Audacious Impact: Milda M De Voe of Pen Parentis On Leading An Audacious, Visionary, Impact-Focused Program
An Interview With Russ McLeod
Lead From Need: make sure that what you are creating doesn’t already exist! When I founded Pen Parentis I first looked everywhere to see if nothing like this existed — there is no reason to duplicate what someone else is already doing, but if your service or product doesn’t exist, people may crave it.
In an era where social and environmental challenges are increasingly pressing, certain organizations stand out for their bold and innovative approaches to creating meaningful impact. These trailblazing organizations are not just meeting the status quo but are setting new standards for what can be achieved through dedicated, impact-focused programs. What does it take to pioneer such transformative initiatives, and what can others learn from their successes? I had the pleasure of interviewing Milda De Voe, or as she prefers to be called, “M”.
Milda Motekaitis De Voe is the Founder and Executive Director of the national literary nonprofit Pen Parentis and the author of the fun guide to creative parent productivity, Book & Baby, which won first place in writing/publishing at the 2021 Indie Awards. To support the nonprofit’s mission to help writers stay on track after starting a family, she has interviewed more than 300 famous authors who are also parents and has won countless arts grants from major funders like The Poetry Foundation, the New York State Council on the Arts, and the National Endowment for the Arts. She earned her MFA at Columbia University where she was a Writing Fellow and continues to write award-winning fiction under the pen name M. M. De Voe. (mmdevoe.com).
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Our readers would love to get to know you a bit better. Can you share a bit about your background and what has led you to your current role?
Absolutely! I hope that my story inspires your readers to follow their passions — my business journey began after I had kids — I refused to accept that giving birth would ruin my literary career (it was commonly said that having kids would derail an artistic career — but to me that only meant there was zero support in the industry for parents, much like the 1970s were for women in the regular workforce!) To me it seemed discriminatory for an industry to insist that its practitioners remain childless, and I set out to discover the famous writers that had kids, more as an example to myself and others than anything else! I went to the Nobel Museum in Stockholm Sweden and discovered that of the last 10 Nobel Prize winners in literature, 8 had kids! That didn’t seem like failure to me…! Therefore it was a question of breaking a stereotype. I could stand up to the system for sure. A Columbia University MFA classmate and I started a reading series to present notable writers who happened to also be parents in small groups in an upscale and convivial location in Manhattan, and then interview these authors to determine how they were able to find the time, energy and money to maintain their creative careers. The rest is history.
What inspired you to start or join your organization, and what is its core mission?
Once we had these writers in one place and open to discussing their personal lives, support for the idea of a nonprofit that would help writers stay on creative track after having kids was immediate and ubiquitous: the need predated the organization. Before Pen Parentis, there was societal shame in artistic circles for admitting you had kids. Men in particular left kids off their bios, but women were also counseled to “leave the private stuff at home.” It was generally thought to look “less serious” to admit to parenthood.
Month after month, men and women who had fantastic careers — multiple literary awards, or international bestsellers — kept coming to tears at our Literary Salons, saying they had never felt so seen or so whole. Regulars in the audience kept asking to join the organization — long before there was anything to join! I started small, with just a DBA and the name Pen Parentis and the tagline “parenting done, write.” I knew I wanted to collect any professional writing resources that were available for parents into one place and make it easy for writers to find them.
After only a few months, a lawyer who was a regular at the reading series offered her services pro-bono to help me file for 501c3 status. She saw that I had a charitable purpose and advised me that getting tax-exempt status would make me eligible for large gifts — it was exactly the sort of thing that people might want to fund.
She was right in how quickly the turnaround was on our application. We became a nonprofit within only a few months.
Could you tell us about your journey in the industry and any significant experiences that have shaped your approach to impact-focused programs?
I always listen to the needs of the constituency. This organization was absolutely vital when it was founded — in 2009 no one else cared about the needs of writer-parents or even acknowledged their existence in the industry. Back then, writers with kids were all assumed to be mommy-bloggers. Just hobbyists. It was insulting. But instead of getting mad, I decided to make a home for these people — “my people” — people who, like me, wanted to create great works of literary fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction — people who needed the support of the arts industry, needed an organization to champion them. Since that time we have served hundreds of writers and caused hundreds of books to be finished and celebrated.
