Annie Dean (above left) and Anna Auerbach (above right) were strangers living on opposite coasts when they quit their high-powered careers to change the world together.
Connected by a mutual friend over a call that was rescheduled three times, Annie, a “recovering corporate real estate attorney,” and Anna, an immigrant from Kiev who went to Harvard Business School before becoming a McKinsey consultant and social impact COO, bonded over working-mother worries. Though they could have commiserated and carried on with business as usual, they decided instead to disrupt the outdated system.
That’s how Werk was born. The service pre-screens for leadership-track, career-advancing jobs with built-in flexibility so that women don’t have to ramp down, opt out or never see their families. The 600+ openings listed come from the likes of HBO, Deloitte and MM.LaFleur.
“Employees no longer work standard hours in a single space with one parent at home,” reads Werk’s manifesto. “We cannot parent like we don’t have jobs and work like we don’t have children. Flexibility is the highest-impact, lowest-cost tool companies can use to optimize their workforce.” Maybe that’s why Fast Company recognized Werk as one of the Top 11 Innovations That Made Women’s Lives Better in 2017.
Since our mission at Bare Necessities is to lift women up, we’re firmly in favor of Anna and Annie’s script-flipping vision. Read on for how these friends are advocating for women in the workforce on a mass scale. Thanks to them, more of us will be able to “have it all” in the not-so-distant, female-led future.