The biggest moment in anyone’s life is the start of their career. But, when one of the other big moments in life — becoming a mother — happens a year later, the two together can be hard to manage.

For Rhena Bunwaree, account director at Wildfire PR, 2006 was an exciting year as her PR career was starting to take flight. She had just completed a masters degree in corporate communications, and was taking her first graduate role as an account executive for a tech PR agency.

Bunwaree was in the blur of intense, fast-paced agency life, managing multiple clients with high expectations and was of course staying glued to her BlackBerry Mobile.

In 2007, she fell pregnant and took maternity leave, before returning to a new in-house hospitality PR role in 2009. It was then that she unlocked the true meaning of what it means to be successful in PR as a working mother.

The moment

"I was treating motherhood like a side project."

“I was confident I could balance everything. I could navigate different agencies across the globe, so surely, I could be a working mother too,” she muses.

However, while her new role was giving her new leadership opportunities and the ability to hone her strategic PR skills, Bunwaree faced “very long” hours.

One night in particular while breastfeeding her child, taking calls and writing an email simultaneously jumped out at her.

“At first, I tried to power through. I was answering emails while rocking a crying baby and jumping on agency calls while battling sleep deprivation. But something had to give. The breaking point came one evening when I caught myself drafting a press release on my phone while holding my baby, who was desperately trying to get my attention.

“That was the moment I realised: I was treating motherhood like a side project, when in reality, it was the most important role I’d ever take on.”

She remembers that the idea of “stepping back” from her career felt “daunting”.

“PR had been my identity for so long, and I worried about being seen as ‘less committed’ or losing my place in an industry that moves at lightning speed.

“But it wasn’t about adjusting, it was about reevaluating everything and what success really meant. It was not about stepping back, but stepping forward in a new way. It gave me a much clearer sense of purpose.

“I had to redefine success on my own terms and realised that success isn’t about how many hours you clock, it's about the impact you create. For years, I had equated being busy with proving my worth…and I realised that building a sustainable and fulfilling career in PR was far more important.”

The takeaway

"Mothers should feel empowered to embrace their strengths."

Bunwaree now approaches her career with a ‘sustainable’ mindset which she says is about “preventing burnout and saying no to unsustainable workloads.” Prioritising work-life balance has allowed her to continue growing her career while raising a family.

“There’s a cultural shift from PR being all about the hustle culture to focusing on career longevity and meaningful work. Work-life balance is not about working less, it's about working smarter and motherhood helped redefine what ambition looks like.

“The most valuable skill I’ve learned isn’t media relations or crisis management, its boundary setting. There’s a superwoman expectation [of working mothers] to be excelling in their professional and personal lives without compromise , and women in PR often have to prove that motherhood hasn’t slowed them down — I personally felt that pressure.

“There’s also a myth that if you take your foot off the gas your career will suffer, and when you are just starting out in the industry, that fear is amplified.”

She adds that she overcame this by leaning on her personal support network, and actively seeking out professional communities that could help guide her set clear boundaries.

“Fostering a PR community of support and mentorship is really important because one of the biggest challenges for mothers in PR is feeling alone in their struggles. Creating that peer support, mentorship and open conversations really helps dismantle the idea that work-life balance is a personal problem rather than an industry-wide conversation.

“The industry needs strong voices, and mothers should feel empowered to embrace their strengths, set boundaries and redefine success on their own terms."