Career, Motherhood & Becoming CEO | Avani Desai, CEO of Schellman

Avani Desai once believed she had to make an impossible choice: be a good mother or become an exceptional executive.
Today, she's CEO of Schellman, and she's building the kind of workplace she wishes she'd been able to see earlier in her career.
In this episode of RAM, Avani joins Jake Bernardes to talk about growing up as the daughter of immigrants, beginning her career as one of the only women in penetration testing, and eventually becoming one of fewer than ten women leading a top-100 CPA firm.
But this isn't really a story about becoming CEO.
It's about what happened along the way.
Avani opens up about being afraid to disclose her first pregnancy because she worried it could affect her next promotion, seeing her newborn son fewer than 50 days during his first year, and ultimately leaving a job she loved because she refused to sacrifice the kind of mother she wanted to be.
Then an opportunity at Schellman changed the equation.
Now, as CEO and mother of three, Avani is trying to make sure the people coming behind her never feel forced to make the same choice.
It's a conversation about ambition, representation, parenthood, leadership—and redefining what having it all actually means.
In this episode
Why Avani's father moved his family to America specifically to create more opportunities for his daughters
Going from penetration tester to privacy, marketing, president, and ultimately CEO
What it feels like to be the only woman—or woman of color—in the room
Why Avani was afraid to tell colleagues she was pregnant
The impossible choice she felt forced to make between motherhood and her career
Seeing her son fewer than 50 days during his first year
Why she ultimately left a job she genuinely loved
Finding a company where parenthood and ambition didn't have to compete
Why 70% of Schellman's executive leadership team is female
Why Avani believes representation isn't about celebrating being “the only”—it's about making sure you're not the last
Her approach to being fully present at work and fully present at home
Why Schellman shuts down for three weeks every year
Why “rest is not a reward after burnout. It is part of performance.”
Building a leadership team strong enough that the CEO can make herself “irrelevant”
Chapters
00:00 – Meet Avani Desai
01:54 – Her hero: the father who sacrificed everything for his daughters
02:42 – Growing up as the daughter of immigrants
04:34 – Reinventing yourself without changing companies
06:35 – Being a female penetration tester in 2002
06:52 – Becoming one of the few women leading a top-100 CPA firm
07:34 – Why being “the only” isn't something to celebrate
08:04 – Being afraid to disclose her pregnancy
09:00 – The impossible choice: executive or mother?
09:47 – Seeing her son fewer than 50 days in his first year
10:18 – The opportunity that meant she didn't have to choose
10:55 – Building a leadership team that's 70% women
12:35 – Why Avani talks publicly about the good and the bad
13:12 – Can you actually “have it all”?
14:00 – Protecting the hours that belong to her family
21:38 – Why Schellman completely shuts down
22:26 – Why she rejects unlimited PTO
24:12 – “My job is to make me irrelevant”
24:30 – Why exhaustion shouldn't be a badge of honor
24:50 – Rest is part of performance