Leadership journeys are rarely defined by uninterrupted progress. Sometimes, the moments that feel like pauses or detours end up offering the greatest clarity.In this personal reflection for Adtech Today’s Women’s Day series, Neha Bagaria writes about stepping away from her career after becoming a mother and how that pause ultimately reshaped her purpose and led to the creation of HerKey.

When the Path Paused

For most of my early career, progress felt linear.Education led to opportunity. Opportunity led to responsibility. Responsibility led to growth. I understood how to build, how to execute, how to move forward.

Then I paused.

When I stepped away from my career for 3.6 years after my children were born, I viewed it as a choice — a conscious decision to be fully present during one of the most important phases of my life. I assumed that when I was ready, I would re-enter and continue the trajectory. What I did not anticipate was how much the pause would shift my internal landscape.

Motherhood expanded me in ways no professional role had. It strengthened my patience. It deepened my empathy. It demanded resilience in quiet, repetitive ways. But alongside that growth, an unexpected question surfaced.

Without the structure of work, who was I becoming?

“Motherhood did not reduce my ambition. It refined it.”

 

The Unseen Transition

In professional life, feedback is constant. Goals are defined. Outcomes are measurable. During my break, I experienced impact that was deeply meaningful but invisible. I was fully engaged, yet externally unvalidated.

When I began exploring a return to work, I encountered something unfamiliar. Not incapability, but hesitation. The world had moved ahead. Technology had advanced. Networks had shifted.I had evolved too. The self-doubt was subtle but real.

And in that space of uncertainty, I discovered something far more significant than my own re-entry. I realised that my experience was not unique.

There were thousands of highly capable women navigating the same transition — women who had stepped away for caregiving, relocation, health, or personal reasons. Women who had not lost ambition, but had lost access.That distinction changed everything for me. It was not a confidence gap. It was an infrastructure gap.

 

Rethinking the System

Workplaces were designed around uninterrupted careers. Hiring systems valued linear progression. Visibility favoured those who never stepped out of the room. What happens to ambition when systems are not designed to accommodate life?

That question became the foundation of HerKey.

I did not want to build a platform that simply connected resumes to jobs. I wanted to build an ecosystem — a space where women could re-engage before re-entering. A place where confidence could be rebuilt alongside skill. Where companies could interact with talent in ways that were intentional, structured, and future-focused. 

Building HerKey has required conviction. Ecosystem shifts always do. It meant explaining a problem many acknowledged privately but had not addressed structurally. It meant designing solutions before the market fully articulated the need.

But stepping away from my career had given me something invaluable.

Perspective.

Distance allows clarity. When you step outside a system, you see its assumptions more clearly — what it measures, what it overlooks, and who it unintentionally excludes.

“Leadership, for me, is no longer about occupying space. It is about expanding it.”

Redefining Ambition

Motherhood did not reduce my ambition. It refined it.

Earlier, ambition meant personal achievement. Today, it means structural impact. It means creating access at scale. It means ensuring that a career break is seen as a life phase, not a professional liability.

Leadership, for me, is no longer about occupying space. It is about expanding it. It is about holding complexity without retreating from it. It is about making long-term decisions in the face of short-term skepticism. It is about understanding that confidence is not the absence of doubt, but the ability to move forward with clarity despite it.

The Power of the Pause

The pause that once felt like a disruption became the most defining chapter of my professional life. Not because it slowed me down.

But because it clarified what I was building toward. There is a space between who we were and who we become. It can feel uncertain — even destabilizing. But it is also where reinvention takes shape. If we design systems that recognise that space, honour it, and build pathways through it, we do more than help women return to work.

We redesign the future of work itself.

 

This article is part of Adtech Today’s Women’s Day Leadership Series, celebrating the personal journeys and defining moments that shape women leaders across industries.