investment banker and a consultant and my parents were really pushing, of course, to be a lawyer. UM. And after business school, UM, I started to realize that in you know, grading internet business plans, there was something about the power of the Internet to help people. And here I was as a young mother going through undergrad, my jobs, between undergrad and

grad school, through my career and then grad school. When I did my j d NB at Harvard, we struggled. We struggled with care And fast forward when I graduated from HBS and decided after my teaching stint there that I wanted to go join an internet company. I begged my parents to come from the Philippines to actually care for our youngest son, Adam, And as he was going up the stairs my dad was caring for my son.

That afternoon, I got a call from my mother, frantic at work that my my father had fell backwards UM holding the baby because he had had a heart attack. And so I think this combination of being sandwich in our space, that's being sandwich between childcare and senior care at such a young age at twenty nine, made me start to realize that I wasn't alone in all of this. There's so many other millions of families and especially women

that are impacted. And I remember I was working in a technology company and yet I was using the Yellow Pages I'm dating myself to look for care because there weren't a lot of other solutions. UM and back then Classified were going out of business. Craigslist was just beginning and it wasn't really reliable. You weren't going to go there to look for care. And oh yes, church and the y m c A or the local swimming pool.

I could put up an eight and a half by eleven and have those little tag ear things that you could peel off. I mean, they're just so technology. I saw had a real potential because I was working for a company that was helping families save money for college called you Promise, and so was a great training ground for me to understand. But the real personal pain point that I went through was something that really inspired me to say, I'm not alone in all of this, and

as I said, many women are impact in front. My dear friend I Gin Pooh, who you know well, has been fighting for domestic workers and she often says it care is what makes all other work possible because it is the underpinning. It's just like roads and bridges. You know, you have to invest in that infrastructure to help women work because the challenges are care costs is high. Caregivers,

a majority of which are women. You know, the average pay eleven dollars an hour, I mean, whereas golf caddies or what making fifteen an hour just doesn't kind of add up. And then there are these care deserts. There's just not even enough spots for kids around the country for care for women to pursue work. And then I haven't even layered in senior care. So all of that I call I consider sort of the econ I'm excited of care as opposed to the soft love tendency of

how people call the industry that we're in. I don't really understand that this is actually one of the critical issues and drives sort of the problems around an economic crisis if you're not investing in this infrastructure. So you had asked me, what does care dot Com due today? You know, it's basically simple. It's matching families with caregivers. Majority of the platform are moms, and caregivers are also women, so it's actually really serving women. But ultimately it's about

servicing families and caregivers. Before I left in February, we had more than thirty million members and over twenty countries. So the way they think about that is every three minutes a family finds care on the platform and a

caregiver finds a job. Well, you know, you're not only created a solution, but you've just made the most compelling case for why we need to address the whole issue of affordable, available, and quality healthcare that people can count on, and increasingly elder care, which we know is another huge imperative for our society. So you came up with this very innovative solution. But we know building a company is

accompanied with a lot of struggle. So tell us what was it like, What was the hardest part in those early days, and what did you do to get strength so that you could keep going. I think the full journey, though I very much enjoyed it and learned, was difficult. Exactly what you're asking Land, I'd say. In the early days, even at the start of the company, I was worried about how I was going to be perceived. I had

my d d NBA at Harvard. Here I was going to run A good friend of mine who was in an investment bank when I went to get advice from her and said, you're going to run a babysitting company with your experience. And I was so in secure about running a company focused on women that I was really worried that men weren't going to take me seriously. And a very male mentor came up to me and it took me out to lunch and said, are you in

the pain business or you the pleasure business. I didn't really know what that meant, but what he was really pushing me to really think about, milanas, how do you stay true to yourself? A pain businesses look, you like to solve consumer problems. Saving for college is not that fun, right? And after you left, you promise you went to help help at the ladders to help people find jobs. That wasn't fun either, right, But that's what you're passionate about.

