Geoff Bennett: When Riccarda Zezza returned from maternity leave to discover her role had vanished, she transformed a career setback into a powerful new opportunity.

Her experience inspired her to found a company redefining how parents and employers approach life transitions. Tonight, she shares her Brief But Spectacular take on motherhood.

Riccarda Zezza, Founder and CEO, Lifeed: We associate implicitly maternity to a problem.

When women live for maternity leave, words are important. We call it leave. They leave. Where do they go? They don’t leave. They’re there. They’re still there. They’re there more than ever. In reality, it’s a master in soft skills.

So, yes, you might be away for a while or you might be there less hours, but in the hours you’re not in the office, you are practicing learning skills that you can use to work.

I am actually from Milano, but I was born in Naples and I grew up in Rome. I was the classical career woman with a lot of dreams and expectations from my job. And every job I did in my 15 years in the corporate world, I believed in.

I became a mother when I was 36, and it was almost unexpected for me to become a mother, but it was an incredible, amazing surprise. I didn’t know that becoming a mother could bring me such a strong sense of identity, such a strong sense of purpose and all this love.

So this happened in my private life. And at the same time, at work, back from maternity leave, I didn’t have a role anymore. Basically, they excluded me. I didn’t lose my job, but I lost my role.

So I changed my company. I changed — I went to another company. And I started as a manager. And I was different. I was better. And that also surprised me, because nobody had ever told me that being a mother could make me a better manager.

I was sent to a business course in a very expensive business school, and the course was about managing crisis. They made us fly a flight simulator to put into practice the crisis management we learned in the morning.

OK, good, good rating. Let’s go home. I opened the door, and there is Marta (ph), 2-year-old, running towards me. My crisis management simulator is at home presenting me new crises and new problems and new challenges and new delights every day.

I got pregnant again and I had my second child. And it happened again. A different company, a different boss, but I got demoted because of my maternity. I was sent for an MBA when I was in a company, so companies accept they can tolerate an absence as long as it’s for learning skills that they need.

What I did, I started studying. I found all the evidence. Together, with Andrea Vitullo, who is an executive coach, we created the learning methodology which we call life-based learning. Consider all your life as a training ground for soft skills.

We had 100, more or less, customers so far, big brands mainly. Everybody else is telling, you lack some skills, you have to take them from the outside. We say, you have those skills, you have to take them from the inside.

We think that our life is like a cake, and the more slices we have, the smaller the slices. I give a piece to my child, a piece to my work, a piece to my — and they are smaller and smaller. What we see is that we are like multiple circles, meaning that every role we have makes the overall surface bigger. It makes us bigger, instead of having smaller slices.

My name is Riccarda Zezza. This is my Brief But Spectacular take on motherhood as a master’s in soft skills.

Geoff Bennett: And you can watch more Brief But Spectacular videos on our Web site. That’s PBS.org/NewsHour/Brief.