It is a joy to hear stories from constituents like Ralph O. who joined because he wanted to do something with his talent, and with the encouragement of his group published two short editorials in Newsweek that were very timely (he had been a Rikers Island Correctional Guard and had opinions on the state of that Facility). An agent read his pieces and asked him if he had a memoir — the fulfillment of a lifelong dream!
Or Julia P. who had her first child in the middle of a high point of her writing career — her debut novel had just been nominated for a massive literary award — and suddenly she found herself frozen, unable to write. The encouragement and advice of her group got her over the hump and within 12 weeks she was writing again! Her second novel was just published to great critical acclaim.
But I get extreme pleasure even from the regular attendees who often say, “If it wasn’t for this group, I wouldn’t have written a word this week.”
Can you describe your company’s mission? Does your organization solve societal problems? If so, tell us how. What customer problems are you solving?
Our mission is to help writers stay on creative track after they have kids. Our membership is trying to maintain or establish creative writing careers while also having a family at home — this is not different from an accountant or a lawyer wishing to continue to work after having kids, but for some reason the Arts are not considered equal to these other careers.
People commonly say to writers who have kids, “So will you be writing children’s books now that you’re a mom?”
Just imagine asking your doctor if they are planning to switch to pediatrics because they just had a kid.
Do you have a big hairy audacious goal for your organization and its impact on the planet?
Yes we do. Our organization hope to permanently change the definition of parenthood: it is not a “career” it is a relationship. Calling parenthood a job demeans the relationship.
We would like to eliminate the phrase: “I could never have a child; I care too much about my career.”
If the only way to succeed in your career is to eliminate your relationships entirely, there’s something wrong with your industry.
Because it is a relationship, parenthood should never be weighted against a person’s career as though it is a job. All relationships make demands on your time, energy and money: falling in love may lead to a honeymoon or buying a house. These things take time, money, and energy. Caring for an injured relative may mean you spend more time traveling and are less available to your job. Audaciously, I suggest that love, marriage, and caring for your aging parents are valid uses of your energy, time, and money, and are equal to parenthood. We all need to have solid relationships, whether with our friend-circles or with our children.
Having healthy relationships should not alter our career success trajectories.
Our organization additionally proclaims that society is wrong about the Arts. For a long time creative writing hasn’t been considered a “real” career. In a couple which has kids, the creative career is frequently considered less important because it makes less money. But consider this: if you do not attend professional training, get a mentor, establish a practice, and put in the hours, it is going to take you a lot longer to reach any professional peak — in every industry. That includes creative writing. Writing is a job. You have to value and respect the time, energy and money it takes for professional development in the arts as well as any other industry.
Can you describe one of the most audacious impact-focused programs your organization has pioneered? What was the inspiration behind it?
The Pen Parentis Literary Salons were the first — and might still be the only — reading series in which parents are specifically asked to showcase their non-parental talents. We are not presenting parents that write about parenting or their kids. We present parents who win Pulitzer Prizes (Jennifer Egan), who write international bestsellers (Min Jin Lee), surprising literary content that changes paradigms (Victor LaValle), Poet Laureates (Tina Chang) and MacArthur Geniuses (Kelly Link.) We “out” great writers as parents (with their permission) — and we explicitly talk about the unmentionables: how authors were able to find the resources to devote to their creative careers despite all the prejudices against parents who maintain their artistic practice.
What were the biggest challenges you faced while developing and implementing this program, and how did you overcome them?
It is tremendously hard to find funding because we have always been gender-inclusive. Many foundations would like to fund a women-only or mom-centric effort, but we maintain that it is the “stay at home” or “sole provider” part of parenthood and not the “mom” part that creates the basic inequities between writers who do have kids and writers who do not. (That said, our membership is 80% female, showing that stereotypes do have legs.)
Interestingly, though, the fact that we have always been gender-inclusive means that it was easy for us to be the first reading series to present a nonbinary parent at a public reading. Andrea Lawlor read for Pen Parentis in 2018 and we had a fascinating, respectful and open discussion about their pronouns and why they chose the singular “they” and the non-gendered parent-title, “Baba.”
We stand firmly on behalf of all writers who have kids: writing at any stage, kids of any age.
Tell us how your program has been received by customers. What struggles have you had generating customer interest? Please share what successes you’ve had with customers.