Because at the time I was weighing running a mobile company sort of in the entertainment space, and and that real advice I took home, I slept on and woke up the next day. I was like, I have to stay true to myself. So I think the beginning many young founders when they're starting companies there's this insecurity that sets in around how you're perceived or gaining a sense of confidence to be true to who you are. So

that definitely was there in the beginning. And then as we were scaling Care, some people said why wasn't this a nonprofit and because somehow what was wrong with with a you know, pursuing profitability with a comparable goal of social good? And I started to realize part of my role wasn't just the mission of Care, it was breaking the mold that this was doable as a public company, that we could scale this as a solution, and that

you could have a double bottom line. You know, we call those bea corps now, but this was before they were around. We were starting care dot com. So it's an interesting sort of push that you had to do to just prove to people that yes, you know, this

is possible. And more and more I try to spend time with social entrepreneurs and then even I, I know you asked me the question, you know, like in the early days, what was surprising to me, Milan is that the challenge of the of convincing the perception of men to realize the opportunity of investing in female focus businesses not only started throughout all my fundraising of the hundred million private hundred fifty million public was even when we

were public, we were running into issues. I remember an analyst taking aside on a my non deal road show preparing to go public, and said to me, you know you're going to run into problems? Is is a male analysts one of the top ones in Wall Street? And I said why? He said, because there's a fundamental dilemma that male analysts won't understand the product because they don't ultimately use it. So interestingly enough, the profile when Open Table came out is similar to yours, except they go

to restaurants. They know how to book that stuff. It matters to them. But many young male analysts don't have children, aren't worried about their parents, they don't even have likely dogs or plants, because they're committed to their jobs. Right, So you're going to have to figure out how do you make this issue proximate to who you're selling it to. And so those challenges we're with me all the way through until the very end, in fact, and it's a

very interesting thing. And and I know that that we've got to change that, we've got to figure out ways in which men become more proximate to the issues that women face. Well, you know, I think maybe COVID has changed that a little bit. It may be one of the bright lights out of it, if I can say that about a pandemic, because we're certainly much more aware today of just how difficult it is to juggle all of this um and many of the the men who are aware of these challenge is are seeing it in

a very proximate way. I dare say I completely agree. But you know, it's so interesting to listen to you because you're right. You anticipate that these struggles are going to come early on, but as you so well said in your experience, these stay with you. As an entrepreneur, You're always thinking of that next challenge, that next piece, what else do you have to do to overcome and thrive. But care dot Com did thrive. It was thriving continues obviously,

and you started another company, landed. So how did that come about and how did you juggle both companies? You know, it's really interesting. I care dot Com launched a product

called Carrot Work. I would say it's probably year four of our thirteen years stint at that company, and Carrot Work was providing benefits for employees, and I would meet with h r os and CEOs and CFOs and often they would say, we love care as a solution for our employees to make sure that they show up at work and they could be present at work, but we

really have a problem with the pipeline of women. We start off fift when they're young, and then of course when you know, when they're in the corner office, it's getting into the single digit percentage. And I said, wow, that's that's a real problem. We know it, but that's a different business from care dot com. Because they were asking me, you know, should you launch a different product.

I had the fortunate experience that I joined an Aspen Crown Fellowship class and allowed me to really search and go deeper around impact. And it happened that in my class, my HBS classmate from business school, a Lisa Skate Tatum, was also in my Crown Fellowship class and she had been contemplating the same issues about the pipeline problem. The third thing that happened is Milan also was in my life, who I remember we're telling me, who said to me, the care issue is such a big issue to help

women focus on it. So the way to do that it allowed me to focus on it is really worked with Lisa where she became, you know, my co founder on land It, and it has just been incredible at really pursuing the shared mission and vision we had. So we came together to found the company, and it's allowed both of us by the way we're both women that

