As a child, Ashley Chang Dawson saw her mom sacrifice her career in software engineering in order to be more present for her family. Fast-forward 30 years and Ashley, then a rising tech professional in San Francisco, witnessed her female colleagues forced to make a similar choice between their own ambitions and their family’s needs.
Ashley was intent on breaking the pattern. In 2023, she launched Sundays, an executive assistance service that lets dual-career families outsource household tasks — and eliminate time as the deciding factor between having to quit and having it all..
In this episode of the Motherly Podcast, Dawson sits down with Liz Tenety to talk about the mental load, the unfair division of household labor, and how she’s giving busy parents their Sundays back.
Meet the expert
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Ashley Chang Dawson is the co-founder and CEO of Sundays, an executive assistant service designed to support high-achieving parents in work and life. Alleviating the mental load, Sundays lets clients delegate tasks, like making appointments and researching summer camps, to their dedicated US-based virtual assistant. Since its debut in 2023, Sundays has saved its clients more than 25,000 hours through its services. Ashley graduated Magna Cum Laude from University of California, Davis, with a Bachelor of Science. She is the mother to her young son and lives in San Francisco.
Liz Tenety: How did Sundays emerge from talking to today’s parents?
Ashley Chang Dawson: I asked every person I knew who had kids that I used to work with, “Can you tell me what it’s like to work and have a family, and how you balance that?” Everyone told me that there was not enough time in the day. Everything that it took to keep the family running got pushed to the weekends. And that’s how we came up with the name Sundays — we want to give people their Sundays back.
Liz Tenety: You mentioned the word balance. Is that what you think modern parents are seeking?
Ashley Chang Dawson: The people we’re working with are ambitious. They want a lot in their careers, and they want a lot from their families, and I think they also want to enjoy life while they are living it and be in the moment. I’m not sure if that means balance or integration. I think it’s this sense of having multiple things in your life that you want to prioritize at the same time.
Liz Tenety: What do you see parents struggling with the most?
Ashley Chang Dawson: The amount that I see parents carrying on their plate at any given time is just enormous and heavy. A lot of times, they don’t even have the time to take a step back and think, “How can I build a system that can support me here?” or “What things could I delegate?” Because they’re feeling underwater all the time.
Liz Tenety: Do moms ever feel guilty for offloading some of those responsibilities?
Ashley Chang Dawson: I think that a lot of moms feel like they need to be the person to be doing all of these tasks, and that really leads to them losing a lot more time than dads do. Men are much more willing to come to us and pay for support, whereas moms feel more emotionally tied to exactly how it’s done and doing it in the way that they think is best for their kids.
Liz Tenety: How do you think we can better engage men on the specific topic of household management?
Ashley Chang Dawson: I think the first step is to bring visibility to all of the things that it takes to keep a family running. The dad might not understand the number of things that are falling onto the mom. So it actually can help to delegate to someone else because then they can see the volume of things that are coming up that their partner might be handling.
Liz Tenety: What kind of help did you see modeled in your own home when you were growing up?
Ashley Chang Dawson: My mom was a software engineer in the ’80s. She stayed in the workforce for a few years after I was born, but was struggling to balance between family and work, so she made the decision to stay home with us, which I’m super grateful for. I wouldn’t say she had a good support system beyond her kind of managing all of that herself.
Liz Tenety: Sundays takes some of the burden off of working moms, and in doing so, creates jobs for moms seeking flexible work. Can you speak to that?
Ashley Chang Dawson: When I started, I was only thinking about the client side. Now, every time we post a role, we have a ton of moms apply, and we end up having these really emotional conversations about how they feel like they can make a meaningful impact, but there just aren’t roles that allow them to do that while giving them the opportunity to care for their family in the way that they need to. It’s been really meaningful to me to be able to create those roles and give our team the opportunity to work.
Liz Tenety: You and Sundays are a big part of a lot of people’s villages now. Who’s in your village?
Ashley Chang Dawson: I feel really lucky to have the Sundays team. It’s just amazing to show up to work every day and have that kind of empathy and support system of a whole team of moms. And I have my own mom, we do a nanny share, and we have a home assistant. So that’s been really impactful.
Liz Tenety: At Motherly, we believe that motherhood brings out our superpowers. What do you see as yours?
Ashley Chang Dawson: I think it’s brought out a lot more resilience in me. Now I can face difficult days and difficult nights and show up still as the person that I want to be. I’m 13 months in now and I’m sure it will continue to teach me a lot of lessons in that way.
Liz Tenety: What has surprised you most about being a mother?
Ashley Chang Dawson: I could never have really understood the emotional side that goes into it — how hard and how fast those emotions change, but also just the joy that comes with parenthood. And I think I get to see that from my son and hopefully absorb a little bit more of it into my life, too.
Liz Tenety: How do you think motherhood changes our relationship to time? And what have you experienced around that?
Ashley Chang Dawson: It’s really important to me to get time with my son every day, so I feel like my workdays are just much shorter. And therefore, I need to really prioritize how I’m spending that time. When I put my career and the company I’m building next to [my son], how do I think about both on a longer time scale so that 20 years from now, I’m going to feel happy with how I spent my time.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. Listen to the full conversation on The Motherly Podcast.