This is my favorite thing: whenever I tell a new person what our mission is, they gasp. No matter if they have kids or not, they hear that we help writers stay on creative track after having kids and there’s a tiny pause and they go “oh! That is a great mission!” And then we go into how we do it — it’s lovely!
The three main programs we offer are an annual Writing Fellowship for New Parents that incentivizes the creation of new work when kids are tiny, a weekly Cycle of Support where new members can connect with other writers who have kids to develop their creative writing practice, and to crowdsource resources and advice, and our popular online monthly Literary Salons where we present small groups of critically-acclaimed authors who are also parents to show the diversity of creative success it is possible to achieve.
The struggles we have had stem from the inherent skepticism that many writers have. We are trained to work alone, to solve our own problems, and we tend to expect to be excluded — many writers are inherently introverts, growing up hiding in school libraries during lunch hour, not joining together at a table to discuss common issues. Creating a community from people who identify as solitary creatures, right at a time when the rest of the world is trying to make them bond over being parents — many believe that we are going to impose our ideas on their private artistic practice. This couldn’t be further from the truth, yet it is a challenge we continue to work to overcome.
How do you measure the customer success, business success and impact of your programs? Can you share any specific metrics or outcomes?
Metrics are difficult to come by since writers tend to deal in narrative not numbers. We collect testimonials from our Fellowship winners (for example 2024’s Fellow has expanded her winning story which will come out as a book-length work in 2025!) — and our website is full of examples of people who sent us emails or videos to thank us for helping them finish a story, a novel, or present a reading.
That said, in 2022 we did a data analysis of participants in our Cycle of Support and discovered that when writers attend their meetups they have a 70% success rate in achieving their personal writing goals for that week; this number rises to 89% when you loop in the partial goal achievements. Most of our meetups participants have attended regularly for more than a year, many since 2018. Our membership has produced 41 published pieces in 2024 alone, including two forthcoming book-length works.
How do you ensure that your programs are sustainable and scalable over the long term?
We rely on our Board to govern well! We always seek to have a very broad swath of diverse talents on our Executive Board, and we use their knowledge and expertise and skills extensively. I personally take at least one professional development training every month. I like to stay abreast of current administrative trends by meeting with other leaders, and I find them by participating in focus groups and networking events. I am also avidly engaged in partnerships both with other nonprofits and with the for-profit world. I always try to learn from my peers. I do not like to be a competitor — I am always a collaborator. The mission wins above all — if it is within our mission and within our power, we will try to do it.
What are your “5 Things You Need To Bring An Audacious Idea to Fruition”?
1 . Lead From Need: make sure that what you are creating doesn’t already exist! When I founded Pen Parentis I first looked everywhere to see if nothing like this existed — there is no reason to duplicate what someone else is already doing, but if your service or product doesn’t exist, people may crave it.
2 . Listen to Advisors: it’s not enough to have a Board or a Mentor, you have to actually listen to them. I was assigned an official mentor by LitNYS, and at our second meeting I began listing the ways I had tried to implement her advice. She was floored. She said, “Do you know the number of people I have advised as a paid consultant who just took my report and filed it somewhere?” This staggered me. When advice seems sound, implement it right away! It is both a sign of respect and it can immediately move your company forward.
3 . Start from Core Values: I created my list of core values before I even envisioned the company. I knew that anything I created would have to be Professional, Inclusive, Balanced, and build Community. I know that if I create a corporate culture with these values, I will be proud of whatever it is I create — and it will be a healthy place to work. It is how I maintain so many volunteers — they feel respected and give their all because we are in it together.
4 . Disasters offer Opportunity: I lived through 9–11, Superstorm Sandy, and Hurricane Irene. Somehow, surviving these crises and others made me realize that crises are inevitable — your strength comes in how fast you can pivot. You can’t possibly predict every single risk or avert every disaster, but you can be quick to get back up and moving.
When the Pandemic hit, I didn’t even pause to freak out — we held our last in-person Salon as a roundtable with only 15 people and only one of the three authors in attendance. I decided to take the intimacy and highlight it — we sat in a circle including the author instead of theater-style with a panel. Many of the participants said it was their favorite Salon ever — because it was so intimate.
That was step one — but I wouldn’t be doing in-person salons the next month. Because I follow many genres of writing, I knew that the Sci Fi community had hosted online readings long before the pandemic. I used Linked In to find a contact within that community and asked what they used as a platform. I signed up immediately and Pen Parentis was live casting the salons by the next month, without a break — which not only created a sense of continuity and safety, but meant that we were able to open the event to even more people! Now it is live cast permanently because we discovered that open online access means that a broader and more diverse audience can be reached.