integrate our work and life together. We both juggle running companies, we trade a lot of notes, were there for each other, we support each other, and so I I found this such an incredible satisfaction of being a board member and a founder of something I saw that other female founders, unleashing their own potential, could pursue their passion and I can impart the journey that I've been on on care to how to scale those platforms they themselves can make

a big impact as well. It's something that's so near and dear to me around working with female founders and Landed has just been such a joy, and I'm just thrilled that Lisa is making such this huge impact in the world that she really wanted to. Well, that's terrific, and you know, I know personally just how much you care about women developing their leadership skills and going on to enjoying great success that is commensurate with the potential

of so many. So you left care in two thousand and nineteen, and you are, by any account, UH a force of nature. So what is Sheila focusing on now? UM? I would say certainly adhering to quarantine. And I had planned to travel sabbatical, but I've been doing my Quarantine sabbatical, but my kids tease me that it's not really sabbatical because now I'm launching a couple of ventures with with a few female founders UM to continue again to unleash

their power. I'm super excited. One of them is focused on girls, and I'm just excited to build new companies built by amazing female founders. And by the way, that includes for profit and not for profit, because I think impact can be achieved in many different ways and and my goal is how can I help in any way to scale that that what is in the hearts of

other people to help people UM. And then specifically, one nonprofit I'm super proud to be helping right now is Him for Her by Jocelyn mangan Um and it's putting women on boards. Uh, So it's something I'm super excited about to continue to support her. Uh. Some of the companies are still stealth, but it should be announced within the year. It sounds terrific. Will all be awaiting those

announcements with eager anticipation. I had mentioned earlier COVID Uh, and you just talked about how you're abiding by all the protocols and staying on the ground, which is rare, rare for you. So how has it affected your work otherwise? Has it brought on any particular challenges? Have you had to make any major pivots outside of what you described in terms of really not doing all of that extensive travel that you had anticipated in this period, but you've

put it to good use. It sounds like yeah, certainly, going from a twenty four seven job running a public company to then, you know, reducing travel in the hours and all the inbound requests of my time, I've had a real opportunity to do a lot of meditation, yoga, just a self awareness time for myself. Just been a gift. I hadn't had this in over twenty years because I've just been running and gunning. But what's interesting about COVID

has certainly has been silver linings, is it. It's also, as you pointed out, it's allowed a lot of people to open their eyes at the juggle is really hard, and I'm seeing with a lot of my zoom calls in also my male friends sharing with me that they're now at the front seat to see this juggle of work life balance. I used to have to hit people over the head to tell them that care was really important. They're realizing that it is definitely essential. Work at the

corner office is seeing it a lot too. Um So this proximity that you described earlier, I believe it's a real silver lining in the care industry, and it's one of the nonprofits that I founded and ran, and I do want to thank I a C for helping seed that with me as a way that they honored my founding of care dot com. I a C bought care dot come earlier this year. As you know, is that the Care Institute is really focused around how do we influence the specific issue right now because it is top

of mind for people. How do we use this moment because care is top of mind, because we really can't help women At the same time that I'm working on that nonprofit. It's really to train caregivers. I also see this huge need for Landed. Lisa and I are all over that UM and Landed not only to help women, but especially also people of color with everything that's happening in the world, especially with post George Floyd and the

Black Lives Matter movement. So I think there are silver linings in difficulty and challenges and really finding ways how we can make a broader impact. So terrific to hear. I want to ask you one final question because I think your role in UM the tech field really it's

still fairly unique for women. We know that women in technology have faced continue to face so many challenges, Yet your companies have been technology based, and I think that's been part of the success and visionary in many many ways. How can we, Sheila, get more women in technology to succeed in the field and overcome some of the constraints that are strown in their past. It's definitely something in my nineties that I want to make sure is completely

different from what we have now. Listen, as you've heard often the answer is having more female vcs. It's it's just it's so upsetting that in the top hundred firms, we're still seeing eight percent of partners or women. It results in these blind spots because you know, I don't know why in this day and age, we have to still convince people that gender inclusivity has a positive economic r O. I right, it's just it's it's it's just shocking.

