Introducing “How She Does It”—a new Corporate MomSense series celebrating women who are building remarkable careers while raising families, and offering an authentic look at what it truly takes to make it all work.
Timed perfectly with back-to-school season, we are honored to feature Laura Cunningham, Founder, CEO, and mom, who this past month launched AVA, your 24/7 parenting partner that knows what's coming, helps with the work, and makes sure you don't miss what matters. Think the school supply list you have not started, the camp forms due Friday, the reply-all email thread about carpool — AVA tracks it, drafts it, and moves it forward before it becomes one more thing on your plate.
As a mom of two daughters, Charlotte (9) and Margot (7), Laura built AVA to be the tool she needed most. She co-founded the company in 2025, raised $1.7M in pre-seed funding, and built a 1,400+ person waitlist entirely organically before AVA officially launched in the App Store this July.
Before AVA, Laura spent 15+ years building products across government, education, and emerging tech, most recently as GM and Head of Product at NEAR, a $5B market cap company, and VP of Product at Noodle, a $110M+ Series C company.
What is one practical tip you swear by for advancing your career without losing yourself?
Ruthless prioritization. As a founder, the list of things I could do is infinite, so the only real power I have is deciding what I won't do. I constrain my time on purpose and really try to hold boundaries as sacred. The non-negotiable for me is eating dinner with my family every night and spending time with my kids before they go to bed. When your time has hard walls, I have found that what is worth spending effort on becomes so much more clear. I think constraint is like a filter than makes ambition efficient.
Also, I eat the same thing every day for breakfast and lunch... because who has the brain space to make yet another decision throughout the day.
How do you structure your week—what is your approach to planning, protecting, and prioritizing your time?
I run my calendar like it's my infrastructure. I build work blocks into every day, and every Friday, I look ahead at the following week and assign specific tasks to each of the work blocks, so I know what I am prioritizing every day. I leave some blocks deliberately open because I know new things will crop up that will need to take priority.
And every morning I run - which is really not a fitness note, but an operating note. I find that it puts my head where it needs to be, burns off any nervous energy, and helps me pull my emotions together so I can show up in the way that I need to for my team (and my family).
Laura with her husband, Will, and daughters, Charlotte (9) and Margot (7).
What is one belief about working motherhood that you had to unlearn to reach the success you have today?
This is literally the basis for what I am building now with AVA, but the big thing for me was the belief that struggling to hold everything and everyone together was a me problem. I had been telling myself that maybe I was disorganized, or bad at delegating, or bad at reading my personal email. I felt like I was somehow failing at something everyone else had figured out.
So the belief that I had to unlearn is that the mental load is a personal failure. It isn't. It's an infrastructure gap. Every decade since the early 1900s has added expectations to working moms, and removed none. Once I stopped treating the overwhelm as a character flaw and starting treating it as a systems problem, everything changed. We cannot (nor should we be asked to) self-improve our way out of a structural problem.
What are your go-to style rules for high-stakes days, and how do they help you save time and energy?
There is a short list of clothes that make me feel put together and powerful and so on high-stakes days (when I'm meeting with an important partner, journalist, investor, etc.), I always wear those clothes. Decision fatigue is real and so having only a handful of those kind of clothes really helps.
What is your 2026 anthem?
Break My Soul by Beyoncé. It's all about release, putting down the grind, refusing to let the load break you and finding a new foundation. I want this energy for 2026 - the year we stopped calling burnout a lifestyle and started building the infrastructure to end it!
A Special Offer for Corporate MomSense Readers
Laura's app, AVA, has officially launched in the App Store, and she is giving our community a special code.
Use code MOMSENSE to unlock two weeks free, followed by heavily discounted access for six months (less than the cost of a cold brew!).
AVA is also hosting onboarding sessions to get you set up and answer questions. See dates and details here.
Wearing new AVA merch!