And as an added bonus, all of the Salons are also available on a YouTube channel devoted to our salons — your readers are welcome to check it out and subscribe if they are interested in hearing the life-journeys of their favorite authors. It’s on YouTube.com/penparentis (This whole archive probably wouldn’t exist without the pandemic forcing us to rethink our public events!)
5 . Humble, not Invisible: I believe in transparency and giving others their due. I did not create Pen Parentis alone. I could not have created this amazing nonprofit without dozens of remarkable people who lent me their expertise for a few hours, a few days or a few years. That said, I am happy to be the face of the organization — I am proud that by the efforts of this nonprofit, I have also published my first collection of short fiction (A FLASH OF DARKNESS) and I am proud that my creative writing gives me proof that what I do with the nonprofit is working. But I am only one person. The volunteers that surrounded me, uplifted me, and championed the Pen Parentis mission, they are the real reason this organization will outlast my leadership. I would love to see this nonprofit continue to help writers stay creative after kids, long after the world has solved the issues of working parents not having enough resources!
What piece of advice would you give to other organizations looking to pioneer their own impact-focused programs?
Get started!! Write down your mission in a way that is short and clear and easy to remember and then don’t ever forget it! Use it to remind yourself that the work you’re doing is GOOD work. You’re making the world a better place! Find experts to advise you, get others on board, and start doing the work!
Can you share a story of someone who has inspired you in your journey?
I learned a lot from Alison Meyers — she is the executive director of Writers and Books up in Rochester NY. She’s a veteran nonprofit leader who was executive director of Cave Canem Foundation in Brooklyn, N.Y., the nation’s pre-eminent organization for African American poets and poetry for ten years — she is also a published poet and never gave up her creative practice while running her nonprofits, but also she has a vibrant personality and an unparallelled generosity of spirit. When she discovered I needed help with Board Governance, she volunteered to help me pro bono — simply because she believed in the cause.
This is the kind of generosity that I aspire to. Recently I was on a zoom with a small for-profit writers’ group that has been in existence three times as long as Pen Parentis. They asked me for help in building authentic community and I gave it to them. For a whole hour their leadership asked me questions and I told them everything I could think of to help. At the end of the call, I asked myself why I did something that could create a possible for-profit competitor and the only reason I could come up with was Kindness.
I did it because it was the right thing to do.
How can our readers further follow your work or your company online?
Pen Parentis is at penparentis.org and on all the socials @PenParentis
My own creative writing including links to both of my books can be found at mmdevoe.com and I’m @mmdevoe on Twitter or @femmekafka on IG
This was great. Thanks for taking time for us to learn more about you and your business. We wish you continued success!
It was my pleasure! I hope that your readers are inspired to accomplish great things!
About the Interviewer: Russell McLeod is an experienced business leader, social entrepreneur, and mentor. A champion of profit with purpose, the circular economy and of collaboration for positive progress. Russell is the founder of Mightyhum a Toronto-based impact enterprise dedicated to supporting growing organizations. And, while it’s not a requirement, the Mightyhum team has a passion for collaborating with purpose-driven businesses. Mightyhum specializes in providing consulting services and turning hairy audacious concepts into achievable ventures & projects. The Mightyhum teamwork with C-suite executives and leaders, developing new product offerings, effective go-to-market strategies, building for profitability, and streamlining operations. Before Mightyhum, Russell was involved in the world of social enterprise as the Executive Director of ME to WE, one of Canada’s best known and most awarded social enterprises. While at ME to WE, the team demonstrated that being profitable and impactful was indeed possible. During his tenure, ME to WE delivered $20M in cash and in-kind to WE Charity, helping transform the lives of over 1 million people through access to clean water; the lives of 200,000 children with access to education; and 30,000 women-led businesses launched globally.
Russell’ personal mission is to inspire others that there is ‘a better way to do business,’ ‘that through business we can solve some of the world’s problems at the same time.’ You can follow Russell’s work at https://www.linkedin.com/in/russell-mcleod1/ or www.mightyhum.com.
Audacious Impact: Milda M De Voe of Pen Parentis On Leading An Audacious, Visionary, Impact-Focused… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.