She's been fighting pregnancy discrimination for 2 years, and she won't quit.
You've probably been told that if something bad happens at work, you only have two choices: sign the settlement and move on, or fight and watch your life fall apart for the next decade.
But nobody tells you what happens when you choose option three: refuse to be silenced, build something bigger than your anger, and change the system while you're at it.
This is Beth Warner's story, a story of feeling trapped between doing what's "easier" and doing what's right.
The moment everything changed
Beth was eight months pregnant when she got fired.
Fired, before the end of her probation period, from a job she'd been recruited for, at a company that knew she was pregnant when they hired her.
They told her it was because of "performance issues”. Convenient timing, right?
Most people in this situation take the settlement. Sign the NDA. Move on with their lives because fighting feels impossible, expensive, and soul-crushing.
Beth refused.
Two years later, she's still in it. Her human rights case could take another six years. And instead of just surviving, she built Mother Cover—a company that's preventing this from happening to other parents by completely reimagining how companies handle parental leave.
What it actually costs to fight
When Beth filed her human rights complaint, her lawyer told her: this could take six years.
Six. Years. All because: the system isn't built for humans.
Even when you want to, you can't let it go because you need to remember every single detail. Every conversation. Every email. Every moment matters because their job is to discredit you.
You're not allowed to move forward because you're constantly being dragged back into the trauma. An email from their lawyer. A mediation session where you have to see their face. Preparing for the next phase of a case that feels endless.
And the worst part is that almost everyone tells you to just settle. Take the money. “Just move on.”
But Beth realized that signing away your voice doesn't actually make the trauma go away. It just means you suffer in silence.
The "oh shit" moment every company has
Beth talks about the moment when someone announces they're pregnant at work.
The manager says, "Congratulations!" The door closes. And everyone in the room thinks: Oh shit. How are we going to handle this?
Here's the problem: This happens every single time. Even at companies with good intentions.
As soon as you say congratulations, your brain immediately goes to:
How do we staff this?
How do we handle their projects?
What does this mean for the team?
Does this mean extra work for me?
Instead of just being happy for your employee, you're in panic mode.
And that's exactly why Mother Cover exists.
What is Mother Cover?
Mother Cover is an agency that provides interim and fractional professionals to step in during parental leaves.
But it's not just staffing. It's a complete system for how companies should handle leave.
Here's what makes it different:
1. It's all they do
They're not a recruiting firm that places someone and disappears. They're not a consulting agency that does leaves on the side. This is their entire focus.
2. They've built a roster of senior professionals
Over 100 leave partners with 10+ years of experience across HR, finance, operations, marketing, and sales. These aren't junior coordinators trying to figure things out. These are experts who know how to step in seamlessly.
3. They handle the entire transition
From onboarding the leave partner, to documenting everything during the leave, to re-onboarding the parent when they return. The part most companies completely drop the ball on.
4. They protect the person's professional reputation
This is huge. Leave partners are trained to keep the person's name spoken in rooms they're not in. To honor their strategy. To present ideas as building on the parent's work, not replacing it.
The parent going on leave doesn't have to worry that someone's going to take their job or erase their contributions.
Why your workforce planning is stuck in 1974
Companies plan for literally everything.
Holiday staffing. Economic downturns. Summer vacations. Back-to-school season.
Everything except parental leave. Every single time, it's treated like a scramble.
Beth puts it this way: We plan for leaves the same way we did in the 1960s and 70s. When women weren't a huge part of the workforce. When one parent stayed home.
That's not the reality anymore. Dual-income families are the norm. Women care about their careers. Parents want both.
But our infrastructure hasn't caught up.
Companies are running lean. So when someone goes on leave, the work gets dumped on everyone else. Nobody's happy. The team resents the extra workload. The person on leave feels guilty. And when they return, nothing's been documented.
Mother Cover's approach: Treat parental leave like succession planning. Build it into your workforce plan. Budget 1% of your salary line for leave coverage. Stop treating it like a crisis.