You know. We have this rule in a consumer business that ultimately, when you're designing a product, you have to be open with the design of it because you have to be objective and data driven because ultimately you're designing something probably not for you. Um. And so I'm always you know, perplexed when I talk to my male VC friends to say, you know, it should be the same when you invest. It shouldn't be about something that you have to fully understand you as a consumer to understand

the economic opportunity. So it's a really interesting thing. And so and then the other thing is advice that I have for female entrepreneurs. It's really important. First look, We've heard it from from so many other amazing women, So I'm not I'm not first to say believe in yourself and make sure you have a voice of the table. One of the things I did early is invest in my own self awareness in that journey. I can tee to do that with meditation. I'm working on being a

bound once as a corporate athlete. With my health, especially now as I'm entering into my menopausal age, is really important to get that energy level right. UM that challenges you will face. I wanted to share one of the one of these last few stories with you. I remember we were we were traveling around again for a non deal roadshow for I P O and we flew into this um private airport and and they're just back to

back meetings Milan. So I rented the bathroom. So I'm a little late for the meeting, and because we didn't have enough sleep, I go into the room and I pour myself a cup of coffee in the conference room with investors, and of course I offer everybody coffee because I feel like I was raised well that's my you know, my mom and dad would say that's what you should be doing. And so of course when the handshakes came around, they you know, my CTO UM shook his hand, mail

ct O r CFO shook his hand. They got to me and they said, you must be the assistant from the bank, and I politely said, no, I'm Sheila Lerio Marcello, very nice to meet you. I'm founder, chairwoman and CEO of care dot Com. And and then we proceeded with the meeting. I didn't miss a beat. I decided I wasn't going to assault the wound. I think they felt

embarrassed enough as it is. I decided in those instances, in these moments I have and I've gotten so many stories like this, I just take the high road because my hope is that they were impressed. I believe they did invest in the I p O. And my hope is that they themselves become better at addressing this unconscious bias by seeing the role modeling that hopefully the next woman that's in front of them, they're not going to

assume she's the assistant from the bank, right. I just I just think I'm advising women that they will face these challenges and so they need to think about what role are you playing as a role model for the next woman. This happens too. That's for of the way that I think about things. How can I make an impactum paying it forward the next time around? And lastly, this is very specific to female entrepreneurs. As you ask

me how do we get more women in tech? I often advise female entrepreneurs always be pitching for your next round. What do I mean by that? If you're raising a seed round, make sure the quality of your deck, it's as if you're raising for an A round. If you're raising for an A round, make sure the quality of your deck is raising for a B round. Why because the bar is high. Beat it, delight them, surprise them, you know, beat out that unconscious bias. That's what we

need to be doing. And be confident in what you're doing, believe in it, stay true to who you are, and pursue what's in your heart. Oh, Sheila, this has been just such a great conversation, and I am so grateful, as I know our audiences for all of the good advice you convey today, for your contributions from your businesses, because they have indeed created great social value. And I think you're right. I think care today is top of mind.

At least we can hope that it's top of mind and we do more to understand why it's such a critical issue. So grateful to hear how you continue to use your power for purpose and much success, and we will look forward to all of those exciting announcements that are coming in the future. Thank you, Sheila Marcello so much. Thanks Milann, what an inspiring conversation. Sheila has so many lessons we can learn from. Here are three things that

particularly stuck with me. First, even today, women entrepreneurs often have to persuade male investors that women focused projects are worthwhile. But when you persist as Sheila did, you can build a business that makes a real difference in the world old Second, no matter the industry, it's important to remember that many so called women's issues, such as childcare, are really everyone's issues and they can have a ripple effect

throughout the economy. And finally, pursue what matters. Imagine the incredible things you can accomplish when you have a life dedicated to purpose. See you next week. Made by Women is brought to you by the Seneca Women Podcast Network and I Heart Radio, with support from founding partner PNG