Mom should bake the brownies.

In 2000, Gina Domanig founded Emerald Ventures, the first independent clean tech venture capital fund in Europe. Previously, she served as Senior Vice President at Sulzer, a multinational Swiss company. The native American has always worked full time throughout her career – even after the birth of her son. When her husband suggested she could take a career break, she just laughed and is still very happy with her decision today.

Gina Domanig chooses her words carefully, yet is clear and distinct: “Not working was simply never an option for me,” she states. The reason lies in the cultural imprinting of her home country, America. She lived there until she moved with her husband to his homeland, Switzerland, at the end of the eighties. “As long as I can remember, everyone around me has always pursued a professional activity,” she recalls. “I just don’t know any different.” Shortly before moving to Switzerland, her husband suggested that she might not need to work in Europe. “Today, he knows it was a strange proposal. Work is a significant part of me, a part of my identity,” says Gina Domanig. Without her profession, she simply would not be happy.

The day has only 24 hours

Besides her role at Emerald Technology Ventures, Gina Domanig serves on the board of the insurance company ‘Die Mobiliar’, on the International Advisory Board of the Innovation Fund Denmark, holds the Executive Co-Chair Innovation at the World Energy Council, and has positions on the boards of several tech startups. Our interview was scheduled just before she flew to Singapore. Emerald has offices there and in Toronto. Today, it is again possible for her to travel a lot for business. Her son is grown and now enjoys time without his parents. When he was younger and needed care, the investor relied on the support of a trained nanny. “We were very grateful that this was possible for us,” she remembers. For her, it was a time when she often had to make decisions. “I decided then for my work and my son. That meant for myself that I often felt that not everyone was one hundred percent happy with it. Be it in the family, at my son’s school, among friends or just myself.”

What made it easier were the working conditions in the nineties: little digital communication, no video conferences, no emails. “When you left the office, you also left work. You couldn’t work from anywhere. When I was home, I had time for my family.” Did she have to give up anything back then? “It doesn’t work without sacrifice,” she says. “I saw my friends and girlfriends little during that time. I hardly went out, was not at networking events. When I started again, people looked at me in surprise and asked why they had never seen me before. Simply because I was either at work or with my family. But that was a conscious choice, and it was exactly the right decision. You also have to be able to live with the less positive consequences.”

A communal responsibility

Gina’s husband also always worked full time. “He has always supported me incredibly in everything.” She emphasizes this important factor for her. For her, it is crucial to recognize that a family and a career are the joint responsibility of two people. Since her husband had to travel less for work than she did, it was easier for Gina to coordinate her trips. That’s just one example of how they organized themselves to create time for the family and to support each other. “For example, I love to cook. He hates it. I prepared meals and left little notes for my two boys about what they should eat on days when I was away,” she laughs.

What still irritates her to this day is the choice of words by people. “I was often asked if my husband would help me. I think it’s important to understand that it’s not the sole responsibility of the woman to take care of a child. The father doesn’t just help; he shares the duties and responsibilities with the mother. It’s a division of tasks on an equal footing.” At the time when her son was attending school, this perception was not yet a matter of course. One story remained particularly memorable to her. When she returned home from a business trip at 11 pm, she found a handwritten note from her son in the hallway. On it, he had noted a simple request: “Mom, I need 25 brownies tomorrow morning.” The brownies were not baked. Instead, Gina drove to the bakery and bought cakes. “Of course, there were no brownies, and I had to buy something else,” she laughs. Then she becomes serious again. “For me, this showed that the entire society must recognize that it’s not always Mom who bakes. I asked my then six-year-old son why he didn’t ask his dad to bake the brownies. He would have been home. And his answer was that he noted it for me because the teacher explicitly said to ask his mother.”

Do not be deterred

Since her son is an only child, Gina placed great importance on him regularly being with other children. She herself has three siblings and loved growing up with them. Therefore, she was grateful for the opportunity to let him be cared for at childcare two days a week. “He used to cry terribly when I left. But then the childcare called me later and said I shouldn’t worry. He usually went straight to the other kids to play with them.” Nevertheless, the family also needed the nanny’s help on those days. Childcare did not yet offer full-day care back then.

Gina advises mothers who want to reconcile family and work to accept that you can’t have everything and there will always be something that isn’t perfect. Anyone who carefully weighs their decisions will find a solution. She herself never perceived the sacrifices she had to make as negative. The awareness of having actively decided for family and work gave her a tailwind. “I wouldn’t want to impose my life design on anyone because everyone deals with the demanding aspects of it differently. People should decide for themselves what is best for them. What society expects of them should not play a role in this decision.”

“I think it’s important to understand that it’s not the sole responsibility of the woman to take care of a child. The father doesn’t just help; he shares the duties and responsibilities with the mother. It’s a division of tasks on an equal footing.”