M+A Edit

There’s always one year in everyone’s life when nearly every weekend is spent attending a wedding. For Zola co-founders Shan-Lyn Ma and Nobu Nakaguchi, that year was 2013. In addition to celebrating their friends and family, they both found themselves buried deep in outdated, inconvenient, and impersonal wedding registries. Shan felt uninspired, and Nobu was reminded of how cumbersome planning his wedding was a decade earlier.Today we're talking with Shan-Lyn Ma, who together with Nobu Nakaguchi, built Zola, the startup that’s re-inventing the wedding registry online for modern couples. Previously,...

After losing her newborn son Zachary in the hospital, Alexis Marie Chute entered what she calls her ‘year of distraction’—an attempt to fill every spare second of her day to avoid facing her loss and grief. It wasn’t until she became pregnant nine months later with her rainbow baby, Eden, that the slow process of healing truly began. Here’s her story, as told to Kristen Dold.When I became pregnant with Zachary, I had already had one healthy pregnancy. I was excited to do it again. Everything was fine until we...

Amy Nielsen and Jenylle Fideli had never dated another woman before—let alone thought about it—before they met at the gym (Amy’s the co-founder of boutique studio chain SPENGA), fell in love, and got married. Now they share the title of “mom” to their two kids Brooklyn, 5, and Jackson, 7, from Jenylle’s previous relationship, and have plans for a third. From the laughably awesome aspects of a household run by two women (let’s just say they’re on top of it) to their unique roles with the kids, here’s their story....

When Micky Onvural took over the position of CMO of digitally native men's clothing brand Bonobos in 2016, she knew she would be honing the company's vision to further elevate the customer experience that they are known for. But she never anticipated she would end up stepping into the role of CEO just two years later, and she couldn't be more excited.With almost 20 years of experience in consumer marketing, spanning categories and continents, Micky Onvural has built a reputation for developing stand-out brand, business and marketing strategies that deliver...

For plenty of women, growing a bump is anything but blissful—between symptoms like nausea and back pain, crazy hormone activity, and the stress and unknowns of delivery, pregnancy can feel like more of a nailbiter than a nine-month joyride. But for up to 15 percent of women, pregnancy is packaged with full-blown anxiety and depression, says Carly Snyder, MD, a reproductive and perinatal psychiatrist based in NYC. What’s worse: only a third of those women seek help. Why do the majority of those suffering skip treatment, and what kind of...

When The Limited launched Eloquii in 2011, it became the go-to fashion brand focusing on plus-size women. But when they closed their doors a year and a half later, it left a lot of customers at a loss for where to find the fashion and fit they had fallen in love with. When a few former employees of Eloquii got together to buy the brand back from The Limited—with Mariah Chase joining the team shortly after—they never could have guessed just how excited customers would be for their return. Mariah...

Cloth diapers can feel intimidating—there’s the old-school origami-style folding, the prospect of having to, um, deal with the contents inside, and the fact that there are over a dozen different types. But the truth is they’re not all that complicated. (Don’t forget we live in the age of the NoseFrida—today’s cloth diapers aren’t your Grandma’s.) Read this primer to decide if they’re worth a shot for your family. The Options: Flat or Prefolds Traditional and super cheap (just a few bucks each), these diapers essentially look like a dish rag...

After leaving her job at IBM in 2008, Leah Busque was excited to launch her new startup TaskRabbit. When the economic crisis followed later that year, Leah didn't know if her new project was going to last. But what she didn't expect was the incredible opportunity this situation gave her.Leah Busque is currently a General Partner at Fuel Capital, an early stage venture fund located in Silicon Valley, and was the founder and CEO of TaskRabbit before it was bought by IKEA in October of 2017. With over 15 years...

From Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos to Google cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Montessori school has some high-profile, deep-thinking graduates. The basic concept behind Montessori—let kids learn through discovery, instead of instruction—can feel vague and mysterious to those who haven’t stepped inside the walls of this less than traditional education system. So to set the scene for interested parents, we chatted with Kitty Bravo, Director of Education at the Center for Guided Montessori Studies, about what to expect. The classroom is the teacher Montessori classrooms are lined with wall-to-wall activities...

“I didn’t want to do this as a single mom, but I realized I didn’t have the time to find someone, mutually fall in love, make the decision to have a kid, and try it out.” Myriam Steinberg attempted a DIY insemination, seven rounds of IUI, three IVF transfers, and two egg donor cycles—all on her own—before becoming pregnant with twins using donor eggs and sperm. Now, finally home from the NICU with her three-month-old babies Abegail and Isaac (pictured above), just over three pounds each at birth, she’s opening...