Mom Bosses of Ann Arbor

At the Mom Boss Power Lunch last December, a mom breastfeeds her newborn and a giggling toddler runs free, while more than a dozen women enjoy a vegetarian Indian buffet and talk about their latest business ventures. For them, motherhood isn’t secondary to entrepreneurship—instead, they blend the two, and support one another along the way.

“When you put women in a room together, inevitably amazing things are gonna happen,” says Ariel Wan, whose nonprofit the Mamas Network cohosted the event with business sponsor TRUiC. “We lift each other up. We inspire each other.”

According to data from the federal Small Business Administration, women own 44 percent of small businesses. ​​While the SBA and similar organizations don’t track how many of these entrepreneurs are mothers, a widely quoted statistic from Working Mother magazine, which closed in 2022, puts that number at about one-third.

Wan, thirty-nine, who’s married with two young kids, left the corporate world to follow her own entrepreneurial dreams. She launched the Mamas Network in 2024, which offers a range of programs that support moms. At her Little Break Cowork space on Research Park Dr., which offers both drop-in and member rates, parents can work while their kids play or nap down the hall. And in March she started Little Break Launchpad, a business incubator for moms.

Related: Little Break (Apr. 2025)

Shahrzad Mitchell is a regular at the Power Lunch and Little Break—and a newly minted entrepreneur. After she was laid off last year from Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan two months after returning from her maternity leave, Wan and other moms supported Mitchell as she turned her passion for tea into a business. She created 1001 Nights Tea Company, which she hand-blends in Agricole Farm Stop’s commercial kitchen in Chelsea to sell online, and at farmers markets and special events.

“There are these networks that people build up over many years,” says Mitchell, thirty-eight, who’s married with two
toddler-age sons, “but if you’re an immigrant mom you really have to mingle with the community.” The Mamas Network provided a built-in support system. Mitchell, who is Iranian, moved to Michigan for grad school in 2013 and hasn’t returned to her homeland since.

“I never imagined myself as a business owner, but the more I did, I realized this is so me. I can do this,” she says. “It is a hard job. You do twice the work you would for a nine-to-five job [but] I feel so happy.” Her signature blend, Scent of Persia, combines black tea, rose, and cardamom.

Mitchell’s business is named for the Middle Eastern folk tale in which the female narrator tells never-ending stories to save her life. Like her, Mitchell says, “My story is not yet finished.”

 

On a cold and windy February evening, moms duck into the Stone Chalet on Washtenaw Ave. for Moms’ Night Inn. It’s another free monthly Mamas Network program hosted at Daisy Howlind and husband Vincent Zhang’s bed-and-breakfast and event center. Howlind says supporting fellow moms is part of the “community-building” that’s at the heart of her business.

As moms sample fancy cheesecakes and sip 1001 Nights Tea in the front dining room, they also get a break for a few hours while their kids hang out upstairs in the chalet’s playroom. Howlind, who later leads a tour of the 1917 estate with twelve themed guestrooms, says, “You have to find the place that your idea will blossom, and I think that’s what the Chalet has provided to me as a female entrepreneur with kids.”

She says it’s important to “let our clients know [my kids] are part of my life, just having them around me and having it as the natural fabric of our business,” which hosted a hundred weddings last year. Her seven-year-old sometimes helps set a table for guests; her two-year-old likes to dig in the garden.

Howlind opens up the Chalet to those in need for Thanksgiving dinner and also installed a free food pantry at the side entrance. “Moms are the planners,” she says. “They have their pulse on the community. … They’re the ones who provide spaces for others.

“Men can do this too,” she adds. “But women lead and I wish our country would get on board with this. They care about the community. They care about people having access to different things.”

 

“It was really kismet,” says Krista Parker about how she met Stephanie Miller at their daughters’ Ann Arbor Public Schools Rec & Ed ballet class a few years ago. The moms—each are married with two kids—quickly bonded over their childhoods in Minnesota, their similar parenting styles, and their recent moves to Ann Arbor (Parker from L.A., Miller from Milwaukee).

Another thing they had in common: They both wondered why their new town didn’t have a play café.

“From what I’d heard about Ann Arbor, I thought there’d be more than one,” says Miller. “They’re all over Chicago,” where she lived for a decade. So, last February, the new friends, both forty-three, opened one of their own.

Tucked in the back of Revel & Roll Plaza, Hide and Seek: A Play Boutique is for kids six and under and their caregivers and offers open play, birthday party rentals for kids of all ages, and special events, with a counter-service café. It’s the alternative to “the big bounce-house places,” Miller says. “My son does love those places, and I take him to those places for him, but I don’t take him to those places for me.”

As they sit at a table in their café space and soft-rock tunes play overhead, Parker sips freshly brewed RoosRoast Lobster Butter Love coffee and makes this pledge to caregivers: “We know you need caffeine and we’ll always provide that for you!”

Large front windows bring natural light into the mint-green-and-white space that features market, salon, and kitchen playscapes. The duo also has space to pursue their individual talents: Parker, a photographer who ran a boutique children’s photo studio in L.A., hosts photo sessions for kids and families—and Miller, a social worker, teaches developmental classes on-site.

There’s a quiet feeding room for nursing moms with cushioned rocking chairs, and changing tables just like the ones at home. A sign in their “mindfulness room” promises “all feelings welcome,” and kids who feel overwhelmed can escape there, surrounded by soft play equipment. “As kids we both, I think, had big feelings,” Miller explains, and both understand kids who are highly sensitive.

