Helen Mayer

It was May 2020, and Helen Mayer looked out the window of her Boston apartment to a city transformed. The silenced streets and boarded-up restaurants echoed the disruptions that COVID-19 had imposed on Mayer’s own life. That March, her first startup—a texting application designed to help first-generation college students navigate college life—had shuttered as universities closed and students returned home. Days later, her 16-month-old twins’ daycare shut down.

While her then-partner continued to work, Mayer was suddenly unemployed and stuck in a too-small city apartment entertaining their sons. Between hours making play goop from cornstarch, Mayer searched for a job. Finally, she found one, but the problem then became childcare. Even in a city like Boston, the options were limited and prohibitively expensive.

Mayer was forced to turn down the job offer, simply because she could not find childcare. During her sons’ nap time, Mayer began canvassing online parenting groups to see how other families were faring. She quickly realized she wasn’t alone. Story after story detailed parents, overwhelmingly women, driven out of the workforce because they could no longer find or afford decent childcare. According to the National Women’s Law Center, more than two million women were forced to leave their jobs during the pandemic and assume the responsibility of looking after children. Approximately half of all Americans now live in communities that the Center for American Progress dubs “childcare deserts.”

Mayer attended Smith College for a degree in Philosophy with a pre-med focus.She previously served as a Research Fellow at Massachusetts General Hospital and was the founder of Forward F1rst which helps first generation college students build the social capital they need to thrive on the road from college orientation to graduation and beyond.