The business case for doing this right
Here's what Beth tells the corporate leaders who push back:
One-third of women leave their jobs within 18 months of returning from parental leave.
Most of them leave because they didn't feel supported during their leave.
Think about the cost of that:
You lose your most talented women right when they're ready to step into leadership
You have to recruit and train replacements
Your team experiences turnover and instability
Clients churn because accounts weren't properly managed during leave
Now compare that to: 1% of your salary budget to prevent all of that.
What "fractional" actually means (and why it works better)
Mother Cover does full-time placements, but most of their work is fractional.
Fractional means: You're getting a fraction of someone's time. 20 hours a week. 30 hours a week. Whatever makes sense.
Why this works better than full-time backfill:
1. Budget: You can afford someone way more senior if you're only paying for 25 hours a week instead of 40.
2. Quality: The people doing this work are fractional by choice. They're not looking for full-time jobs. They won't bail halfway through to take a permanent role.
3. Experience: These are portfolio career professionals. They've done this before. They know how to step in, get up to speed, and deliver.
Beth's seen it over and over: companies hire someone junior because they think they can only afford that. Then when something changes or a crisis hits, that person isn't equipped to handle it.
Better approach: Hire someone with 20 years of experience for 20 hours a week. They can handle anything that comes up. And you're not overpaying.
The transition nobody talks about
Beth says the part companies completely ignore is re-onboarding.
Everyone focuses on:
Documenting everything before the leave
Training the person stepping in
Making sure projects don't fall apart
But when the parent returns? Crickets.
But there’s no plan when the parent returns. Crickets. No documentation of what happened while they were gone. No transition meetings. Just: "Welcome back! Here's everything that's on fire."
Mother Cover's approach:
The leave partner creates breadcrumbs. Documentation of decisions made, context for why things happened, updates on team dynamics.
When the parent returns, they're not walking into chaos. They're getting a handoff that respects their time and their role.
What keeps her going
Beth gets dragged back into it every time something comes up—an email from their lawyer, a mediation session, preparing for the next phase…
She can't let it go because she needs to remember every detail. Her professional reputation is on the line. Their job is to discredit her.
But she won’t just settle.
She told me: "Signing a settlement doesn't actually make it go away. It just means you suffer in silence. I'd rather tell success stories about companies doing it right than keep telling this one."
That's what Mother Cover is becoming. Proof that there's a better way. That you can support parents without sacrificing your business. That policy alone isn't enough, you need practice.
The real cost of doing nothing
Beth knows companies with incredible parental leave policies—18 months paid, full benefits, everything—that still lose women after they return.
Because policy doesn't equal practice.
You can have all the policies in the world. But if your culture treats parental leave like a burden, if managers panic every time someone announces a pregnancy, if parents return to chaos with no support—those policies are meaningless.
The cost of not fixing this:
You lose talent right when they're ready for leadership
Your teams burn out covering for people on leave
Parents feel guilty and unsupported
Your "family-friendly" culture is just branding
What it takes to actually change:
Infrastructure. Planning. Systems. Support.
The same things you'd build for any other predictable business challenge.
What Beth is still figuring out
Beth is still figuring out how to teach her daughter that work isn't just "paying for diapers."
Ruby's two now. She's starting to notice when Beth leaves for work. And Beth caught herself making jokes like, "Well, somebody's gotta pay for your diapers!"
But she's realizing: That's not the message she wants to send.
She wants Ruby to see that Beth works because she's passionate about it. Because she's proud of what she's building. Because changing systems matters.
Not because she has to. Because she wants to.
Want to hear more about fighting pregnancy discrimination, why our human rights system is broken, and how Mother Cover is reimagining workforce planning?
This conversation came from my podcast episode with Beth Warner, founder of Mother Cover and one of the most resilient humans I know. We went deep on what it actually costs to fight a discrimination case, why Europe's approach to NDAs should be our model, and how she's building a company that prevents this from happening to other parents.