The friends “equally carry the weight,” of the business, says Parker, from keeping up with health department code to updating the online booking system. And their husbands, who installed the wooden floors and help out whenever they’re needed, “have their own budding friendship.”

 

Andi Sperry dreamed of becoming an astronaut. The former NASA employee was on her way when she moved to Ann Arbor in 2021 for a U-M PhD program in nuclear engineering. But when she unexpectedly became pregnant with her third child the following year, she decided to put her academic career on hold so she could better balance family life.

“I was struggling to find, who am I?” says Sperry, thirty-eight. “What is even my purpose?” She started teaching a small group of kids about robotics on evenings and weekends at Maker Works. One day “a lightbulb went off and I realized this could be a business.”

In 2024, Sperry, who has two teens and a three-year-old, launched the Future Innovators Academy. It offers project-based STEM courses, camps, and other programs for kids. Parents’ schedules are top of mind for Sperry, and she offers extended-
care hours and programs for no-school days and snow days. With her summer camps nearly full, she anticipates that she and her staff will teach a thousand kids in the coming months.

“I think moms are real,” she says. “When I do networking things with other groups like the chamber of commerce, it’s always so polished and can feel so overwhelming. … And I think when you go through the trials of motherhood you just get it. You know, and other mothers know. You can just lock eyes and be like, ‘Yeah, I know girl.’”

Sperry’s daughter, Izzy, sixteen, works as an assistant camp instructor along with her thirteen-year-old sister, Addy. She says her mom “inspires me to work harder,” and also praises her management style. “She really cares about everyone who works for her,” Izzy says. “It’s almost like she treats them like her family. She’s invited all of her coworkers to our house for get-togethers.”

Sperry’s husband, who initially thought the idea “was crazy, but supported me,” retired from the military last fall. Now he works for her.

 

Lydia Kelow-Bennett also made a shift from academia to entrepreneurship. Next May she plans to leave her tenure-track position as a U-M assistant professor in Afroamerican and African studies to devote herself full-time to her new business, Soulful Nest Birthwork. A trained doula, she provides support to mothers and families before, during, and after birth.

“University life is hard for women,” explains Kelow-Bennett, forty-five, who’s married with two sons. “It’s hard for Black women. It’s hard for mothers, especially, I think, because the expectations around your research don’t really allow for life to happen.” Covid, a second baby, and a depressive episode all contributed to her career change.

“I still want to be able to teach and so entrepreneurially, part of why I called my business ‘birthwork’ instead of doula is that I can see myself doing childbirth education, doing education for dads and for partners who are feeling out of their depth.”

With a special interest in Black maternal health, she connected with fellow providers at the Ann Arbor Birth & Baby Fair in February and met potential clients, too. “I was so encouraged,” she says. “I felt, this is where I’m supposed to be.”

 

Sarah Williams and Christine Rodrigues sit at a table at the Recess Work & Play Café downtown and take turns passing Williams’ smiling one-year-old daughter Lily back and forth as Rodrigues sips a latte and Williams grabs an occasional bite of her quiche, when she’s not checking on one of their toddler sons in the play area.

Related: Work and Play at Recess Café (Aug. 2025)

The two have been friends since they were Forsythe middle schoolers; now in their mid-thirties, they’re each married with five kids between them and full-time careers. Williams works in HR for a tech company and Rodrigues is a criminal defense attorney for juveniles at the public defender’s office—both in hybrid roles. They’re also launching a business together.

Williams and Rodrigues plan to open Sacred Fourth, a perinatal wellness center named for the “fourth trimester,” or postpartum period. They will offer movement classes, educational workshops, nutritious meals, and doula support to new moms.

During her maternity leave with Lily, Williams found Fourth Tri Sanctuary on social media and regularly drove an hour to Ferndale for after-birth care and support from experts. She told Rodrigues, “We need this in Ann Arbor,” and asked her to help her make it happen.

The friends joined WCC Entrepreneurship Center’s Business Start-Up Boot Camp last year and developed a framework for the business. Williams also found inspiration at the Mamas Network and Shine & Rise events for women in tech. That’s where she met Thressa Nichols, who owns Recess.

Nichols “gives me hope that you can kind of do all the things with maintaining the [financial] stability of the corporate position while still having the outlet to create this space that you really want to see in this community,” Williams says.

Nichols, thirty-three, who sits nearby with two laptops open, works remotely full-time as VP of operations for a tech startup. She’s hired an operations manager to run Recess and her husband works weekends for free.

“I was one of the first of my friends to have kids,” explains Nichols, the mom of a two- and six-year-old, about her decision to create Recess. “I felt like I was more complex than any of the spaces that existed. I like wine, I like to go out with my husband; I also like walking and the energy of downtown. But I also have kids and I love my kids. And I also have a career, and I just didn’t feel like I really belonged anywhere.”

Her solution is the bustling play café on S. Ashley that opened last fall. In addition to coffee and tea, it offers a light menu, wine, beer, and nonalcoholic drinks. “Our greatest shrinking population in Ann Arbor are family-age folks,” she explains. “We need to remind people that there is still a space for them.”

Meantime, Rodrigues and Williams plan to host pop-up day retreats this summer while they work out the details and funding for a permanent space.

“We will figure it out,” Rodrigues says. “That’s what moms do. We always figure it out.”